Inspiration and influence map

 Original here!

My biggest influences, what makes me want to create art. There are a few other inspirations that I couldn't fit on here—everything on here has been a consistent inspiration for multiple years, as opposed to things I've only discovered recently or had influence me for relatively-short periods of time (examples: Mass Effect inspires the hell out of me and makes me want to draw almost endlessly, but I've only been a fan of the franchise since this past September. Weiß Kreuz and Gundam Wing are two things I was fanatic about in high school, and did a ton of fanart related to them, but they're on more of a back burner these days when it comes to my interests).

1. Record of Lodoss War, both the OAV series and the various manga versions. I watched some of the TV series (Chronicles of the Heroic Knight), but I was never able to get into it as much as the OAV. I don't know if it's the less-elaborate animation style or the fact that it seems to take place in an alternate timeline where some events of the OAV story apparently never happened. *shrug* Nobuteru Yuuki is an awesome artist and I wish I had even a tenth of his skill. I'm nowhere near that level.

2. Gall Force: Mostly the first movie, Eternal Story. I was first introduced to anime when I was young, probably 7 or 8, and some of the first things I watched were Urusei Yatsura (aspects of which can be confusing to a kid, but it's simple and fun overall), Nausicaä (in its American edited version, "Warriors of the Wind") and Gall Force (death and violence and nudity, always great things for a developing mind! xD) I immediately switched from a "realistic" style to one that was WAY more anime-influenced; most of my earliest anime-style drawings are obviously modeled after Miyazaki's and Sonoda's styles.

3. ThunderCats: Hey, I grew up in the 80s watching 80s cartoons! Some years (damn, probably at least 13…that long?) ago, when Cartoon Network re-aired it, I watched it for nostalgia's sake, and realised that it's actually got a lot in there to appeal to non-chibi viewers, too. I've not seen the "remake" of ThunderCats. I'm actually kind of hesitant to do so—I have my own plans for a remake (not that it'd ever have a status beyond fanfiction, unless I can somehow buy the franchise rights).

4. Slayers: To me, Lodoss War and Slayers kind of represent two points in a continuum of high-fantasy anime. Lodoss is super-serious, while Slayers is mostly silly. I took a lot of inspiration from both: My original works range from dramatic to outright comedic, complete with superdeformation and cartoonish facial expressions, though I'm not as good at inventing them as I'd like to be.

5. Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind: Honestly, anything by Hayao Miyazaki. His art style and character designs are fairly simple, but very expressive, and I love the themes of harmony with nature that are woven into just about everything he does.

6. King's Field (and King's Field II): An old, obscure first-person RPG for the original PlayStation. The American game known as King's Field was actually King's Field 2 in Japan, and our King's Field II was their King's Field 3 (for whatever reason, the first Japanese King's Field was never released in the US). As may be obvious from this screenshot, the graphics in King's Field were hardly cutting-edge even in 1995, but the world it's set in is deeply-developed, with an extremely compelling plot and some of the most orgiastically-awesome music you'll ever hear in a video game.

7. Lord of the Rings: I couldn't find a good group picture, so I settled on this amusing photoshop from www.somethingawful.com (a website I used to visit with great regularity, though I've lapsed somewhat in the past few years). Since most fanfiction/fanart I create based in the LotR world is fairly silly, I thought this was a better example of how it inspires me than some generic group shot of the Fellowship.

8. Phantasy Star Online: I've always been much better at designing fantasy-type clothing and objects, but PSO has given me a lot of inspiration for stuff that looks more sci-fi. In fact, a significant portion of my Mass Effect fanart has a very strong PSO influence.

9. Firefly: Not just this, to be honest, I also draw inspiration from just about everything else Joss Whedon has created/produced. I love the plots he dreams up. I love the characters he creates. I love the way characters can flip from Super-Dramatic Drama Mode when the world is in danger to some of the most memorable and quotable one-liners ever. Buffy's yummy sushi pajamas, River being in Congress, medicinal carrots that were there when he moved in… XD

10. Sailormoon: I love brightly-coloured things, I love astronomy/astrology, and I love heroines. I love the idea of mystical superpowers based on celestial objects. I even invented a faction of Sailor Senshi for the solar system that Third Earth (where the ThunderCats live) is located in, but I'm not sure that will show up as such when I get around to writing my TC fanmanga. ^_^;

11. Elfquest: I've been a fan of EQ longer than almost everything else on here. Like my first animes, I was introduced to Elfquest at a young age, and I thought it was the most awesome thing ever. I still do! It's over thirty years old—older than I am—and still going strong. Wendy Pini is proof that not only can a woman create comics and do gorgeous art, she can publish them and make a living. All of the elves and fairy-people in my original works have a strong EQ influence behind them, and even some non-elf-like alien races in my sci-fi stories do as well.