What series/franchise/whatever inspired you to start drawing and creating your own world and characters?

What series/franchise/whatever inspired you to start drawing and creating your own world and characters?

Picture related, and Calvin & Hobbes

What you posted. Mostly Akira Toriyama monsters, creatures, aliens, robots.

Also Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and Invader Zim.

Not one in particular. I just feel really strongly about comics as a medium.

sonic the hedgehog

i'd draw the badniks that the instruction manual didn't include in the sega genesis games

>calvin and hobbes

you've got good taste, user. ever watch DBZ abridged?

I have. Good series, but I think it's starting to wear out for me. I only ever chuckled through the Broly parody

>Mostly Akira Toriyama monsters, creatures, aliens, robots

This. I love the way Toriyama draws machinery and robots. Through adulthood, my favorite aspect of DB has been the worldbuilding

WHAT?

it's still funny to me... the most comedic bit is between Frieza, Nail, and Super Kami Guru on Namek.

maybe watching it ten minutes at a time stretched out between weeks or months makes it seem that way. the first time i ever saw it was all of the frieza saga at once. i got a headache from laughing so much.

Pokemon, KH, and HTF

And I don't regret a thing

Star Fox

I think the first half of season 3 was the absolute peak. Season 2 was really good too. Season 1 didn't age that well

For me it was mainly Static Shock growing up, as well as all the other DC animated shows (Justice League and Batman)
I agree, pokemon was a really big influence on me growing up

I mean, everything, kind of..
the biggest jump I found in my creativity was circa 1999 when suddenly there was all this great shit at once, powerpuff girls, ocarina of time, pokemon.. everything I made had flavors of those, plus maybe mortal kombat. compared to previously in my childhood when most everything was just shallowly inspired by beat-em-ups and cape comics.
but what got me REALLY making my OWN worlds was when I got on the internet, saw sprite comics, learned about final fantasy, played Paper Mario and finally got RPG mechanics simplified down far enough for me to really digest them... fell in love with the idea of little townsfolk variants of species, and generic 'job' characters like fighter, mage, etc. That and I was really solidly getting into anime and looking up lots of series and starting to draw lines connecting different tropes I didn't realize WERE tropes and not individual characters...
amusingly I sometimes got it in reverse, and thought some characters were tropes, which lead to inadvertent ripoffs. but still.
I started making less-cliche lineups for fantasy stories to round things out so it wasn't the same shit, and from there, worldbuilding blossomed.

Can't draw for shit, but I came up with a ton of characters after being inspired by Osamu Tezuka.

Bone

For me it was Law of talos and endzone that kicked it off

I can't let Exo-Squad be the only one that tried.

Mortal Kombat

yeah

OP's Pic, Calvin and Hobbes, Project A-ko, Conan the Adventurer, and Bomberman of all things because he was fucking easy to draw.

When I was a kid - TMNT, BTAS, various nicktoons, LoZ

As a teen - Mobile Suit Gundam, DB/DBZ, GitS, LOTR, Forgotten Realms

As an adult and serious artist - Everthing listed above, plus Ghibli films and lots of independent shorts

LoZ and MTG

Kingdom Hearts... though my stuff doesn't mimic that, at least not anymore.

Akira Toriyama and Matt Groening decided to become cartoonist when they watched 101 Dalmatians

interesting. you don't see the influence really
whereas by contrast, the modern crop of tumblr artists (when they aren't drawing muppets, inclusive grotesques, or things Sup Forums likes to blindly label 'calarts' as if that was a bad thing) seems to be following the milt kahl era of disney art to a T, with a heavy dose of the renaissance era's style added. My favorite is DoublePines. I wish I could learn that way they make eyes so expressive and so 3d without seeming to have any distinctive shape you can copy.

pic related for me. Akira Toryama will be my favorite animator for the rest of my life just for the impact he had on me.

Captain Underpants actually got me into drawing as well.

He's not an animator.

