an old pokemon manga i got when i was 7 inspered me but i just like drawing, ellcia ,phantom quest corp sadly that eadend to soon i have the old tapes i love dvds of them

Record of Lodoss War

If I hadn't seen that cartoon as a kid, I never would have picked up a pencil.

It was this amazing city scape in a huge one two page panel from Akira that gave me the will to draw comics. After seeing that, I knew I had to draw a webcomic.

Childhood inspiration: Doraemon mangas. The big arcs of adventure stories especially blew me away when I was a kid. Like when the characters traveled to the country of dogs in Africa, or when they went back in time and basically Jurassic Parked, or when they went to a low-grav planet and became superheroes, or when they fought devils from an alien comet. I've never seen anything like it back then. That author was my biggest manga hero. He's like manga Santa Claus to me.

Teenage inspiration:

1. Movie The Secret of NIMH. The first semi-Disney-styled animation I've seen which didn't burst into a Vegas chorus every 5 minutes and had a OMG serious story. I was in love with the world and characters. Started emulating Don Bluth's style and art skillz improved a ton.

2. TV show Dragon Warrior (Dragonquest in Japan). One of the lesser works from Akira Toriyama's kingdom, but its adventurous theme struck something in me. Fell in love and started emulating Toriyama, and of course from there found DBZ. Started emulating DBZ. Art skillz improved a ton again. Also got back in touch with the anime world in general from here.

3. US comics in college. Made an active effort to round out my art style by researching thru US comics to inject more "realism" and "grittiness" into my Bluth-DBZ style. Really like the work of Adam Kubert. The big Image hype suckered me in but I don't think I learned anything meaningful from early Image. Oh, of course Batman Returns. Classic. But I don't do anything in Miller's style, art or story.

Latest inspiration:

This one got both me and Ed back into continuing FIGHT (my webcomic) after a hiatus of several years, so it's safe to say it had a good influence on us. However, I can't say what it is due to the nature of the FIGHT story. As ppl who read it know, it's a fan manga type story which makes you guess where we pulled all the odd characters out of. If I put down my latest inspiration here, it'll ruin the story by page 5 of the new chapter.

mlai
1. Movie The Secret of NIMH. The first semi-Disney-styled animation I've seen which didn't burst into a Vegas chorus every 5 minutes and had a OMG serious story. I was in love with the world and characters. Started emulating Don Bluth's style and art skillz improved a ton.

OMG, I loved that movie when I was a kid. Disney Studio was insane for letting Don Bluth go. The guy's work is brilliant.

Anyway, back to the subject.

I've always like drawing from back when I was a kid. When I would try to draw the Peanuts characters. But here are the comics, manga, and cartoons that gave me the will to do more than just doodles.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
Alan Davis' Excalibur
Jim Lee's X-Men
Akira
Cowboy Bebop

And, last but not least, I wouldn't have found my way to making webcomics if it wasn't for Faith Erin Hicks' Demonology 101.

mlai
Movie The Secret of NIMH. The first semi-Disney-styled animation I've seen which didn't burst into a Vegas chorus every 5 minutes and had a OMG serious story. I was in love with the world and characters. Started emulating Don Bluth's style and art skillz improved a ton.

The Don Bluth movies were what made me want to draw long ago (before I even considered comics). I really miss those dark stories where there were actually things to be scared of. I felt stories that would scare a kid (Secret of Nimh, Land Before Time 1, All Dogs Go to Heaven 1, American Tail 1) were vastly superior to the overly sugary stuff out now (Secret of Nimh 1, Land Before Time 2 through whatever there on now, All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, All those Disney Sequels).

Please do not mention Secret of NIMH 2. As a child I actually looked for that because I fervently wished for a sequel. But when I saw the box at a rental store, and read the back of the box, with wisdom beyond my meager years I ran away from it never to look back again. To this day I am thankful that to the day I die I will never watch it.

Unless I go to Hell and have my eyelids sewn open and forced to watch it over and over and over.

Actually, my motivational comic is one of the worst comics I have ever had the misfortune to slap my eyes on. It was so bad that I invented an entirely new word to describe it and others of its ilk- fanwangery. Fanwangery is what occures when a fan (either amateur or professional) creates something that is essentially fanfiction and throws as many references to other icons and crossovers as it can and hoplessly garbles the piece beyond recogniton.

The comic in question is a Batman comic called "Detective 27." It begins during the American Civil War with a man who is, more or less, the Joker as he and his Confederate allies plan to assassinate President Lincoln...or some such. Eventually, the group is caught, but not before the Joker figure initiates an 80 year plan to insure that the South will rise again.

