Absorbing Another Artist’s Art Style

A teacher once told me a story about an in-law who worked in the animation studio for a very popular children’s cartoon. The studio used hand-drawn animation for the first season and transitioned to more computer animation for season two and season three. The job entailed drawing the main character of the series over and over again for eight hours, five days a week. The art had to look exactly like the original creator intended, exact measurements and line weight.

The animation studio was known for making characters that looked very unique, more zany. The faces had features that were very grotesque. It was the kind of style that would alter anyone’s drawing style if required to draw repetitively for forty hours a week.

I imagined what a lifetime of drawing this particular cartoon character would feel like and I challenged whether the tradeoff of creative energy for a payment was worthwhile. First, recreating another artist’s style to perfection is not a simple task; second, a takeaway from drawing in a different person’s art style, is that my own drawing style is altered by inheriting new techniques or tools of the trade; third, I had a difficult time imagining how much personal free-time was left to draw when the day job required such a large creative output.

In a follow up conversation with my former teacher, I would ask if the animator eventually left the studio and whether their own original style was forever changed. If the answers to both questions were, “Yes.” I would ask, “Was it worth it?”


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