Question 2: Who are some of your biggest influences/inspirations?

ArcanaXIX:

I gotta shout out some of the obvious--

* Koji Kondo is responsible for me spending hours growing up plinking out zelda songs on the piano

* Keisuke Ito is responsible for me going to grad school because I loved the AI: The Somnium Files soundtrack so much and wanted to learn more about electronic composition

* Nobuo Uematsu is also responsible for me going to grad school because FFIX's soundtrack struck me so hard as the kind of thing you can only write if you listen to a LOT of different kinds of music

* Modest Mussorgsky is a fucking beast and the piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition is legendary

* Fryderyk Chopin is also a fucking beast and Revolutionary Etude goes hard

* Shoji Meguro is ALSO a fucking beast and it's thanks to his Catherine OST arrangements that the aforementioned two were brought to my attention

* Toby Fox is a legend

* I regret to inform that grad school has made me a Stravinsky stan. He was doing some weird shit in a way I truly must respect

* ... also unironically am inspired by like half the people on this server and all my classmates and other peers because like it's just so cool to see all the vastly uniquely different stuff you're all making


ZeroJanitor:

* David Wise is probably the biggest influence on my compositional style; the combination of atmosphere and melody are always things I like to incorporate into a lot of my original songs.

* David Warhol conversely is one of the biggest influences on my style of orchestration with 8-bit stuff. His use of hardware sweeps to simulate a wailing electric guitar is something I've shamelessly aped for a lot of things, as well as his use of duty-swapping for a very satisfying pulse bass.

* All the Tony Hawk games for giving me a taste for fast and catchy punk rock, which definitely factors in to how I like to arrange songs.


CaptHayFever:

Michael Nesmith, Neil Cicierega, Al Yankovic, E.E. Cummings, Robin Williams, Lemony Snicket,....


SpriteDude:

Dav Pilkey of Captain Underpants fame is probably who I owe my entire art "career" to. I've said this many times, but his books are actually about self-expression and encouraging kids to create, even if it's just for juvenile potty humor. Do it and love it anyway. Be weird. Be you. His message is what got me to start drawing comics on printer paper and creating my own characters, which in turn made start drawing a lot more.

As far as style influences, the thing that got me to drift towards an anime-ish style was How to Draw Manga by Katy Coope, and Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist) kinda helped me find that balance between realism and cartooniness that I like to incorporate


AReallyFrog:

The three artists I feel like have most influenced my style and kept me invested in drawing for the joy of it are

Yuko Ota: http://www.johnnywander.com/about

Mad Rupert: https://twitter.com/MadelineRupert

and

Tess (Quibbs) Thompson: https://twitter.com/quibbed

They're all comic artists with v expressive interesting styles. Yuko and Mad I associate with a lot of strong black and white illustrations, which I enjoy, and

Quibbs being the strongest influence most recently bc their style is beautiful and sketchy and painted and helped me realize I can do art in a way that's fun for me without having to force myself to do lines and flats in the like standard digital art way.

(plugging Mad and Quibb's webcomics as well: https://www.sakana-comic.com/

https://soilthatbindsus.com/pages/title-page


NyanKat:

I can't really think of any specific people, but sometimes I'll copyedit something for work and then be like "ooh that style/medium/whatever is really cool"


Monstrman:

if there's a video game artist I've probably listened to and have been inspired by their stuff

other than that I take a lot of inspiration from like, classic rock, classical music, system of a down/serj tankian and a lot of metal, maybe some punk rock


Valigarmander:

Bill Watterson is probably my biggest influence, and the main reason I wanted to draw comics in the first place

Jamie Hewlett, Joe Sacco, and Jhonen Vasquez are other big artistic influences, and I could probably name dozens more


Vapor:

Was thinking about this this morning coincidentally. The artist that probably motivated me the most to get back into production after a ~12 year gap is probably SOPHIE. Her wild diversity of sounds, from gentle ambience to the most terrifyingly abrasive beats ever, is really inspiring. The influence is probably noticeable in how much I love sonic textures and how much I focus on creating interesting synth sounds in my music

Other than that it's a big mess of all the weird and noisy electronic artists I've listened to. The most prominent are probably 100 gecs and their ilk, heavy synthwave like Perturbator and Dance with the Dead, Death Grips and a little bit of prog rock (I can't get King Crimson out of my head, I've listened to them my whole life)

Yeah on reflection if I had point to specific albums it would be Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides by SOPHIE, New Model by Perturbator and maybe a couple others

Actually forget all that my biggest influence is this tweet