Influences through the years
Early Saturday morning, I got up and was doing my normal social network surfing and saw something on Deviant Art that got me thinking, “Who are the artists that made me who I am today?” Wow, that’s a pretty deep question for 6:30 in the morning. What could get me thinking about something like that so early? What I saw was something called an “Influence Map”. The “Influence Map” instructions wanted me to fill a template with things that have inspired me. I really liked that idea but wanted to do something a little different so I decided to go year by year throughout my life as an artist and pick people that influenced me over the last 25 years. I can’t think of what influenced me from ages one to four, so I started at age five. I had no idea who most of the people on my list were until I went back and did some research. These are the things I can remember as a kid always going back to, trying to draw over and over. Here is my list of artists that have inspired me over my first 30 years.
1985 – Maurice Sendak (writer and artist of Where the wild things are)
1986 – John Byrne (Artist on The Man of Steel)
1987 – Keiji Inafune (Creator of MegaMan)
1988 – Tad Stones – (Creator of Darkwing Duck and Chip’n Dale Rescue Rangers)
1989 – Erik Larsen (Artist on Spider-man Revenge of The Sinister Six)
1990 – Arthur Adams (Artist on Uncanny X-Men Annual 14)
1991 – Ken Mitchroney (Artist on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures)
1992 – Shotaro Ishinomori (Artist on Legend of Zelda-A Link to the Past Comic)
1993 – Jim Lee (Artist on X-Men #1)
1994 – Bruce Timm (Batman The Animated Series)
1995 – J Scott Campbell (Artist on Gen 13)
1996 – Akira Toriyama (Character designer Chrono Trigger)
1997 – Akihiko Yoshida (Character designer Final Fantasy Tactics & Vagrant Story)
1998 – Long Vo (My first online art site I would frequent)
1999 – Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Character designer Neon Genesis Evangelion)
2000 – Shukou Murase (Character designer Final Fantasy IX)
2001 – Ryuji Higurashi (Character designer MegaMan PS)
2002 – Mike Wieringo (Artist on Fantastic four)
2003 – Sam “Samwise” Didier (WOW Concept art)
2004 – Haruki Suetsugu (Artist on The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap)
2005 – Shinsuke Komaki (Character designer MegaMan Battle Network)
2006 – Bryan Konietzko (Character designer Avatar: The Last Airbender)
2007 – Sean “Cheeks” Galloway (Concept art)
2008 – Dani Jones (Amazing artist and great tutorial for artist)
2009 – Gurihiru (Artist on PowerPack)
2010 – David Lafuente (Artist on Ultimate Spider-Man)
I never thought doing an exercise like this could bring such emotion. Now just looking back at this completed peace of 25 years of inspiration I can’t help but smile every time I see it.
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