This seemed like a natural topic for discussion here. Why don't we all give a list of a handful of artists who we consider to be greatly influencial on our own comics work? And, hopefully, we'll also give insightful reasons explaining their impact on us.

The artists named don't have to be comics artists, but that wouldn't hurt either. I'd also like to keep this in strictly visual art terms. (I'm sure a seperate topic for writing influences wouldn't be a bad idea though)

These are my guys...

Bruce Timm - Like many of the people on here I was a giant fan of Batman: The Animated Series as a kid. I drew a lot of my comics from that tender age in a style lazily swiped from the visual look of the series. Bruce Timm is a refreshingly straightforward artist. His visuals are simple and direct, but they also have a great sense of movement and grace to them. I also really like his facial expressions. (This will be a recurring theme in my list)

Steve Dillon - Speaking of which, I think Steve Dillon does the best facial expressions of any comics artist working today. I have a hard time thumbing through his stuff and not cracking a smile at some pointed visual gag he sells perfectly with his character composition. On top of that, Dillon's a fantastic pictoral storyteller and his style is instantly recognizable. (Another integral aspect of all the artists I like the most)

Jack Kirby - Just about everyone on here is influenced by Kirby in some form or another. There are people who want to emulate his style and there are those who want to do anything but his style. (Which, in and of itself, is an artistic influence in its own way)

I swiped Kirby panels like crazy when I was a little kid. I still draw Kirby Krackle and other such wrinkles of his visual language even today. I also try to match his fine and seemingly intuitive abilities to display an unbridled projection of power and strength. I'm sure that I have a lot of work to do in that department.

Robert Crumb - Holy shit did I ever want to draw like Robert Crumb when I was in high school. He's the only reason I started cross-hatching my comics. It was pretty shameless. Naturally, I lacked Crumb's finesse in this department, and pages upon pages of sloppily shaded linework were the result.

I've moved on from my Crumb fetish since those days, but it still lingers in my current work. You'll still see a modicum of Crumb-lite crosshatching in a lot of my characters.

Will Eisner - Naturally, I'm a big fan or his Spirit work and I got a lot of cues from his instructional books. Still, the part about Eisner that influenced me the most was his series of self contained graphic novels. His masterful use of graywash really changed the way I looked at comic art. Most of my coloring techniques are lifted from what I like about Eisner's style. In many ways my current stuff is the bastard child of Eisner and Crumb's approaches to light sources.

Steve Ditko - You know it's a Ditko page from the very second you gaze upon it. He probably has the most unique visual approach in all of comics. I loved the hyper-kinetic action sequences in his Spider-Man work, and the outre imagery in his Dr. Strange material also had a strong impact on me. Whenever I'm called upon to do a hallucination or cosmic weirdness scene, I am definitely looking at what Ditko did there and on many of his other series. (Shade, for one thing)

But yeah, the thing I like the most about him was his one-of-a-kind style. I hope I can one day find a style halfway as creative as Ditko's.

Dick Sprang - I love the world that he created. All those lantern-jawed heroes and giant typewriters and random circular panels and all that jazz. Dick Sprang's work just has this fun, loopy look to it. As much as I like Sheldon Moldoff and Jerry Robinson I tend to favor Sprang's work over all the other classic Bat artists. His approach is the visual standard I think of when I think "superhero".

Eric Powell - There is not one thing I do not like about Eric Powell's art. The coloring is always beautiful, the character designs are terrific, the facial expressions are a gas, and the illustrative style is distinctive all over. I can laugh my ass off without even reading the dialogue.

A lot of my coloring and shading cues come from looking at The Goon. (Especially Chinatown) I just hope that my work can one day contain the nuances that his stuff seems to have with such seeming effortlessness.

Jaime Hernandez - I think Jaime is the best comics artist alive. I really do. Nobody can spot blacks better than this guy. I also really love the way that he draws women. He can make them feminine and sexually charged while avoiding the pratfall of making them look like inflatable fucktoys. I look to him as an example of how I'd like my female characters to be received.

Mike Allred - I think Allred is the best comics artist working today who is still greatly informed by Silver Age comic art. It was a great inspiration to me to see the work of Curt Swan, Jack Kirby, Dick Sprang, C.C. Beck, and other heavy hitters of those days modernized in the pages of Madman and X-Statix.

