Banana Kyatto

亜美・クール : Ami Kuehl
Digital Illustrator and Writer

Art isn't where you are, it's where you were, where you are, where you're going to be, and the story that follows your journey.

An "animated storybook" video version of Door of Aeons is also linked below in the Video Projects section.

The end of 2023 into 2024 was a span of time where I was unable to draw much due to other work and life obligations requiring my full attention. That time has passed, thankfully, and come March I was once again able to continue my artistic pursuit. My focus for the year is on learning more proper perspective and value/shading techniques such that I may improve my environment and background art while still iterating on my abilities to draw characters within those environments. I have since added more pages to my manga, described in detail below.Timelapse videos for the illustrations in this section can also be found in my Video Projects section below.

The majority of my work in 2023 was focused on writing, drafting, and publishing pages of my manga, First Words of a New Life: Origins - Lilith (新生の初語：オリジンズ - リリス) and included are a selection of personal favourites from among them. Still a work in progress, being ~66% complete, a WebToon link to the work entire in a readable format can be found at the bottom of this page.

The years following university were spent splitting my time between full time UI and UX work in the health-care adjacent software space and working on personal projects such as those found below. My focus was very much on improving my general character drawing and design abilities, trying to learn all I could about better anatomical proportion and redesigning old characters as my story evolved.

A collection of older pieces. I drafted a few different stories and manga before I decided to take on and complete First Words of a New Life: Origins - Lilith, using them more as idea testing grounds and learning opportunities while I was in university and working. I plan to return to many of them as I continue to improve and can do them more justice than I could at the time.

Video Projects

A sample of the eclectic series of editing projects I have made for myself. I enjoy making things that I think are educational, funny, cool, or that people will just enjoy being able to see. I also enjoy showing the learning and illustration process via timelapses.

Kaith, Jewel of the Desert Timelapse

Get Out of Here, Skeleton

Fly With Light Beneath Your Wings Timelapse

Cosmic Heartbeat Timelapse

Animated Story Scene - Door of Aeons

Game Projects

Entry for the 2024 GMTK Gamejam under the theme "Built to Scale", created from start to finish over 4 days. On a team with another artist, two programmers, and a sound designer, I provided the gameplay design and song maps, the character visual assets, and the user interface visual assets.Playable on itch.io

About

I am an illustrator, writer, and a person with a deep passion for art, language, culture, and storytelling aiming to publish my own work in both English and Japanese. I am entirely self-taught and my artistic focus has been on character art and stylized figure drawing for the purpose of creating graphic novels, but I am additionally training in environmental design and technical illustration.I take inspiration primarily from Japanese mangaka and illustrators such as Kubo Taito (Bleach), Shinotsuki Shinobu (幼女戦記/The Saga of Tanya the Evil), Moriyama Daisuke (Chrno Crusade) and Okubo Atsushi (Soul Eater), as well as drawing on the work of American artists such as Peter Mohrbacher (Angelarium), mythology, and my own spirituality. My writing is often informed by the same and additionally influenced by the works of Japanese novelists such as Carlo Zen (幼女戦記/The Saga of Tanya the Evil) and American novelists such as Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth Series) and Brent Weeks (Night Angel Trilogy).I strive to always be better tomorrow than I was today and make my vision reality. This portfolio serves as a series of key-frames outlining my journey thus far.I primarily use Clip Studio Paint for Digital Illustration and Sony Vegas for video editing, but I am familiar with the Adobe Creative Suite, open source tools like Krita and GIMP, and design tools such as Sketch and Figma.