Skip to 80 years later and to one Bruce Wayne who must uncover and prevent the organization's deadly plot from coming to fruition. He never actually puts on the Batman costume, mind. this isn't inherintly bad...but he doesn't even HAVE the thing. At any rate, he eventually discovers hat the head of the contemporary evil organization is nonother than his own father who, yes, staged his own death and killed his mother. But never fear! Bruce Wayn has such notable allies as Babe Ruth, Franklin D Roosevelt, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Gregor Mendel, and Teddy Roosevelt- all of whome are only too eager to assist!

This may be uncouthe of me, but the comic is so very bad that I keep a copy of my own with me. You see, if something as bad as this can get published, it gives me hope that I can, too!

Bible-thumping rednecks want to take over America... that'll never happen.

I'm so scared! OMG Batman and evolution to the rescue!

Nothing for the will to draw... I was drawing long before I read a comic.

What somewhat inspired me to draw a webcomic though was Megatokyo five years back. I had friends that were obsessed with it. I took a look at it and thought "I can do that..."


Otherwise if your looking for inspirational comics I'd say Please Save My Earth is my ultimate favorite manga. Even though they are not comics... I really like story novels like F451 and Brave New World. I really loved Slaughter House 5 too. I really want to draw stories like that though.

mlai
Bible-thumping rednecks want to take over America... that'll never happen.

I'm so scared! OMG Batman and evolution to the rescue!

And baseball. Don't forget baseball! lol!

The first webcomic I ever read is what inspired me to try my hand at comics. Granted, I was thirteen when I found it and going through a horribly awkward furry stage where everything I drew was a cat, so it's taken me five years to thinking about making a comic, to trying a few different times and failing horribly, to finally having something that I'm happy with.

I'm actually a bit surprised that I haven't seen Loserz mentioned yet. It's my favorite comic even after all this time, it's funny, has some great storylines, and above all it's relatable. I hated high school so much and reading Loserz made me feel a little better about it, since they were going through exactly what I was and it was pretty cool to know there was someone else who understood what it was like.

What gave me the will to draw though? I don't know, I've always been really into art and drawing and painting and have a very traditional fine arts background because of classes and stuff, but what got me into comics was a huge stack of old comics that my grandfather gave to my dad, and my dad just left them laying around. They weren't very well cared for or in the best condition, but it took a lot of classic novels and put them in a form I could understand (Oliver Twist, Black Beaty, Great Expectations, etc) and had amazing art and writing. I can't find a single comic today as good as those first ones I ever read, but they really gave me a love for it.

All the comics i love to read online, Sin City by Frank Miller, Naruto (yes, the manga did xD), Origin (a story about wolverine), and various manga :)


Also: various other RL and online artists who have inspired me ^.^

I've been drawing pretty much since I could hold a pencil at about two years old, but as to what inspired me to do a webcomic... funny story that.

I've been into animation and comics for as long as I can remember. I never outgrew animation, I just began looking for more sophisticated and adult oriented animation, which lead to some alternative stuff as well as anime. I've collected comics since I was about 8 or so. Lot of marvel stuff. A bit of DC, and a few companies that didn't survive or merged, like Impact comics. I first started drawing comics tho in elementary school and my inspiration was... garfield. :P I drew a 'funny animal' character which was a cat but looked like a racoon for about 6 years. In that time is when I started to get seriously into marvel comics, then into anime/manga from there. When I got to college I thought that I'd really like to tackle drawing a comic. But of course, being a student with no money, I couldn't afford to print it. The internet was still young in 1997, but I had gained enough skills to have a website. At the time, it was fairly popular. The lightbulb flashed over my head and I thought "Hey! I can post images on my website. Why not comics? Then my website peeps can read my comic!"

At the time, I thought this was a brilliant idea and wondered why no one else was doing it. I searched for other comics online, particularly serial/serious ongoing comics like mine and I think I found a grand total of 3. I can't even remember what they were. There were some strips, but again, very few and far between.

I started posting pages in early 1998. I continued to have my comic on my website until 2001 when I discovered what was then Keenspace. I put the archives to Shifters up there and with the automated updating and archiving, I found I could 'get serious' about it. I actually remember I was invited to drunkduck wayyyy back in the day when it first came up. I just was too lazy to move my archive and I'd spent a lot of time and effort establishing it where it was. But I have to say, I kind of regret it as I like the community here more.

One word. TRANSFORMERS. The cartoon made me want to draw stuff, but I was five so what I ended up drawing was a disorientated block of some sort. When I REALLY got into drawing was when my cousin gave me an X-Men comic for my 11th birthday. I started tracing the characters, and then started experimenting(badly) with their poses. One thing led to another, and I became the drawing-obsessed fanatic I am today.

So it was the Transformers cartoon and X-Men which gave me the original will to draw.

Now it's random webcomics on the internet(VGCats moreso) that gives me the will to draw.

Oh, comics that gave me the will and the idea to dive into WEBCOMICS?

That was the original question?