Mr. Allred hasn't settled there, however. He's constantly pushing himself into new approaches and tecniques. Painting his characters on cel animation frames for his last comic series was an especially brilliant move. I try to emulate his fun-to-look-at style and his constant hunger to try new things artistically.

Frank Miller - What influenced me the most about Frank Miller was contained in his early stuff. His Daredevil run with Klaus Janson's invaluable assistance on inks was a big part of my comics vocabularly. I voraciously ate up any back issues or reprints I could find. His cinematic approach to panel framing and his elaborately choreographed fight scenes were the stuff of wonder for me.

I definitely tried my hand at doing long action sequences as a direct result of reading Frank Miller's old stuff. Obviously, the equally elongated sequences by Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko played a hand in this too, but I never got the image of Daredevil whomping on Bullseye out of my head.

You have a great list that just about sums it all up for me as well. Add Joe mad for me, as well as Timothy Truman, Tim Vigil and George Perez.

Ernie Chan and Larry Yakata-"The Savage Sword of Conan-The Secret of the Great Stone" was the very first comic book I ever read back when I was seven. I remember gazing in awe at the cover art Conan with a little girl on his back hacking his way through all sorts of vicous monsters to get to the biggest and ugliest of them all. My tiny hands open up the book and there's Conan bashing and slashing an army of brigands with an axe and a mace, and at that moment I thought to myself. I want to do this, I'm gonna draw comics.

Aside from them birthing my love for comics and getting me started, Chan really influenced me with his drawings of barbaric he-men and terrible demons that stuff really got me going. For the longest time all I drew were musle men and monsters.

Burne Hoggarth- I always looked to Hoggarth's drawings whenever I wanted to draw some epic muscle man. Hoggarth's drawings of the human body were so awe-inspiring. I learned so much from them and I learned how to draw proportionally from copying his work.

Eichio Oda- He gave me the influence to draw my current comic. Origanally it started out as a one piece spin-off until I realized there were so many things I wanted to do with it that I wouldn't be able to get away with if I stayed in his world so I altered the characters and the world and started anew.

For panel layouts and stuff, my main influence is David Peterson.
But with my drawing style I'm not really sure what influenced that exactly. Some people have said it looks Manga (which I don't mind as long as they don't actually say it IS manga, cuz it's not lol) someone also said it looks sort of Disnet style, which would make sense because I love all the old Disney films :)

John Buscema
David Mazzucchelli
George Perez
John Byrne
Andrew Loomis
Jack Hamm

... off the top of my head.

There's no one specifically who influenced me. I've been drawing since I was 7 and back then, my drawings were very cartoony. Then I got around anime all the time and my art started to reflect that (no, I was not one of the people who only draws Dragonball Z characters).

As I've gotten older and seen that anime/manga style art is like the butt of the American art world, I've tried to change my style into a more realistic hybrid of real and anime, which is the hardest task in existence because it still looks like anime because of one little thing. I looked at artists like Jason Chan for inspiration. He manages to balance the styles pretty well.

-Bill Watterson
-Gary Larson
-Jim Davis
-Sergio Aragones

And recently,
-Jay Ryan Flock
-Suzuhito Yasuda

Frank Miller. for me its him, then everyone else.
John Romita JR
Klaus Janson
Eiichiro Oda
Tite Kubo
Joe MAD
John Buscema
Jack Kirby
Walter Simonson
Ashley Wood
Bill Sinkewicv or however its spelled
Corey Lewis
Ryan Ottley
David Mazzuchelli
Will Eisner
Akira Toriyama
Moebius
James Kochalka
Mike Mignola
Erik Larsen
Greg Capullo
Christian Lichtner
Lynn Varley
Amanda Conner



uh......fuck

For me I have a few artists that I follow

for my inspiration:

Masamune Shirow: I love his art style, ever since reading the GITS manga and
seeing his pin up art.
He is probably my most influential artist

Tsutomu Nihei: After Reading BLAME!, abara and other manga by him, his style
of drawing mechanized creatures and interesting dark artwork.

Ben Templesmith: I like the way his artwork is very avant gard compared to
most comic artists, he can draw realistic, or surreal, and it looks good (some
argue an aquired taste) but the way he shows the emotion in his art is brilliant

Nick Stakal: I first saw his art style in IDW's Silent Hill comics. His gritty
dark, and heavily shadowed artwork is eyecatching.

