Your creative influences

[entransify]

Well that rather depends how your defining the word 'artist', doesn't it?

It does.

Writing can be art. So can music, or just about anything.

 

[thenewme93]

Greg Weisman is a writer. Not an artist. Just fyi.

I thought he did the designs on Spectacular Spiderman..

 

[G. Wen]

My influences include O'Keefe, Chagall, and Redon. I'm trying to master composition like Cezanne did.

Other stuff that influences me: bright colorful patterns in nature, furniture, architecture (esp. cathedrals), textiles, clothing, flowers, the rhythm and mysteries of the universe, the sky in all its manifestations, infinity.

 

[GregX]

I thought he did the designs on Spectacular Spiderman..

Sean "Cheeks" Galloway did the designs.

Greg Weisman, by his own words, cannot draw a straight line.

 

[jph139]

Hmm... well, as an aspiring writer (which seem somewhat common considering that roughly 1/6 of this thread consists of them if I'm guessing correctly), most people who really capture a sense of fantasy, whimsy, and pure entertainment have inspired me. Neil Gaiman, Tim Burton, and Douglas Adams are some of the core influences in my (genreally mediocre) short stories. Not to mention Charles Dickens and Ronald Dahl - shaping my style before I even knew it.

 

[Yash]

Well, my art style is lifted straight from Penny Arcade:

One of my musical inspirations, I don't actually know his name, was the man who played Scar in a Disney World show based off of The Lion King. Once I had seen that show I had begun to consider acting (and now singing) as a serious occupation.

Relative to Disney, in my few original song works I like to draw inspiration from Howard Ashman, lyricist for several of the "silver age" Disney musicals including Beauty & the Beast and The Little Mermaid.

Mostly I find my inspiration from local people who I see every day. It sounds kind of cheesy but it's true. I get more out of seeing an amazing high school production than a huge Broadway number.

 

[Hanshotfirst1138]

Sean "Cheeks" Galloway did the designs.

Greg Weisman, by his own words, cannot draw a straight line.

Galloway worked on the Hellboy DTVs too (On that subject, whatever happened to the third one that was going to come out?).

 

[Spideyzilla]

I write, and make films. Here are my influneces.
Greg Weisman
J. Micheal Strackyzinski
Paul Dini
Sam Raimi
Christopher Nolan
Bryan Singer
Tim Burton
George Lucas
Steven Speilberg

 

[Darklordavaitor]

Hope you don't mind if I bump this, but I've been working on a couple of personal projects lately and I've been thinking about my influences.

Lately I've been working on music, mostly just stuff I can play on an acoustic or a keyboard. I have a couple of songs down and I'm still working on the right music for them.

I think my biggest songwriting influences include Steve Harris, Paul Simon, John Darnielle, Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan, Jamie Stewart, Phil Lynott, Neige and Neil Young. Judging by these, I seem mostly big on folk, heavy metal and whatever Zappa era I'm feeling at the moment.

Vocally, I aspire to the heights of Bruce Dickinson, Ronnie James Dio, Mike Patton, Morrissey, David Bowie, Ian Curtis, and Jeff Buckley. I think I sound a bit like the last one in particular, although I don't think I can match some of his notes just yet.

I may or may not be forming a band soon with one of my friends, and we've been jamming a bit. I can't do much beyond acoustic guitar yet, but we've been working on material. Our tastes differ a little (out of the artists I mentioned, the only ones he is a big fan of are Iron Maiden, Frank Zappa, Neil Young, and Dio, while he likes bits from other acts here), but we're smart enough and big enough on music to be able to make some great stuff together.

Either way, I think I have enough material to keep for myself.

I've also been writing a screenplay for a movie I've been imagining in my head. I'd like to think that it's kind of like the modern teen movies you see today if Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment) had his hands on one.

Wilder was an insanely gifted filmmaker. He was a great writer as well as a great director, and is one of my biggest influences. I think Kevin Smith is also a great writer/director, and has influenced me in other pieces I've envisioned.

I'd also add Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Quentin Tarantino, Rod Sterling, Joss Whedon, Mike Judge, Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and Greg Weisman as to my influences for celluloid storytelling.

There are a handful of authors that I greatly appreciate and admire as well, but I don't think that novel or graphic novels are something I would like to write. That said, I do respect F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Oscar Wilde, H.P. Lovecraft, Frank Herbert, Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Brian K. Vaughan, Naoki Urasawa, and Osamu Tezuka a great deal, and their work come to mind often.

The work of these people and many others always come to mind when I try to plan my own pieces of art and I thank them everyday for existing and giving me something to reflect on. Whether it's an album like Tallahassee, a movie like Ikiru, or a book like The Picture of Dorian Gray, these are what I can back to and reflect on often.