In that case, the answer is IMPROMANGA. It was a fairly popular and fairly unique online art community where artists from all over the world gathered and participated in round-robin comics stories. In fact, I believe that for a period of time (close to a year), it was the only large scale site of its type. There were some really good artists, including a few who now work for Image (last I heard). It's gone now, and its archived treasures with it. There were many titles, but the ones I participated in included...

Dead End at 59th Street
Point Blank Assassin
Assassin's Blade
Galden's Tear

Wow, and some other titles I can't even remember anymore. I was prolific; interacting closely with so many other artists tend to give that motivational boost. It's where I originally met Ed, my online co-artist of FIGHT (which will return dammit).

At Impromanga, I first realized that it was OK to draw fan manga with characters created by others. It's not a shameful thing! I am not an uncreative person because I don't create my own characters! I discovered that, for whatever reason, I like drawing FAN manga, using copyrighted characters but with my original stories. Can't make money off of it? Don't really care; I have a day job.

Then the founder of Drunkduck (What's his name again? Is DD still his?) spammed me with his "Come to DD with your comics" email. How the hell did he find me? It was perfect timing; me and Ed just lost our FIGHT hoster and was looking for another online comics host.

And so we came. FIGHT enjoyed some popularity. Ed got married. FIGHT got swept under the rug of domestic oblivion. Currently trying to make a comeback...

Remember kids. This is what happens when you marry someone who doesn't like comics!

Hm... Elf Quest might be up your alley. See if you can't find the first episode at your local library or from a friend. If you read through the first and don't get a hankerin' for the second, I guess I've failed in my recommendation. But if you do thirst for more, there's a whoooole lotta them out there. I've only gotten to the third, which makes me feel a little guilty, but it's a grand adventure that's beautiful and stirring and pretty damned good despite the almost cutesy elves.

(Do you remember barb from back in the day on DD? She did Talisman among a few others, and her style was very similar to that in Elf Quest.)

Ohhh, my gosh! Impromanga! I used to read all of those comics! I liked Controvercial Jack best, though. Oh my. They've turned into "centerstorm" now. Mal (Brian Lee O'Malley of Scott Pilgrim fame) used to participate in a lot of comics over there, and so did a few others who are indeed in the industry now. Mal is the just the only one I can remember off the top of my head, haha.

EDIT: Oh, and Robert DeJesus did some stuff on impromanga too! I think he's with Dark Horse now.

The Avatar.

R.I.P Randomoscity. ):

SMURFS !
seriously

Believe it or not, it was the minicomics that came with every He-Man action figure back in the 80's. Yes, I'm THAT old. Especially the ones drawn by Alfredo Alcala, those are just beautiful, and they have everything I like about superheroes (exotic locales, superpowers, action and adventure) and none of the things I dislike (secret identities, day jobs, real-life stuff in general)(yes, I know He-Man has a secret identity but he's a prince, for God's sake. That's not precisely an average joe)

i used to redraw spiderman comics

lothar
SMURFS !
seriously

I believe that!

I too have been drawing since I was like 0, but what made me want to draw a webcomic was a comic called Joshbabes, that was around a long time ago...that and RPGWorld. They just touched my life in a way that other mediums couldn't.

the archive to joshbabes is here. http://stubble.keenspace.com

I also liked Spiderman a whole lot

Oh yeah, the old He-Man little comics off the toy boxes! Those were the best! That's the REAL He-Man! Like Ahnold Conan but smart, and just as ruthless! Wheee!!

I like the REALLY OLD He-man boxes. I was *really* little back then, and back in Taiwan. I don't even know if He-man was called He-man, but the boxes painted a grim barbarian world. I was scared of those toys; too "grown-up" and "extreme" for me.

I drew from about 3 years old. I made my first REAL comic at about 7 years old. At eleven, I made my first webcomic. All of my webcomics eventually fail and I dont work on them anymore, tho. I am now twelve years old and live in asia.

Don't worry. If you're only 12 and you drew that avatar pic, you're already 10x better than I was when I was 12. And look at me now (omg i'm so 133t). So you'll be really great by the time you're in college, as long as you keep drawing.

I'm glad I didn't have access to Internet and a scanner when I was 12 y/o. I loved drawing. But imagine if I put a "webcomic" up at that age, and had to listen to all the ***hole jaded webcomics surfers tell me how much my best work sucks all kinds of ****. ***holes like my current self (sometimes). I might have been so discouraged, I might have given up drawing, if I took them seriously.

Edit:
As proof, this is what I was drawing at 12.

So this is to all the 12 yrs olds out there, who put out their webcomics, and ppl tell them they suck and stop spamming the Internet with suckiness, with cliched badly-drawn Mary-Sue webcomics that make ppl go blind.

Well, don't listen. Keep drawing, and in 10 yrs you can show all the blathering oyajis your TRUE POWAR. Like so:

WHAM-!!!

Rumblo, Calvin and Hobbes, simply looking at the art for Dark knight returns and Beaver and Steve!

You should ink that, mlai.