Ryan ottley, he made me want to stop doing anime, love his sharp clean lines

Toshihiro ono, made me want to do anime again, love smooth/clean lines and how he balances select realism with the cartoons

Frank cho, has nothing to do with my style he just made me more obsessed with dinosaurs

Steve Mcniven, one gigantic superhero sketch practice for me, i'll by the comics with his name on them even when i could care less about avengers or any other team of circus freaks.

Hajime Ueda: Having read mostly traditional manga, when I was a kid, the manga-version of FLCL was a mindblowing experience. It opened a whole new approach towards drawing comics for me.

Mike Mignola: Another big influence. I've always liked his simple, gritty linework. Michael Avon Oeming has a pretty similar style.

Moebius: Does this really need an explanation? You can't read his comics and NOT be awestruck, or influenced. Both his style of drawing AND the general weirdness of his stories has been a huge influence.

Jae Lee: I like totally copied panels off his old pages for X-Men as a kid. Clean an simple lines.

Winsor McCay: Almost forgot him. I love his way of playing with anatomy and perspective, he does it so well.

DERP.

I have a basic few that are true standouts.

John Byrne - Love his art and ability to tell a story!

Tom Batiuk - Ditto! Main influence for writing a school-themed comic!

Frank Miller - My all-time favorite redemption story is his Darevdevil's "Born Again" arc. Told across six issues! It's like a ballet!

Barry Windsor-Smith - Quite old school - and delciously vivid art!

Bruce Timm - Everytime I catch his work on TV, he makes me want to get up and draw...SOMETHING!

I forgot about BWS....Weapon X is a must read. MUST. FREAKING. READ.

uhm...I also forgot


Todd McFarlane....wonky anatomy and ugly women, but one of the best page layout artists ever.

I have an ecclectic list of influences...

-Ethan Van Sciver
-Jim Lee
-Michael Turner (RIP)
-Jack Kirby
-Tetsuya Nomura
-Tite Kubo
-Masakazu Katsura
-Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

Hmm. For me it was
-Naoko Takeuchi (Artist of Sailor Moon) When I was 5 Sailor Moon was the world to me xD All the shiny, pretty sailor soilders made me want to draw pretty girls too xDD

- My friend from Third Grade (Forgot her name sadly :/)
She was a child prodigy, she could draw anything and make it look just like the drawing. When she drew from life, it looked like a photo. I was so jealous of her because she was such a great artist, and I stunk heheh...But she inspired me to work harder because I thought if she could do it, so could I

-Shaun Hayley (Sp? Endling from Deviantart)
I first saw his artwork when I was in 6th grade, and automatically fell in love with it

-Adam Hughes
This was when I had a friend who hated anime(Well actually almost everyone and the teachers hated anime, but liked my style because it was anime, but not the sterotypical type) so she started to get me into American comics, and I bought a Catwoman comic and I just loved the cover. So I looked up the artist and fell in love with his work, and was inspired to change my style xD

-Kenneth Rocafort
I then bought a Madame Mirage comic and fell in love with the style of drawing, and inking. I thought it was such a unique style.

I don't think you can see what from them has inspired me drawings *Urk, cause my art stinks so bad compared to theirs xD*

But it's influenced the way I draw now IRL.
(I draw with a different style when I use a tablet because it's too difficult to draw with for me x__X)

How many of these threads are there? :)

OK, mine is Morph.

Ozoneocean
OK, mine is Morph.

Morph rocks!

Bill Watterson and Ralph Steadman are my biggest art influences, because they are both so very different. Ralph has a very rough and raw style that I use for sketches, and Watterson often used this very simple style that I use often for Negligence.

Larry Elmore and Jeff Easley, I distinctly recall copying their work from the 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons books when I was about 14. I told them as well when I met them LOL. They seem to have been amused;)

Also Frank Frazetta!

I am so old school LOL!

Bill Watterson - I don't have a lot in common with his style, but I definitely got my love for complex facial expressions from him. His hatred for talking head comics fueled my resolve to never draw a static comic.

Chuck Jones - Subtlety. The flick of an eyebrow can completely change an expression. I've always loved that.

Adam Warren - Exciting artwork. A perfect mesh of hyper-realism and extreme silliness. And he draws great broads.

Jim Henson - Mostly for his humor, although he was another great who could take the simple design of a puppet and make it extremely expressive.

