Choii
The Lion King Fan-Art Archive is fortunate to host thousands of artists
with vastly different artistic styles, ranging from the super-cartoony to
the super-realistic, with Disney-like blends of the two extremes
occupying the continuum in between. Yet there's a certain look, a visual
style that could be said to be the trademark look of the TLKFAA: a smooth,
polished, computer-colored stylistic vocabulary that starts with the
Disney TLK style and kicks up the realism a few notches. Many artists have
mastered variations on this look; but this month's Featured Artist,
Choii, is one of the very best at it, executing it with effortless skill
and imbuing it with that all-important uniqueness that every artist brings
to the table.
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In the Artist's Own Words:
| “ | I'm on the front-page woohoo!! In your face!! XD lol kidding!!
This sure came as a shocking surprise, I could hardly breath when I first realized the people who congratulated me had NOT mistaken me for an other person. So I can't say I'm not happy about it. ;P I knew it would happen sooner or later, but not this day, this month even less this year! It's an honor I have to thank all the persons who voted on me, my friends and fellow artists for ! And of coz Brian! Brian have given us a community like no other. He works his butt of for us nagging kids. XD THANK YOU SO MUCH!! *BIG SQUASHY HUGS* And a special Thanks to my best friend Tuss who always been there supporting and pushed me :P through all these years!! But also to my man Pixie to confuse everyone!(non tlkfaa dude) ;D My TLKFAA story ain't much different from any other artists here. I found the site through www.lionking.org. Got amazed and wanted to join the party lol XD So I joined up at 2002 and been around since then. Through time I've been haunted by the obsession of improving (in a good and enjoyable way).To reach that point where you feel everything is perfect, no need to practice on backgrounds or such XP. Could be able to draw what ever you want and think it's good enough =P Such point may not exist but you know what they say; 'Aim for the stars and you might get halfway' Aaaand I know I'm a freaky weirdo but if it weren't for the will of improving I wouldn't be where I'm today. So I'm taking all constructive criticism with great gratitude ^.^ ~ Love ya all !! |
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As a few of the example pictures here show, Choii favors an illustrative twist—a style of character design that foregoes intricate detail of surface and outline in favor of large, easily interpreted shapes in the face and body. Smooth gradient coloring is used where applicable, but for the most part characters are composed of simple, even flat components such as eye shadow surfaces and ear edges. These are the shapes that define an artist's unique style, and while Choii's doesn't scream "Disney" as its inspiration, it does every bit as good a job a Disney's at presenting a character with a memorable, distinctive personality embodied in its face and body language.
As is so often the case, though, I find that it's really the sketch work that shows off Choii's skill the best. This is where we get to see the creative process in action, the half-finished lines and the rough coloring. A recent self-portrait (posted on August 7) is described as a "scribble", but such a word masks the artistic value that an observer can glean from it. It's clearly a very rapid sketch, done digitally with a tablet, with quickly laid-in crosshatch shading and incompletely defined color areas—and yet it's a beautiful drawing, projecting character in its own right and yet perfectly translating the artist's own physical appearance into a leonine one with the same inward and outward characteristics, right down to the eyes and smile. "Lionizing" a human character is seldom easy—but you'd never know that to see Choii do it, because she pulls it off so confidently.
It's always a treat to see an artist with as much natural skill as Choii moving in the direction of creating animations; the ones she does, certainly, are breathtaking in their simplicity and ease of execution. Even in the half-finished state most of them retain after being posted, their fluidity of movement, their unmistakable character, and their easygoing humor all work together to make Choii's animations some of the best on the Archive. It's just too bad that there are so few...
Choii has definitely earned the spotlight this month through her hard work and constant aspiration toward excellence. She's an asset to the Archive by any measure, and it's a pleasant bonus that her trademark style is one that so many fans of this still-rapidly-growing artistic genre enjoy so much!