I'm not very good at art in general, but I really want to try drawing Sailor Moon authentically, and the 90's anime's artstyle is my favorite because it's so cute and expressive. I want to draw SM characters as Hamilton characters, so I want to be as authentic as possible.

I'm no expert, but my drawing style is, I draw digitally in PaintDotNet (which is similar to Photoshop, but free, a bit simpler/has fewer features, but includes a really handy curvy line tool). Drawing digitally allows me to use layers to go back and change proportions or details in a way I can't do on paper.

To try to capture the 90s anime style specifically, I learned at first by studying a lot of screenshots I took of parts of the anime I thought looked particularly good, and studying the lines. I'd try tracing them at first, but then I started branching out by drawing new poses, outfits, etc, while trying to keep a similar look to the face. Basically the idea is to make something new while only using the screenshots as a general visual reference, rather than copying them verbatim.

Some of the really distinctive traits I noticed about the 90s anime are:

- The two most common types of eyes are big wide open girly eyes, with big ovals with bright white circles in the middle (they don't seem to have black pupils- just shiny spots), or thin eyes, which similarly have white spots in them but are way more anrow and wide and pointy. That second style is more for older or more masculine characters, although it can also be effeminate as seen when Makoto gets angry for example (in episode 25 Makoto shows both styles well).

- People have really, really long limbs in Sailor Moon. A little longer and thinner than seems quite natural. Doubly so for tall adults. Children and the eldery have tiny stubby limbs. The teenagers are built a bit more like realistic adults in my opinion, whereas someone like Sailor Pluto or Kaolinite is extremely long and slender. Not like, unhealthily so- there's a few cases where they went overboard, but usually you want to err towards what's physically possible for a human- but that seems like the trend.

- Hair tends to be a bit bigger in older anime in general, although Sailor Moon wasn't nearly as crazy about it as something like Tenchi Muyo. But you want to make sure you have the distinctive flippy-up bits on certain characters' bangs (Mamoru, Makoto, Naru, etc), and a good amount of volume with a lot of lines in the hair.

- Faces tend to have a bit of a pointiness to the chin but not too extreme. A lot of the time there's a little line on the chin below the lips, especially on male or older characters (not so much cutesy younger characters, who may have a simple line or dot for a mouth). Lips aren't generally seen unless someone wears lipstick. For the exact sense of how the face curves I really just recommend studying some screenshots of faces at different angles- front, 3/4 angle, sideview.

- For comedic scenes and fantasies, characters do extremely wild, cartoonish takes where all rules are out the window. Hyper SD proportions, crazy cartoon faces, beady eyes, all sorts of weird little mannerisms.

Another oddity you may want to keep in mind about the 90s anime is that they had many different animation directors, giving certain episodes different looks than others. Masahiro Ando did a pretty different look from some of the other animators, with faces that were a bit more... squished, I'd say? And had little tooth things. But even within one director's work the style changes a lot- like in episode 23 (the one where Usagi tries to warn Naru about Masato Sanjoin), the art style changes wildly from scene to scene even though it's all one director. So you may kind of have to pick and choose what you think looks better to try to duplicate.

I'm not sure what Hamilton characters are, but I wish you luck on your project! I also hope other people can chime in, as I feel pretty sure there's been other people who were knowledgeable about this subject. (I want to say there was a thread about 90s art styles on here a while back?)

Sorry if that came out a bit rambly, hopefully some of it makes sense. If you have any other questions, always feel free to ask!