Your webcomic's inspiration

[shiftingverses]

My comic? Mostly lines from old 80's crooner songs.

"But there are some things love won't allow, I held her hand, but I don't hold it now."
"We watched our friends grow up together, and we saw them as they fell. Some of them fell into heaven, some of them fell into hell."

Also a mix of personal experiences, reading too much alt fantasy, and travelling around. If you know the songs above, can we be friends?

[APM]

Did you ever saw a cloud with a shape of a ship? That's it... haha

I was traveling by car with my family, looking through the window, when I see clouds colliding like old warships. At this moment I took my cell phone and started writing the introduction of "The Sky Travelers". People living in floating islands, flying ships, pirates and sword fighting... OMG I'm so excited

(The style and culture have a lot of anime/japanese culture influence too)

[Aetherwing]

A lot of things went into the inspiration for Aetherwing, but I'd say that DnD and Magic: the Gathering were the most prominent. My main character, Azora, started out as an idea for a DnD character that I wanted to play. Unfortunately, I didn't really get to play her in anything and I was really proud of her idea, so I tweaked her a bit and built a story around her. I was also really into angels at this time (still am) so the comic has a race of angelic beings.

A lot of the other things in the comic basically just stemmed from things I liked or thought would be interesting (not to say I shoved every little thing I could think of into the story. That would be ridiculous.) For example, since this is a world that has magic, there's a lot of opportunities to have some neat magical creatures in there. And since the world has a large myriad of elementals (my interest in element based things is also the source of some inspiration, some of this may come from my love of the Avatar series among other things,) if could explain the existence of some of these (Examples: Banshees, Phoenixes, Golems.)

[webcomicguru]

When I was a kid, I used to watch "Chavo del Ocho" every day. I didn't understand a word, but now that I speak Spanish, i'm going to start watching it on Netflix.

[MrKyleRose]

Like most art the inspiration for my series "The Working Stiff" comes from multiple sources. In short the series is about a sentient zombie holding down an office job in New York City, because "even the dead have to make a living".

The initial idea came to me back when I was a senior in college (2008ish). I have always been a big fan of the Romero movies and had been binging on the Office. I though it'd be fun to see an intelligent zombie interacting with humans on a day to day basis in a regular office setting. This idea of taking something exciting or extraordinary and setting it in the mundane tedium of daily life has always intrigued me. I came up with the name then and the concept has just stuck in the back of my mind over the years.

I came to think of the zombie as a representation of how we become complacent in our daily routine. Especially in the corporate world where it can be easy to slip into the monotony of regurgitating corporate buzzwords and redressing canned solutions. After moving to New York and working in marketing and advertising for almost a decade I feel like I finally had enough "material" to really flesh the concept out (pun defiantly intended).

Additional influences include:
—Bob Fingerman (Especially "Minimum Wage" and "Recess Pieces")
—Dean Haspiel
—James Kochalka
—The Walking Dead
—Berkeley Breathed's Bloom County
—And of course Charles Schulz and Bill Watterson

Please check out and subscribe to "The Working Stiff" Here

[JeanGuillet]

I'm inspired by the San Francisco Bay Area location and culture. When I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008, I read an old book from the 1970's about the local legends of the region. It was full of thrilling stuff about pirates and bandits, gold discovered in your backyard (it happens), lost wandering ghosts, storms and seas, and a thousand whispers of exquisite detail about the land, and the people who inhabit it. I had arrived into paradise, fresh out of parched wanderings through the desert, and was overcome with expansive appreciation for the new climate, drowned in wonder for this land of the setting sun. There's nothing like contrast to make a fresh start in life seem positively magical.

So I set out to create my own legend about a lonely, disillusioned old man who lives on an island, just out of sight in the mists, endlessly sifting through the off-balance minds of every stereotyped California looney he can find, looking for someone who could face him down.

[whydocowsfall]

I've always loved Greek mythology but I really got into the idea of making a comic based on it when I studied it in school. Before then I'd had a lot of sympathy for Medusa, but mostly just took it for granted that the myths were as they were - the heroes were the good guys and the monsters were the horrible flesh-eaters. Studying it gave me a chance to really think about the stories in more detail and I managed to utterly convince myself that the cyclops Polyphemus could canonically be an adorable sheep-loving sweetheart. So naturally, I decided I had to convert as many people as possible to feeling the same way about him!

(he's a great character - you should definitely have a look at the comic here)

[webcomicguru]

Grew up in NJ, mother was Colombian so much family spoke Spanish (except me being the 1/2 gringo). In my teen years, spent a few years living in Jalisco (Chapala area), where I learned the language and drank soda from a plastic bag with a "popote"

[kambreapratt]

Shadowbinders was inspired by a few different things. Our story has different facets we have Magic and Fantasy mixed with Steampunk mixed with Mecha and Slice of Life. We just say "Steampunk, Fantasy, and romantic comedy"
Story wise
1. Howl's Moving Caste (the book more so than the movie)
2. Inuyasha
3. Escaflowne
4. Stardust
5. Korean Drama

Visually I know the artist bases it on
1. Final Fantasy games
2. Last Exile
3. Avatar (which we didn't see until way after we started the comic)
4. Disney
5. Anime
6. Basically anything he thinks would be "fun to draw"

[joannekwan]

I conceptualized Demon House around October last year. I had been seeing a lot of demon related things on tumblr (most notably Daryl Toh's Tobias and Guy and his other works) and decided to design my own and so Haxan and Fawn were born. I thought they looked really cool and wanted a story attached to them. So I came up with a few more demon companions and drew an unassuming human girl to put smack dab in the middle of them to deal with their shenanigans. But of course she can't exist in a vacuum, so I then created some human friends for her. And that's basically the gist of it.

