I chose to reference the art from the anime Sailor Moon, which was inspired by the artwork of Naoko Takeuchi. I wanted to base my art of the anime “Sailor moon” because the art that I do today is influenced by the anime characteristic art style, an art style that originated from the 1960s from the creation of the Japanese animation “Astro Boy”. I chose the anime Sailor moon to use as a reference for my art because I was attracted to the way in which the eyes were drawn and the more vivid color palette. The Japanese animation as well as Naoko Takeuchi’s art style is recognizable today by many because of the characters’ unique elements, such as their hair and eyes. I found it interesting how Naoko Takeuchi chose to draw the eyes of her characters, considering how stylized and how much they stray from the composition of eyes in real life. Furthermore, it was interesting that Takeuchi found inspiration for the outfits of her characters from fashion designs, such as that of Chanel and Saint Laurent, and she found inspiration from outfits from her own past. For example, the sailor uniforms worn by the characters as school attire was inspired the middle school uniform that Takeuchi wore when she was in middle school.

In my piece, I incorporated the vivid color palette of the anime, incorporating colors of somewhat high intensity. I defined my art by visible black lines that clearly form the shape of the character and the background, similar to how the characters and backgrounds were illustrated in the Sailor moon anime. Furthermore, because the Japanese animation is from the 90’s, it has a grainy texture due to the “noise” on television screens. I incorporated this texture into my piece, and added a similar grainy and somewhat blurred texture. Furthermore, with the character in my piece itself, I referenced the characters of Naoko Takeuchi, and made my character have similar proportions to that of the characters of Takeuchi. For example, I made the head relatively large in proportion to the neck and chest of my character. I also wanted to create a sense of balance in my artwork by not only using colors with somewhat high intensity, but by also limiting myself to certain colors to make the elements of my piece flow better. For example, I limited myself to using brown, blue, and pink hues, and only used variations of these colors. Although I limited myself to certain colors, I was able to have a variety of different colors by changing the value of these colors.

My idea is similar to the ideas of Naoko Takeuchi because I referenced her art to design the eyes and hair of my character in a similar way. For example, in her art the characters have large stylized eyes with highlights/shine, which is an element I incorporated into my own character. Furthermore, I shaded and drew highlights in the hair similar to that of the characters in the anime. Furthermore, like Takeuchi, I found inspiration for my character’s outfit from the uniform at my own school, like how Takeuchi referenced her middle school’s uniforms for the uniforms of her own characters. Although my piece does not have much differences from that of the Sailor moon anime, my piece is somewhat different in that my character is wearing a more modern school uniform in comparison to the uniform based on the period and culture of the time. Furthermore, the anime primarily does not put much shading into the clothes of the characters and rarely incorporates shading into the outfits; however, I felt that adding simplified shading to the clothing of my character would complement the shading in the hair and make the overall piece more balanced.