Biggest inspirations for your work?

[A-weird-girler]

OH trust me IT WAS but It'll be way better now that I have good characters that aren't mary sues or other fandom characters and an actual plot. It's good because it wasn't my inspiration for plot only characters. Have faith

[A-weird-girler]

I discarded the old plot since it was Breadwinners and Teen Titans Go bad.

[Jenny-Toons]

-hisses through teeth- YIKES, that is bad O-O

[ChanYE]

books like catcher in the rye and the show FLCL

oh and edward scissor hands

[A-weird-girler]

Yep. I couldn't look myself in the mirror after I realized how bad it was. But with THIS webseries, it'll change

[SlugBomb]

I love watching youtube reviews about movies/games/etc. that utterly drop the ball and become the objects of ridicule. I agree that they make as much of a good teacher as quality pieces of media.

I've heard the name Escaflowne thrown around in my sphere a lot. I should try that anime out.

[SlugBomb]

I remember getting the newspaper from the front yard and just going straight to the funnys section to read all the comic strips, good times!

[Jenny-Toons]

Yes! Like The Boondocks, Otis, Broom Hilda, Peanuts, and a few others I remember but forget the names of XD

[SlugBomb]

What's your favorite magical school girl show?

[SlugBomb]

Looking forward to your new series!

[A-weird-girler]

It's already out lol. On my profile. Here's a link

The Residents of E. Picurus' Mansion | Tapas

[Masterman]

Oh, I could gush for hours on this topic. I'll keep it reasonable, and focus on the specific inspirations for The Adventures of Echo Callaway:

Hiyao Miyazaki
Everyone knows who this is, I'm sure, but if not, treat yourself to the finest film-maker of my lifetime. Miyazaki's work was a revelation to me, and I discovered it very late in life. His work turns strangeness into a sense of wonder that is incredibly distinctive and sublimely beautiful. My favorite is Spirited Away, but really all of his films are full of this incredible quality.

Brandon Mull's Fablehaven
A novel instead of a comic, but my favorite all-ages fantasy tale. Fblehaven captures the wonder and delight of discovery, and does a fantastic job of gradually broadening the scope of his world as the work progresses. Very much an influence on how I want my characters to interact with their world.

Scott McCloud
Maybe a strange choice, considering that his work is mostly non-fiction, but McCloud was the person who lit the fire for comics in me, and it's only grown over the years. Understanding Comics was revelatory for me, an articulation of all the amazing qualities I was starting to appreciate in comics, and an affirmation of my burgeoning impulse to create them. His later works only added to this understanding, and he is also how I discovered people like Tezuka and Art Speigelman.

[storytimebiondi]

The lesson is: there is learning and inspiration everywhere
Also: look up Escaflowne. It's incredible. It very much ignores the annoying tropes of anime, while also maintaining some level of interest and appealing to fans in other ways (you'll see). It was just very well constructed. A true gem.

[indagold]

I like weird obscure, macabre shit. Anything thats off the walls bizarre I like.

Edward gorey was a main inspiration for me, I used to read his stuff as a kid. He had a wonderful mix of weird, dark and cute pieces of work. I don't know if I can consider his works comics? Maybe more sequential images with captions.

Yume nikki was a big inspiration, even though I only discovered it when I was 14, it took me like 3-4 years later to play the actual game since I only had a mac at the time.

And I guess this more vague, but psychology was a big inspiration for a lot of my work. Someone gave me a book on jung when I was 12 and even though I understood screw all it made me intrigued in terms like anima/animus, cultural symbolism and other terms.

So was going to museums and reading about the world and mythology had a big affect on my work? My mom would give me books on world mythology as a kid and we'd go to nearby museums and i'd always be intrigued about learning about stuff I didn't usually know about. Science also played a very big factor.

Oh and zelda too, I was massive zelda fangirl at one point.

[SlugBomb]

lol right. I'll check it out.

[KoreanTacos]

To me that's a super vague question only because there's so many options to really explain why it should be my definitive favorite. I think if I have to pick something to really represent my love for magical school girls I guess it would have to be Cardcaptor Sakura (even though I only ever read the manga). Sailormoon is an obvious inspiration for most people into the genre. I've been trying to keep up with Precure, but there's so many different versions and older seasons are kind of a pain to find (Splash, Yes, and Fresh being especially annoying to find). One that people seem to neglect is Zettai Karen Children which isn't a traditional magical school girl, but shares some similar themes with the genre... to an extent (fun fact: Doug Walker Nostalgia Critic and James Rolf AVGN are background characters in one episode). While I do like Madoka I always felt like it tried too hard to seem like an edgy show rather than an interesting one if that makes sense. While I was a fan of it the first time around, I tried watching it again and I can kind of see just how hard it tries to be edgy same with Yuki Yuuna (except the fight scenes in that give me a headache for some odd reason).

[kjswithabeard]

Good topic!

My new webcomic Blackmouth was/is inspired by a bunch of stories told in various mediums that mostly fall within the fantasy and horror genres:

FILMS:
- The Village
- The VVitch
- Princess Mononoke
- Sleepy Hollow
- Pan's Labyrinth

VIDEO GAMES:
- Bloodborne
- Dark Souls
- Silent Hill

Blackmouth | Tapas

[jpnakashima]

@Masterman Have you read Scott McCloud's Zot? Great stuff!

@indagold Oh man, Yume Nikki, I was obsessed with it for a while. I feel myself getting down this rabbit hole again, it's been a while since I last played

[Masterman]

Definitely! I picked up some Zot back issues as soon as I read Understanding Comics; later on down the road, I bought the collected edition (which sadly I lost in a house fire, along with 33 years worth of books and comics). But yeah, loved it a ton. Zot actually had one of the earliest LGBTQ characters in comics, and Scott wrote that story beautifully.

[Akhdas]

none.

NOW WHERE'S MY TROPHY I HAVE WON THIS CHALLENGE I AM THE GREATEST OF ALL.