Roy Brown - Graphic artist at WGN in Chicago from the 50s through the 90s. Did everything. Made puppets, designed sets, drew cartoons, did voiceover, and had one hell of a sense of humor. And he was Cooky on the Bozo Show. One of the single most talented people who ever appeared on TV.

hmm... let me think...

Philippe Druillet - I remember his art being a total mindopening shock to me when I saw couple of images reproduced in a comics magazine I used to read as a kid. I think this is where my liking of monumental things came from.
Go Nagai - Especially his early works. Characters are simple, sometimes with awkward anatomy, but the dynamic of line and panel composition just kills. I'm still waiting for an opportunity to draw an 80 page action sequence, haha.
Ted McKeever - I just love his style, everything being so twisted and deformed. It shows a bit in the early pages of Din Krakatau, haha.
Paul Pope - I think his style speaks to me a lot. Partially because I like his loose, wavy lines, and partially (which I think affects his art) because he's left handed like me :D
Guy Davis - It looks like he's scribbling on a napkin at first glance. Lines don't connect, everything's slightly off, there's barely any ruler used in there. And yet the art sings. Wouldn't surprise me if he actually spent a LOT of time to get this "efortless" look.
Sam Kieth - Crazy panel compositions that make sense. That's a difficult one to achieve. Also, strangely, even though he rarely colors things himself, I don't remember ever seeing any story where coloring would ruin it (and I saw that happen to a lot of artists). It seems that his line is so strong, that it beats and coloring into submission.
P. Craig Russell - Beautiful "classical" pages. At times slightly cartoony faces. It's very rich and minimalistic at the same time.
Tsutomu Nihei - I don't know, I think it's his crazy architecture that attracts me. I can tell that Blame! had a lot of effect on me and that this inspiration will come out in at least one of my future projects (if I ever get to it).
Francois Schuiten - Latest discovery. I don't think I can ever achieve his level of architectural mastery, but damn, his art is simply beautiful (makes me want to redraw the fortress in the last chapter of Din Krakatau).
Ashley Wood - On one side I love his style (or styles, whether it's the very early "messy ink" approach from his ghostrider 2099 run, his painterly stuff from Hellspawn or much more current "sketchy" style from Tank Girl), on the other he's a good warning about clarity (some of his works cross the line of unreadability and then you're left wondering what the hell is exactly going on this panel)
Moebius - I discoverd him fairly late (only few years ago) as none of his works were printed over here before and I didn't meet a friend who had a stack of his Epic Comics reptints yet, haha. His linework, shading and shaping things by a set of horizontal or vertical lines (of varied thickness and "shakyness" to suggest the surface) makes me look at it from a different angle.
Osamu Tezuka - I've read so far only the first two volumes of Buddha, but at this point I can easily say: yes, he's a master of comics. Cartoony and simplified, yet very powerfull images. Although he makes me jealous that I'll never manage to draw as many pages as he did.
Bill Sienkiewicz - pure artistic chaos. Loose, splashy inking, crazy colors, the kind of art that you might dream up in a nightmare. Sadly, at times totally incomprehensible, thus more suited for heavily narrated writing.
Enki Bilal - I don't think his art directly affected mine, but it certainly did affect my imagination and I love his style.
Richard Corben - Master of coloring that I'll probably never get close to. His b&w art is interesting too, especially when he's using heavy shadows.
Howard Chaykin - It's mostly his American Flagg comics (which is another fairly recent discovery) but his page layouts were a perfect example of absolutely insane cramming of as many details per page as possible and yet making it work.
Simon Bisley - Mostly his Slaine books, where he delivered some magnificent painting. But overall I like his mixture of hyperdetailed things next to cartoony doodles next to totally deformed somethings...
Regis Loisel - Very lovely art with somewhat cartoony faces (making everyone look a little... unreal I guess?), his La Quête de l'oiseau du temps ("The quest of the Time-Bird", or "Roxana" as it was published by NBM in English I think) had a lot of effect on the themes of the comics I drew as a kid. Also, one of the things that pushed me more towards fantasy.
Dean Ormston - Funny story. I kept reading Vertigo books with his name and never noticing it, but only when I looked back at what he drew it hit me how much I loved his art (and according to at least one person it had an influence on me).
Dave McKean - His ability to mix media is great, but I loved mostly his Cages graphic novel. The b&w pages are drawn in a style that's all... twisted and deformed, and yet everything works beautifully. I think this is where understanding of anathomy and perspective helps... after that you don't have to use it, but you'll know how to deform it so that it still looks right.
Dave Sim - Reading through Cerebus it made me realize how drawing often helps your style. If you compare the first pages of the first two books (first book collecting 24 or 25 issues), you can see a HUGE progress in art. Also his experiments with mixing graphic novel with illustrated novel gave me some ideas for at least one of my future projects.
Frank Miller - the use of b&w, of course :D
Ben Templesmith - When you think about it, his lineart is terrible, but his sense of color/shading are saving his art. In a way he was one of inspirations for my approach in first chapter of Din Krakatau.
Luna Brothers - reading their comics taught me that flashy visuals and super stylish art styles are not really that important. All you need is clearly recognizable characters, good page layouts, good story flow and clarity and you can tell any story. It's a perfect example of art in service of the story.
Jack Kirby - again, a fairly recent discovery (perhaps a year and a half ago). Why so recent? Well, he's totally unknown over here. All the Marvel/DC comics that were printed over here came from the 80s/90s era (with the exceptions of couple Essentials printed few years ago) so none of his works caught into the mix. What affected me is his really dynamic shading and sense of movement.