For Heavy Horns, obviously I was influenced by BL/yaoi manga, but I was inspired more by what I found they lacked. I'm pretty picky with anything I read but definitely that category in particular. Most of the stories were about teenagers or really young adults and a lot of it lacked...maturity, I suppose you can say. The plots were very cliched and had many over-used tropes, and I found issues with many of the characters (like "that isn't a healthy relationship"). I didn't truly love a BL story until I came across the works of Natsume Ono and Est Em. Those two are my romance goddesses. lol

In the case of Erie Waters, I came up with the general beginning of the story under the guidelines of a prompt for a submission to an anthology. I didn't get in but I liked the idea so much I decided to expand it into a longer story. A lot of elements are inspired by folklore and little bits of history (I love history, and where there are ghosts I have to know the history behind that individual).

[enidean]

Set to Zero was inspired by a series of dream / nightmares I had back when I was younger. At that time, it spooked me out a lot but my friend eventually persuaded me into developing a plot based on it. But instead of being horror and paranormal in nature, like my dreams were, it became more sci-fi and futuristic since I developed the plot for LINE Webtoon's contest.

H.G. Wells' The Sleeper Awakes and the film Inception inspired me as well for the overall plot. The anime Psycho-pass and K Project also served as inspiration for the kind of sort of futuristic technology the webcomic would feature.

[avalonmao]

That sounds really cool!

[Roxane]

My slice of life Mini Rex is based on my rabbit. I'll definitely run out of ideas if he stops doing funny things. Help xD

[Dingbat1991]

I've always liked South Park for its satire. If you recall the three-part story of Coon & Friends vs. the DP oil rig, that's sort of how Lento works, combining current event satire with superhero writing. It's more tame than South Park, I avoid doing controversial topics at the moment.

[mattcleaver]

What an awesome question!

In Our Shadow is inspired by a few things.

I am a huge fan of Macross (or Robotech) and my favourite thing about it is how it combines enormous scale battles and stakes, while still making the relationships and actions of a select few incredibly important without being contrived.

With my comic I wanted incredibly powerful foes that aren't particularly 'bad' but just following the way of life they are genetically predisposed to lead, and a concept that will be able to break that status and set the world right.

I was also heavily inspired by the visual style of pokemon, having drawn a lot of pokemon comics, mainly in the way animals are drawn. Translating that style to real world animals makes for a fairly interesting look, I think.

And of course, what character interactions in stories are complete without a little real life experience thrown in!

[BraveHeartTatsumaki]

There are many things that inspired Final Light
Well, firstly, I'd say it was Final Fantasy (OHH REALLY? (?) XD), but the ones from PS1, in those times here we didn't have that many anime but I always wanted to create a fantasy world with heroes and villains and magic creatures.
I remember the very, very first version of Final Light was when I was around 10, and I had the idea of a girl with a dragon, later it evolved to an actual Final light with a girl with a dragon (actually the story did involved dragons), with a lot of mythology from greece.
And the final product is... a story of fantasy, magical creatures, mix of many mythologies, having as primordial local mythology mostly Mapuche (native people from Chile and also Argentina) and practically all the country, I use few words in mapudungun (though is not easy), and in case you ask, there are still dragons, but they're not that primordial (or maybe they are? :P)

[Stellamari]

For Goldlocks Agency for Superheroes, I was inspired by a book written by Jonathan Stroud, Lockwood and Co (I finished that book 1 week before I starts drawing the webcomic) while the superhero part is largely inspired by an rp I joined a few years ago (Teacup/Coffeemug rp) and a webcomic called Nimona by Noelle Stevenson.

[efdvorsky]

Cosmic Fish was kind of put together for a few years based on different ideas and comics I would make. Most, if not all, of the characters are actually based from dreams I've had where I'd enjoy the design and I'd expand from there. Also OCTs to explore the characters, as well as some philosophical discussions and RP's I've had with some of my friends.

I still think a lot of it has been inspired from my overall likes, too. From local folklore, from anime like Satoshi Kon (psychological exploration), Masaaki Yuasa (surrealist analysis of the life cycle and colors), Ghibi films (ambience, backgrounds, the concept of 'ma' (silence)), FLCL (action scenes) or FMA (man vs. god complexity), works of Brad Bird (Iron Giant mostly) and a few independent comics. Really Cosmic Fish is a huge melting pot of so many things I can't personally pin point it to a definite inspiration. But I hope that also gives it its own personality, you know?

[iasucomic]

The Vapors' chief inspiration was Watamote - they're both about mean and nasty kids being mean and nasty so I think the thematic connection is pretty apparent, though Vapors isn't as much of a comedy as Watamote is. Visually I mainly looked to One Piece and Scott Pilgrim for inspiration though I don;t think it came out looking much like either.

[phen]

There's No Such Thing as Jason is certainly a story that I created out of personal experiences with friends and graduating (coming of age stuff, all totally relatable to everyone). Going into university and learning about the psychological slant to some of the "storm and stress" of adolescence really fueled the story. But a lot of it started simply as exploring the weird impulses and obsessive tendencies young people act on relationship-wise. We all have our high school mysteries! But yeah, always love hearing theories and digging through one's psyche to figure out why certain things make us tick!

As for the There's No Such Thing as Jason -- I.T. as I'm posting it on tapastic, further exploration on psychological drives and how people gravitate toward one another. I love psychological drama, yo!