Lots of stuff but in the vein of more specific inspiration I've got a list full of stupid pun names and character ideas just because Venture Bros.

The Last Airbender sparked my idea

The story is that there are 12 gods until one goes bad and said god's actions lead to darkness becoming a threat. The Sun god choose one human to wield his powers (with the other god chipping it from time to time) to fight the dark creatures that spawn from the Dark Void.

That's all for now, don't wanna drop a big dump on y'all, just know that dragons, monsters and fairies play a part as well.

it's funny, shit like venture bros and adventure time didn't so much inspire me as they made me feel good because their humor was what mine ALREADY was, from influence from the likes of simpsons, homestar, etc.

making darkness into a legit threat from having previously NOT been one.. is pretty original. possibly the only original thing in this idea, yet I still like it.

Thanks dude, been building and changing this story of mine for the past 12 years.

Basically I'm writing fan fiction for Journey to the West which is itself fan fiction for Taoism and Buddhism.

I know it's not Sup Forums related but...

Bioshock.

Every little nook and cranny of that experience is just filled to the brim with life-like stories, biographies and tales.

A slave chooses...

The Sandman Overture.

FUCK! How could I mess up a quote like that?!

You tried mate, good choice on inspiration.

because in real life, a slave does choose, the master obeys, because he's such an oppressor

I didn't really realize it at the time, but this main idea I had going throughout middle school was basically X Men with a bit of Resident Evil and anime influences in it.
I haven't thought about it in years and I did not realize how much the mutants actually jump-started my first daydream project despite only ever actually watching the cartoons then.

i always wanted to do something with the mutant heroes concept but with the mutations being realistic things a body could actually do

One Punch Man inspired me to create my own world and characters.

As for drawing I'm not sure if any series in particular was the primary contributor to that. I am finding inspiration for certain aspects of my art though all sorts of different mediums however.

I always loved however how much work TAWoG team put into animating the show and visual gags.

Looking at the season 1 flashback of regular show from the finale made me realize how much better animated it was. It was really expressive and gestural which is what I'm trying to work on the most.

The greatest Donut Steels in history

okay wait how is that not straight up Bucky at the bottom

I didn't start writing until I read a horror novel that was HIGHLY recommended by a lot of people, and it sucked.

Sucked royal.

I figured I could totally do better than that.

I've been published a few times. Working on a bigger novel now.

I have a couple ideas for comics I'd love to do, but don't have the drawing talent and the only artist I worked with on one for six months tried to claim co ownership of the property, despite not having designed one single thing, and that was a whole load of shit.

that's literally bucky hanging out at their party.

He's right there just scoring cake.

>Lol cap I bet I can get some of that cake they are standing on.
>Come on, Buck, you don't want that, it's got shoe germs all over it. Besides, you aren't even part of their universe.
>Watch, I'm totally going for it.

when it comes to motivation, there's nothin' like spite

>Do you think DC will sue?
>We're Marvel, son
>Oh right. I forget sometimes
>It's okay. In any case, I don't think they care that much about you to worry about preserving your image
>Shucks Cap, maybe I should get a metal arm and go full 90s!
>It's 2005, son

What inspired me as a little kid? Looney Tunes and Sonic the Hedgehog were probably my earliest inspirations for those kind of things....but at some point I gave up on that stuff when I got more obsessed with music more than animation and fiction in my mid teen years

What inspired me once again later in life to get back into it?
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic

Why?

Shit's cute, man.

agreed. plus it drew a clear line between what made a show likeable and embarrassingly terrible: good and fun writing. shame it degraded, but still

Astro Boy inspired me to take up drawing and have a Tezuka-esque artstyle. Just something about it was so charming it really motivated me to see how it worked. I wanted to take up drawing for years and did it off and on, but this is the first real push for it. I've been drawing the last couple months, so I'm pretty garbage right now but I hope to achieve something decent some day. I even have several concepts and stories ready when I do.

Why what?