...and I could go on here, there's plenty of other artists that I discovered over the years and learnt something from. But it's getting long enough :D

John Harold
Bill Watterson
Dave McKean
Templesmith
Miller
Dave Gibbons
and the godly Simon Bisley
:0-)

Robert Crumb, Peyo, Hergé and stupid cartoons at tv (( specially Marc Du Pontavice produced... like... Oggies et les Cafards or Les Zinzins de l'espace; )

Berlin Manalaysay

I can't say for sure that they've influenced me, but I aspire to someday capture something of these three artists' styles:

Winsor McCay, of Little Nemo [en.wikipedia.org]. I haven't had much of a chance to delve too much into his works, but what I've seen inspires me.

Nell Brinkley [en.wikipedia.org]-- I had never heard of her; just found a book of her art at a bookstore one time, and I couldn't put it down (it was called "Brinkley Girls".) I later went back and forked out like $30 for the book... a good decision. Her art is beautiful, and full of pretty girls with pretty clothes and long eyelashes.

Hal Foster [en.wikipedia.org] of Prince Valiant fame. I just got a book of his PV sunday pages (called Prince Valiant Volume 1, 1937-1938) and I'm in love with the art (and with how badass Prince Val is- very surprising. He's got some crazy bloodlust.)

Kristen Gudsnuk
Nell Brinkley [en.wikipedia.org]-- I had never heard of her; just found a book of her art at a bookstore one time, and I couldn't put it down (it was called "Brinkley Girls".) I later went back and forked out like $30 for the book... a good decision. Her art is beautiful, and full of pretty girls with pretty clothes and long eyelashes.

Can you go again and buy a second copy for me? :D

Just kidding, but I did see a preview of that book and the art looks sweet.

Hm...this is a tough one...

Takashi Okazaki, just the way he draws in general.

And actually, a few of our DD'ers have inspired me, artistically.

Dark10 , for the way he did shading. The little lines. That's how I originally started shading, but then I just kinda developed it into my own thing. But the little lines thing was all his brilliance.

And my good friend, ShinuZero , who got me interested in using markers for shading with markers. I originally asked him about just like, toning for it. But then I turned it into a full-scale coloring kinda thing. :P

That's all I can think of off of the top of my head D:

Aurora Borealis

Kristen Gudsnuk
Nell Brinkley [en.wikipedia.org]-- I had never heard of her; just found a book of her art at a bookstore one time, and I couldn't put it down (it was called "Brinkley Girls".) I later went back and forked out like $30 for the book... a good decision. Her art is beautiful, and full of pretty girls with pretty clothes and long eyelashes.

Can you go again and buy a second copy for me? :D

Just kidding, but I did see a preview of that book and the art looks sweet.

For real, her artwork is amazing. When I was buying it I told myself, "it's not a waste of money- you can study how she draws draping cloth." But really I just like to look at the pretty pictures...

Raymond Pettibon, Herge, Jamie Hewlett, Alison Bechdel, Daniel Clowes, Esther Pearl Watson and a bunch of other people.

Almost every artist I have seen but

Liam Sharpe

steve dillon

Bryan hitch

jim lee

Adam Pollina

Adam kubert

John romita jr

frank miller

joe mad

steve skroce


many many more