What/Who are your inspiration for making comics?

[Kenny Cappuchino]

I'm curious as to what drew you guys towards the story telling form of comics.

For me, as a kid, comics always seemed to have the bad stigma of being a potential dropout if you had any interest in them. And the only ones I had ever known were of the super buff superheroes beating up bad guys, as well as Captain Underpants; the, uh, stereotypical kind of comics you'd see in cartoons, secretly being read behind textbooks. It wasn't until middle school that I started to see them as something really artistic that I was drawn to as both a writer and an artist, mostly because that was when I found the comic JtHM. It was the opposite of most of the stereotypes I had seen in comics before and I liked finding all the secret messages drawn in the panel layout. No one else really got it but I liked it and started to really get into the comic making world.

Since then, I've come across quite a few different artists that inspire me with visual storytelling, many of them comic and manga artists like Natsume Ono, Jhonen Vasquez, and a webcomic artist known as Nero, but also films, books, games and just things that happen in everyday life, as well as the simple desire to express stories with something a little more than just words. But definitely, the first thing that got me into making comics was finding JtHM tucked away in the corner of the book store with all the other comic books.

So yup, where'd you guys first get into making comics and what kept you there?

[panty sniff]

This is a neat little topic.

I've been told that since I was little all of my art was in a sequential format. I really didn't notice until I had started doing drawing comics professionally and a childhood friend sent me a message saying that she was proud of me for accomplishing my dream from when I was 9 or 10 years old. Then it really hit me that I had been drawing comics long before I had even read any!

It's pretty tough for me to really pinpoint what my inspiration stems from. In my teenage years (and even now a little) I was inspired by Suehiro Maruo, Junji Ito, Kazuo Umezu, Hideshi Hino, and especially Shintaro Kago for his unconventional themes and insane panel layouts. Basically I had only read manga in high school. I wasn't interested in the generic stylings of super hero comics and when manga became marketable in America, I jumped on it pretty quickly and I readily accepted anything that wasn't marvel or dc. I went through a slight phase in middle school where I thought Jhonen Vasquez was cool but I grew out of it when I realized I could stylize things that appealed to me more than his work.

I think it was my senior year of high school when I learned about alternative comics. I was super late when I read Bone. And I liked Craig Thompson and Michael Deforge and Alec longstreth. (A billion others but that's all that I could think of). Basically the more and more I delved into alternative comics the more I realized how much I was limiting myself by thinking that comics just had to be linear straightforward stories. I've been trying to go more and more experimental since. But I still do normalish stories.

(Sorry this is so long)

[Kenny Cappuchino]

panty sniff

Just wanted to ask, have you ever heard of the filmmaker Jan Švankmajer? He does a lot of stop motion work with an invasive-macabre sort of twist. I think you'd find his work interesting.

[panty sniff]

Kenny Cappuchino

panty sniff

Just wanted to ask, have you ever heard of the filmmaker Jan Švankmajer? He does a lot of stop motion work with an invasive-macabre sort of twist. I think you'd find his work interesting.

I used to like his stuff a lot when I was high school. Completely forgot about him until the other day when someone brought him up.

[zammap]

Same happened with me. Being a comic maker is a state of mind, and you naturally want to tell stories. When I was 17 I wanted to invest in going to film school because I wanted to tell stories, but in order to make some pocket change I looked around for art jobs I could get. The ones I was most qualified for were comic book jobs. I was surprise to look at my work and felt dumb that for all this time I was making comics after comics after comics. I guess it does go hand in hand with film though.

I didn't read that many comics though as a child as I was more interested in cartoon. And not just the kiddy stuff like sailor moon or cartoon network stuff, but I watched a lot of MTV where their shows where more out the box. Music videos too (thank god I'm old enough to have seen an MTV where they mainly played videos) as they used to be so artistic, taking the story that is being told in the song and taking it to a new visual level, that you can still figure out the story even if the video is on mute.

One of my recent inspirations was a comic that I bought on the fly and it turned out to SUCK. IT SUCKED. But it was like "if they can get published, why can't I." I also like their drawing/line quality and digital coloring (even if they made everything too dark.).

I guess most of my inspirations are movies and I make comics as a lack to that medium. I've recently met in the middle and trying to learn animation.

[The Zorya]

There were always stories I wanted to tell. Comics give wonderful opportunity to tell stories with very little words actually used.
Making own comics was also super cheap form of entertainent, since most of my life we lived very poor. I made few issues of some urban fantasy comic in high school that my classmates red. It was fun, even tho my skill was low.
Then few years ago, I began to draw them again, this time in webcomic format. It was cheaper and more accesable to whider range of public then just few comic lovers in town. Plus, I can have it in color without getting angsty about print prices. Maybe I will print next project, I am not quite sure yet.
Nowadays I exclusevly do them for own pleasure. Relying on others for motivation and inspiration is too much of a risk. Sure, they are good for lil ego boost, but it shouldn't be more than that.

[Kaxen]

I got into drawing comics when I started reading the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga...... wow, that is embarrassing to say... sweatdrop



I thought about getting into animation but animating drives me crazy. I kept going because comics is the medium that works for me because if I write a novel, I always want to add pictures and if I just draw a stand-alone picture, I want to make up a story... so I basically can only see myself doing comics or maybe illustrated novels.

[Xiam]

Kenny Cappuchino

What/Who are your inspiration for making comics?

In all honesty?

A combination of artistic preference and flat-out laziness.

On the one hand, I noticed I'd draw a lot of characters and scenery anyway, even if I was hoping to write a novel.

On the other hand... I really hate having to figure out how to describe something, and in how much detail I should describe it. I didn't want too little information, but I also wanted to avoid purple prose. So I said "******** it, I'm strongest with dialogue and I'm drawing characters anyway," and moved into comics.

Also, Calvin & Hobbes was seriously like my favorite series ever.