MechWarrior

I guess that's fair

Any premise can work when executed well. It's a good lesson to pull from it all.

though I think we learned that lesson pretty well from powerpuff girls
man between that and sailor moon it was a really good time to be a guy that enjoyed enjoying things with girls involving girls that were cute but also kicked ass. if only I'd had some female friends.

Basically this. Toriyama draws amazing action scenes, has very fun scenery and great character design. It's almost a shame that most people know him more for the posturing, muscles and powerups of DBZ because honestly there's so much more to his art and characters, even in the Buu saga.

>Any premise can work when executed well. It's a good lesson to pull from it all.
Honestly, it was just the first cartoon that had a world I truly cared about and characters I fell in love with in a long time, It provided me with a sense of whimsy and wonderment that I hadn't really felt since childhood, since at the time when I started watching, all I really was interested in was your typical action franchises and retro shows that were airing on the same network and capeshit, which I am not shitting on, but didn't really inspire me in significant ways since such things are usually more on the cliche level, while FIM was completely new to me and struck me as really creative and appealing to me since it had a good balance of adventure, sentiment, and humor....for whatever reason it was the show that pulled me out of the creative slump and made me remember why I like fiction for reasons other than "I wanna see good guys and bad guys who look cool thrash one another"

Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies

Have you seen his new artstyle? Not in dragonball super but just his recent drawings. I feel like it's really shitty.

Yeah. You can tell he's way out of practice. He kinda took the angular style of late Z to a very powerful extreme, and since the 80s era of HUGE musclebound men was far from over everyone comes off as super lanky. Honestly his art was at it's best when it was still a bit round.

Sayian saga looked really good in dbz. But dragonball looked great overall as well. I'd say at the android saga the art direction took a turn for the worse in my opinion.

All the characters in his recent drawings look so skinny and weird. Not sure why.

Because Toriyama's older and because the big "muscle bound" men was more a product of the time. Had Dragonball started in the 90s Goku'd probably end up being more lanky muscle-y than HUGE. I mean just look at what happened to the Jojos.

Sandland looked great though.

But it wasn't that bad in dragonball and the beginning of dbz. They looked more "toned" than muscle bound.

This is going to sound silly, but when I was really young, it didn't occur to me that comics could be used to tell long stories. For years I'd only seen comic strips, and I thought that's as far as the form allowed. I'd assumed I'd have to grow up and become an animator if I wanted to tell a complete story.

Seeing my first comic book blew my mind. It was a Donald Duck Adventures comic from Gladstone, with all the stories about going to space. It was as dramatic internally as if I'd collected cars for years and suddenly realized what the keys were for. I used my allowance to buy nothing but comics and empty notebooks for a couple years. My art never improved to be honest, but I was just thrilled to have an outlet to transcribe - with visuals! - the stories I'd played out in my head while I was bored at the grocery or the bank on errands with my mom.

I still have a lot of them. Sometimes, once in a while, I'll doodle a fresh one. It feels important to do just to touch base with something you did as a child, to rejuvenate yourself.

Anyway, to the question, it was a duck book, and a good one. Mostly I remember the moonman that kept multiplying when Donald hit it with a stick.

The 2d animated Rankin-Bass is heavily underrated

That's because it was the early 80s. It was still coasting off of the very cutesy cartoony style of the 70s.

Sandland looked great though.

Chowder/Flapjack

I'd say it was One Piece that got me into creating my own stuff fully, with the way the story was told and the amount of attention paid to the characters, but Dragon Ball as of late has inspired me. Video games inspired me more than comics/manga and I'd say Zelda kicked things off, starting with Majora's Mask and Wind Waker.

Honorable mentions to Bomberman, Pokemon and Paper Mario. Simple characters even a nine year-old can draw.

Final fantasy V

Kiki's Delivery Service, Dragon Ball, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Teen Titans.

I mean, sandland was drawn like 16 years ago, though, so he wasn't too out of practice.