I watched a lot of videos as a kid due to them being handed down to me since I’m the youngest child. This means I was exposed to a lot of media from the 1970s-90s on top of the 2000s media that was on TV while I was growing up. I have vivid memories associated with VHS tapes and watching them on CRTs.
Whether for better or worse, the horror content I was exposed to as a kid has had a profound impact on the stylistic choices I make in my own work. As a fan of anime, I would seek out any and all types and eventually found myself watching a lot of anime from the 1980s and 90s, a lot of which were OVA (Original Video Animation, similar to direct-to-video releases outside of Japan). A lot of this animation benefited from the VHS format. Much like how I mentioned earlier regarding taped 50s and 60s shows, the shadows were very dark and created striking and disturbing imagery. The warbling, jittering, and blurry interference creates an additional unsettling tone. With anime in the 80s and 90s, while the shadows were dark and heavy, there was an abundance of bold colours (notably blues and reds) to prevent muddying shades. It makes for some very dramatic stills!
A similar aesthetic can be found within the direct-to-video cartoons I watched repeatedly as a child. The most important and influential to me include Scooby Doo and the Witch's Ghost, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, and the Alvin and the Chipmunks Halloween specials. Much of the animation for these films was actually done by Japanese studios, which may explain the similarities in style (especially Sarah Ravencroft's design, who reminds me of the villians of Sailor Moon).
This is something I have begun to test out in my art with the use of blur, fiddling with layer settings such as Pin Light, Lighten, or Screen, as well as adding noise filters.
