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I love the way you draw cats! How did you adopt a style like that? Who/What were your inspirations?

Thank you!!! I'm so glad people have been liking them!! I'd say I get a lot of style elements from popular cartoons, like pokemon, but I also take a lot of care in my references, and learned to breakdown their shapes over years of trial and error. I'd say a majority of the inspo I got was from random warrior cats speed paints on youtube- I'd pause the frames and pay attention to all the different steps they did! I don't think any one youtuber stood out to me as someone I got my style from, but It's def an amalgamation of a bunch of creators from the early 2010's! I'd love to post something, or even a video one day, of how I do each of the steps I do to get where I get! [Below is a retelling of my art journey if anyone is interested!]

I'd like to think I've got two styles of drawing: art for ocs, and canonized fan art. For both I use a great deal of references, either chosen from stock/free use image sites or from pictures of my three irl cats (who are very photogenic <3)! I am self taught, which means I've gone through a LOT of trial and error over the good decade I've been into the WC fandom. About a year or two ago, my laptop (that I've had since childhood) crashed so hard it deleted everything from my hard drive, losing YEARS of progress/artwork that I hadn't posted anywhere. Foolishly, months before that, I'd deleted my DeviantArt where all my cringe emo ocs were posted, something I was embarrassed of at the time, and now deeply regret doing (fr keep and date ALL of your art it is so important for your growth). I wish more than anything that I could post some of it here to show how my style has grown and changed, but sadly, I'll just have to describe it to ya.

[^^^ Above: the only bit of art I have saved from that time!]

I started drawing wc art in the 4th grade with some friends at my school- a very close friend of mine had started doing it, and I had never really drawn before, so I just followed along with what she did; the meme-y 'firestar doesn't like waffles/derp' fad of the time had be in a VICE GRIP and a lot of my work looked like that. I drew almost exclusively on paper, until my parents let me use the trackpad/mouse on the family computer in mspaint, where my passion for it really started to take off.

From there I got into deviantart, and started out like a lot of young kids did- thick, uniform lineart, coloring in the flats manually, tons of airbrushes and clip images of sparkles, the GOOD STUFF. I would hold paper up to the computer screen and trace the emo mspaint scourge pmvs frame by frame, I was obsessed. Then, for my 13th birthday, my uncle gifted me my very first wacom tablet; a tiny, 6x6 plastic plate that came with a pen and a too short chord. I drew constantly, watching speed paints and reading riverspirit comics until my eyes melted out of my skull, rp'd and posted little comics about my day to day. This went on and I very slowly started improving the more naturally drawing came to me; I held my pen different, downloaded a pirated version of firealpaca, learned about lineweight, obtained LAYERS. Almost seven years ago now, that friend I started drawing with passed away while she was very young. I couldn't stomach drawing warrior cats art for a long time after that; and, my parents had been urging me to give it up for a while too (in their opinions, if I was going to waste my time drawing, it should be something I could do to make money. If only they could see my commission having ass now!!). I still made art, but I did it formally; still life, paintings, figure sketches. When I got to highschool, I went to a specialized program for gifted students (burnout king right here) and took a TON of formal art classes, studying it as my main field. I learned about shapes and color and the natural flow of a piece; but I never really get over my love of cartoons, or my love of warrior cats art. There was just something so special about it, so unique to any fandom I've ever been in, that eventually, I was called back to it. My life was very difficult during that time, when I decided to redraw some of my old digital art for a class warmup. I hadn't touched a laptop in years, and it was ROUGH, but I reconnected with it instantly, and it was the first bit of serotonin I'd had in a WHILE. I got back into roleplays, got back into tumblr, got back into all the old stuff that made me happy.

I graduated highschool in 2020 and started drawing a lot of warrior cats content in between shifts- which leads to where I am now! I was deeply insecure about it and would hide the fact I did it from people I knew irl because I was afraid they'd think im cringe (I am cringe and I love that about myself now, thank u therapy)- and now, I pay for our internet bill off warrior cats commission money, which felt like a pretty big leap!! I still like doing 'formal traditional art', and it has influenced my art and it's shapes a ton- but I still cling to the anime eyes I loved to draw as the kid who wanted to make cartoons for all the world to see.

2, 16, 28 👀✨

Ask me about these topics!

2: drabbles

Drabbles are a hit or miss for me in my opinion. I'm a fanfiction writer on another side of tumblr, so I've already written my fair share before, but after taking long breaks from writing, it's hard for me to come up with something super original on the spot for drabbles. That goes for RP, too. When writing drabbles for ocs and such, I find it harder to come up with one I'm proud of or satisfied with unless I've interacted or have known the character well enough. I never want to write a drabble where I portray someone else's character incorrectly or whatever because it just feels wrong to me, and it takes away from the magic of creating a scene between your own character and another's. I don't feel experienced enough with other people's ocs yet to write a long drabble that I'm confident enough to share, but I would upon further interactions with other ocs. I really want Miu to make some more friends, and that goes for my other ocs as well. I'd love to do some collabs with our ocs, whether it be drabbles or art.

16: dash games

I LOVE DASH GAMES. They really help with interactions sometimes, and I like messing with mutuals with our characters and I love being tagged in stuff and I love just reading more about mutuals and it just really helps me feel comfortable in the community. Dash games are always really fun to read and participate in, and I wish there were more that I knew of or were tagged in to take part in.

28: your first muse

Funny enough, the Miu that you know now was not my first muse. (It was actually a cat.. well....Multiple.... I was really into the Warrior Cats books at the time... we don't speak of her tho.)

It was actually a KNB oc that I just enjoyed drawing. Miu came after I stopped watching. To be honest, I forgot the oc's name, and she never really had any real backstory or details about her, it was just a character I drew in my notebook for my 6th grade science class. But after that, when I first got into the DL fandom, there was Miu Toyota. She was cringe af, especially because I first came up with her when I was abt 12 y/o. Colour changing hair based off of her mood, pick-me behaviours, no original plot or backstory. Just early design with nothing too special. I kept her though, just fine-tuning her throughout the years until she turned into the girl you know of now. I think I may have some drafts of Toyota, but I wouldn't dare post them publicly ever again for the sake of my pride lmao