THE INFLUENCE

Day 10 of stalling till I can get the trailer up.

Thought I'd post my "INFLUENCE MAP"

For those who don't know what that is, it's a fancy term for a "bunch of pictures of other people's work."

  

These are the artists who have inspired me the most over the years. Let us count down

10.) Dave Kupczyk - Try saying that 5 times fast. He's really the most recent member of the club. Watching his work on "Wolverine And The X-men", helped me really start to think differently about the details of the human body and how to translate them into lines.

9.) Sean Galloway - An accomplished character artist with a unique cartooning style. Gets that in reality people don't stand firm like marble statues. Also taught me to be loose with cloth and muscle structure.

8.) Bleedman - I still don't know this person's name; simply the pseudonym: "Bleedman". Well the name certainly doesn't pertain to the colors. I'm really not much of an anime person myself, but as for Bleedman's coloring... It's BEAUTIFUL!

7.) Brian Konietzko - The award winnings show: "Avatar: The Last Air Bender", not to be confuse with the worst movie ever: "The Last Air Bender", (Geez, M. Night Shyamalan, stick to what you're good at.), was a wonderful blend of western an eastern animation techniques that created original unique looking characters who's entire identity identity could be wrapped up in a single glance, due in part to the character design of Brian Konietzko. I once read a helpful article on character design. It said that with a good design you should generally be able to tell who the character is even if they were bald, naked, or a silhouette. Good advice and Konietzko's work is a perfect example of this.

6.) Jeff Matsuda - Jeff Matsuda is like Bartholomew Cubins. You never know what he's gonna pull out of his hat next. every project is COMPLETELY different from the last. Still watching "The Batman" gave me some wonderful insight to drawing and animation that I managed to infuse into my own style. 

5.) Kazuyuki Hoshino - Try saying that 5 times... oh right we've already been down that road. While I'm sure there are several others to be acknowledged here, Hoshino is the most ntable name I could find in reffrence to "SONIC TEAM". The people who made Sonic popular again... Well before Sega drove it into the ground with endless storybook adaptations and anime style game gimmicks. But let's not talk about that. I just love the artwork.

4.) Derrick Wyatt - Character designer for "Ben 10", "Transformers Animated", and the famous "Teen Titans". Just love this guys work. Big heads, big feet, scrawny bodies; this guy gets cartoons. Who needs a perfect bunch of runway models when you can be fun and quirky?

3.) Jim Davis - Garfield creator. Since the beginning, this guy has been in my style arsenal. Never have I seen a comic strip with so much visual depth. Heck it's hard to find a realistic  life drawing that looks this 3 dimensional. Great work. Helped me really think about depth and perspective. Hilarious comic too.

2.) Glenn Keane - Son of Bill Keane. And the greatest thing to happen to Disney since animation, since the Pencil, since... well, Disney. All I know is Glen Kean is the most amazing cartoonist I've ever seen. He knows the human body inside and out and yet can draw characters with such great stylizing and exaggeration, yet it still looks convincingly 3D. He has this way of drawing eyes that have so much life in them. As I like to say: "They are more real than real eyes". 

 

1.) Walt Disney - "The angels sang out... in immaculate chorus... and down from the heavens... descended Walt Disney..." Wait that doesn't rhyme, oops wrong poem. Yeah, I think Walt Disney should be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. No wait, better yet, There should be a Saint Disney Day. Yeah, we should all stay up at night wondering when Saint Disney will drop down the chimney and leave us autographed concept sketches under out Disney Tree. Should we go out and sing Walter Carols?

Ok, I wont' go into the details. Everyone knows who Disney is and to go into it would be to flood the pages of this blog post. I won't torture you with a wealth of information that only I care about.... I'll wait until the next post to do that. :)