I've struggled with this myself a million times. Thought I'd bring it out here.

I've always wondered what style to go in. More cartoony (Joe Mad)? More realistic (Butch Guice, Dale Keown)? Realistic with rendering (Dave Finch)? Mainstream Realistic (Jim Lee, Kuberts)? Realistic without (Steve Scroce)? Cartoony with grit (Greg Capullo)? Stylistic Cartoony (Mike Mignola)? Mainstream cartoony (Mike Wieringo)? Highly stylistic (Travis Carest, David Mack, Lienil Yu...). Then there's going back to the sorce of these guys, and so on. There's also painting and more.

There's so many different styles, all of which I love for different reasons. To really develop a style, you have to focus on it. My stuff is constantly morphing It's a little less frequent since I started focusing on storytelling, but I've got that down (there's still more to learn, but it's the experience stuff), and I've been thinking more about style and some of the other aesthetics of art.

Below you'll see a more realistic approach to Batman style study. It's an animated gif, so wait for it. You'll see several stages of creation on this. I started this, planning to go with no rendering or very little. After I finished the first version (no rendering), I saw some areas that could use some rendering to give it more depth and a 3rd dimension (the rib cage on his left side). I then decided to create another layer (I work in Photoshop with a Wacom) to add rendering, so it could easily be deleted, if I didn't like it. Can't just have rendering in one spot and none on the rest of the image, that'll look we'red. So, I rendered the rest of the image. After that, I created another layer for striking through the hatching lines, creating a broken line effect. They all look pretty cool. Oh, and the final frame with the background. Just ignore that. through that in there for fun.

I'm conflicted. What do you think?

Oh, and I still haven't decided if I want to go more cartoony or less or what. This is just for rendering of realistic style. Like I said, I'm conflicted.



Thanks for your thoughts! General critiques are also welcome.