Your webcomic’s inspiration

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.

What an awesome question!

In Our Shadow2 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!

There are many things that inspired Final Light1
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)

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.

Cosmic Fish2 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?

The Vapors1' 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.

I'm not sure I can pin point any one thing that inspired West. It's a product of everything I love and admire in films, books, games, relationships and am intrigued by in day to day life.

Films by Studio Ghibli1 heavily inspired the pace and asthetic. Others like The Prince Of Egypt inspired the vibe. Games like Skyrim and the Assassins Creed series taught me how to move things along and tie things up in the end, and the practise of completing those games through problem solving was especially helpful when devising my own plot.

Spending a lot of time in (relatively) remote places by the sea, in the woods, and in the mountains was a strong source of inspiration. I'm forever trying to bottle that sense of smallness and inject it into what I do. I also walk a lot, exploring caves and rivers and anything else I find, so I've come across some really strange things and gotten into a lot of trouble, which is always amusing to work into the comic one way or another.

West is inspired by old tool kits, colourful rugs, and those crunchy, salty boat ropes as thick as your arm that wash up on the beach and get tangled in weed. I see reflections of people I know in the characters-- my family and friends-- and continually collect memories to drop in when a little something more. It is a manifestation of everything I am-- as I am right now-- and it's kind of scary.

I was really into Bleach, Soul Eater and Haruhi when I first started making my comic. I have some elements of those in the beginning of my story but now, I dunno where I'm going.

@jacintawibowo <3 I'm so glad it's coming through! Okami is, next to Journey, one of my favourite videogames in terms of style and atmosphere.

Space Guys1 had always been a collection of silly cartoon aliens that I doodled in high school. It was a silly Disney Afternoon vibe with some Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy humor thrown in. Then I heard the album Neon Bible by Arcade Fire and suddenly I had a huge backstory forming in my mind. Every song informed some moment or character. But I could never get it started. Then, last year, my dad passing away had a major impact on how I finally approached creating the comic.

The first comic I ever owned was Volume 1 of Naruto, this was back at that age when a person is trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives and it had an effect on me. It's hard to explain it, but comics have effected me unlike any other medium I enjoyed them so much that I decided I want to give other people this feeling aswell so Naruto was my first inspiration. Over the years I got older and the pool of things I have integrated into Shapeshifter have grown all over the board from other comics like Berserk and Attack on Titan to books like Lord of the Rings to even video games, most notably Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy.

I started working on The Chronicles of Oro1 back in 2005 when I was 13. At that point, my main inspiration came from Dungeon Siege (1 and 2 only... 3 never happened, lol.), Dragon Quest 3 for GBC, the Lord of the Rings movies, the Dragonlance 'War of the Souls' trilogy of books, and Inuyasha among others.

All four of these revolve around big fat fantasy adventures but I remember most fondly the worlds that they inhabited. I couldn't resist playing those games, watching those movies and episodes, and reading for hours and hours. I was enthralled by how deep I could climb into some long forgotten mine, enchanted by the mysterious ruins I found lost in an ancient forest teeming with beasts and monsters, and ensnared by the unfathomable history and complexity of the magic and peoples who lived there. I was soothed by the growing familiarity of the characters and their abilities to overcome hardships that made high school seem droll.

Although the story has gone through 3 re-writes and ten years of character development (my own and that of my actual characters), I think I've still managed to keep that which I fell in love with alive in this story... It's certainly kept my interest for long enough.

I haven't gone into the meat of my comic yet, but I thought this would be interesting to look back and reflect how The Pale came to be.

2009-2013, I was banging my head against the wall for an entirely different story.
It dealt with Chinese zodiac, Taoism, touching on elements of other myths of mystical creatures from all over the world. I fell into the trap of getting hooked on the research. There are elements of the characters that are driving forces, but as far as making a story that makes/made since around them, it just wouldn't fit together. But I stubbornly refused to let go of this idea. I had invested so much time and energy into them and I am someone who needs to work on something outside of work.

But I hit a wall and that's when you have to learn to welcome something entirely new and different when it presents itself. And I did. I was watching an episode of Hannibal-- and one scene suddenly inspired something entirely new-- in an instant! I knew the main characters name, his predicament, and the general story/plot, and location.

Weird little factoids from my previous story, combined with my general interest with almost anything FBI, wildlife, and the South West.
Oh, and my dog.
I'm stupid obsessed with my boston terrier.

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The initial story has changed a lot in the past 2 years, but it's formed into something my husband and I absolutely love... and we can't wait to share it with you

I'm brand new and still working on my series before posting it up, but the story has been hovering around for months.

(Having a buffer is good, right?)

My story is loosely based off of a Pen and Paper game based on some of the books by Onyx Publishing / White Wolf (we mixed a lot of the books), but the story follows a young Mage in Las Vegas and her Cabal named the 'Sun Weavers'. Callas is our gal, and delves into a world hiding just under the surface of Las Vegas, and the dangers of the rising conflict between Mages and Vampires.

While this story is based as the history before the players that are part of the game, they are very familiar with what happened as the actions of Callas lead to the fates of the party later on.

So more or less, the inspiration came from a lot of the stories from the PnP games and the base ideas they provided... I just kind of took the basic rules and ideas of those worlds and ran with them... cackling all the while too. Maybe.

Grimmleighs is something I have been "working" on in some way or another for about 20 years, but only recently has it manifested as a comic story!

Most of the stories that will be told are either bad dreams that I had when I was a kid, or spooky stories I told my kids at bedtime. I say spooky, since there is a lot of macabre stuff going down, but I throw a lot of humor into my stories, too, so it's not all doom and gloom!

I grew up watching Hammer horror movies and reading Hellboy comics and reading Edward Gorey's books, so all of that is in there somewhere. I'm trying to loosen up the art just a little, but right now I'm having fun!

I'm only 11 pages in, but I have about 90 pages scripted, and I've story-boarded up to page 20!

My inspiration for Blood Type: AB came from a manga called Adekan. Except not really. It came from a sign in the background of Adekan.

Bee Tradesman Made in Nipon.

That sign was the entire inspiration to Blood Type: AB.

I remember really loving political comics when I was young and like it was like a secret club, so I draw a lot of inspiration from current events, and my opinion on them. I also got a lot of inspiration from the oatmeal I think, and dad jokes. lot's and lot's of dad jokes.

Well that's easy, my top inspirations for many of my comics including Cosmos Songs are old school RPGs like the Final Fantasy series, JRPGS such as Shin Megami Tensei and my Anime watching self. Back before I had a life, I used to collect as many of these games as my money could buy me! xD.