Great question, great thread!

Two Christmases ago one of my roommates gave me a copy of Dave Sim's Guide to Self-Publishing, which was weird because I was in the middle of working on a stageplay, and was a film school grad. But he and my girlfriend started collectively pushing for me to a do a comic; I guess because trying to get into movies had been leaving me sort of miserable, and comics have always inspired my shooting style.

I had an idea for a multi-cultural western floating around at the time -- probably equal parts inspired by Shanghai Cowboy, "Unforgiven" and the fact that I was tired of writing stories about white people.

That February I went to the first NYComicon and learned about Poser, a 3D character-building program. A month later I bought it and started teaching myself how to use it, and a month after that I was building my first characters and assembling the book in Photoshop.

Agreed. Great Thread

Digby inspired me. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com because the writing is some of the best I've read. Period.

Strangely enough, so did Mallard Fillmore, because it was such a terrible hackjob of a rightwing comic that I knew I could at least write funnier -- given time. So I guess I owe that idiot Tinsley a nod.

80s cartoons
Transformers, He-Man, She-Ra, GI Joe, Robotech, and the like

Early anime releases
Dirty Pair (ESPECIALLY Dirty Pair), Project A-ko, Slayers, Golgo 13

Other stuff
Action flicks, video games, Science Channel, heavy metal, ...even professional wrestling

I was "challenged" to do an adult webcomic since I didn't do that kind of art at the time. Basically people told me I was too "wimpy" to do it. So yeah... that's kinda how Pr0nCrest was born. -_-

Of course this was around five years or so... I forget. I posted it on Comic Genesis (it was Keenspace back then) before the hard drive it was on went down. That and at the time I was recieving flaming emails about the comic and its content. Then I found Drunkduck and revived the comic, changing it from a fantasy MMORPG spoof into what it is now. Too bad I've lost more than a few friends because of the comic, though...