 

[the greenman]

I'm a writer artist. Went to school for film. Influences vary:

The Hebrew Bible
Fairy tales
Stephen King
Stanley Kubrick
Alfred Hitchcock
Sergio Leone
John Carpenter
Quentin Tarantino
Tim Burton
Frank Frazetta
Jim Davis (garfield)
Jack Kirby
Mike Mignola
Alex Toth
Bruce Timm

Others I can't remember

 

[Gatomon41]

German expressionism had always made a major impact on my art work. The sense of anexity and the subjective emotions of the subject matter. Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter were other groups that played a major interest. Fauvism and Impressionism has engendered e to the exploration of color and its effects on others.

Heironomyus Bosch is anothener major influence, with his strange and bizzare "Garden of Earthly Delights" being a major influence.

Religous art has also been another major player. Renaissance church art is beautiful and breathtaking, a visual expression of the transcendence to God.

Like others, I've been inspired by Tolkein, Lovecraft, Asimov, Herbert, and Heinlien but also C.S. Lewis, Walter M. Miller, Chiaki Konaka, Jerry Pournelle, David Drake, Keith Laumer, Douglas Adams, and MJS.

A number of my favorite games, shows and movies (Star Trek, Star Wars, Gundam, Digimon, Sailor Moon, Robotech, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Metal gear Solid, Babylon 5 etc. etc.) has all had an impact on my own creations. Although I wouldn't let me influence me too much. Otherwise the flaws of each would be readily apparent in my own works.

 

[AdamYJ]

Well, I'm an oral storyteller, and I can't really just rattle off a list of names of storytellers that have influenced me. If I had to pick one storyteller it would be a woman named Marni Gillard who always exhibits a great deal of joy and passion in her storytelling, but also has dedicated herself to teaching young people the art of storytelling.

Otherwise, my influences come from all over the place. When it comes to giving voices to my characters, I find that I draw my inspiration (without imitation) from a lot of the TV shows and cartoons I watched when I was younger including Disney movies, Looney Tunes and Popeye shorts, but especially from Jim Henson and the other Muppet performers. Henson is also inspirational just in terms of his outlook on things. I've also found a rather unconventional inspiration in TV cook Alton Brown. I've got a little subset of stories I jokingly call "Adam's Fairy Tale Classics". Basically, I pick a classic folk or fairy tale and read as many versions in varying detail as I can, scrutinize all the different parts and then try to synthesize the best version from them. Kind of like how Brown's "American Classics" episodes of Good Eats go down. Also, I specialize in folk tales, so there's a lot of inspiration that can be taken from the source material itself as well as from the fantasy writers who were inspired by those old tales.

I also should give credit to my family who have always backed me up and listened to my stories when I asked them to.

 

[JasonFox]

Definitely the surrealism in my writing comes from David Lynch's films in the way that we look at things so correctly but our minds shift so easily.

Another one is Literary writer Ernest Buckler most famous for the Canadian novel The Mountain and The valley which spoke to me on the levels of innocence between childhood and adulthood.

 

[Jeff Harris]

I did an influence map on deviantArt a few months ago:

http://fav.me/d2x9xdh

Still fits.

 

[Frozen]

I can't get to grips with so many people using the terms 'aspiring'. You either write/draw/sing/make or you don't. Where does the 'aspiring' tag come from?

On the plus side, it's really good to see Bruce Timm getting props here. I adore his work on B:TAS. My real hero, however, is Mike Parobeck, the best artist to ever work on the Batman Adventures comic. He showed me I could follow my instinct and do a simple yet accurate style that wasn't smothered in all that clutter and nonsense that Image and Marvel were peddling back then.

RIP, Mike, and thank you.

 

[Manga4life]

I don'y really have any true creative influences, I mean, there are creators that I am a fan of but I wouldn't go as far as to say that they have influenced the way that I write and/or do other creative tasks. A huge influence (and dream) of mine is to walk into a Borders or B&N and see a book on the shelf by my new publishing company, this is something that will probably never happen of course, but it's still fun to dream and hopefully someday possibly achieve.

 

[the greenman]

I can't get to grips with so many people using the terms 'aspiring'. You either write/draw/sing/make or you don't. Where does the 'aspiring' tag come from?

I think people use 'aspiring' as in they are not 'professional' in any sense. They don't get nor have ever been paid for it. I think that's a goal for any artist of any kind to get paid, though I believe just completing something is the true goal.

Anyways I forgot to add Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, and Are You Afraid of the Dark? to my list of influences.

 

[Cullen]

As a cartoonist. My creative influences have been Bill Hanna, Joe Barbera, and Chuck Jones. As well as writers Richard Mueller and Tom Ruegger.

 

[Sparticus]

Ah, relevant meme is relevant:

http://fav.me/d36true

Sorachi Hideaki, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery, Yasuhiro Nightow, Drew Struzan, Jamie Hewlett, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaimain (not pictured but he's still there), H.P. Lovecraft, Mike Mignola, Bill Watterson - the list goes on. XD