So a few of you guys have said that I’ve inspired you in your art, so I figured I’d share one of my art inspirations with the community here! This drawing is of Gotland, from Kantai Collection. Took me around 12 hours? I’m gonna explain more about KC and how it relates to my art below, so feel free to skip the rest of this if you aren’t interested in that sort of thing!

I first heard of Kantai Collection back in 2015, a little after that years Spring Event had started. I was immediately struck by the game’s art style, and by how interesting and unique the character designs where! Particularly the boss characters, designed by Akira. I started making fanart for the game almost immediately after Spring ‘15 ended, and a large chunk of my art has been KC related ever since.

In particular, I think the artists Drew, Yoshinori and Akira are some of my biggest artist inspirations. Their work for KC has been some of the most important to my growth as an artist! Akira for their gorgeous and often haunting character art, Drew for his insane improvement over the years, and Yoshinori for making me want to improve myself and one day do justice to his characters. Many of the other artists for the game have impacted me too, but these are the top three!

I’ll make another post like this talking about how Bandori and possibly Madoka Magica have also influenced me artistically, but for now I feel like this is the most important one! I literally wouldn’t be the artist I am without the KC franchise. I’ll leave a few links in the comments to the English wiki and some specific pieces/characters for anyone interested :)