CaptHayFever:
Movies - Head, UHF, The Princess Bride, MST3K: The Movie, Stranger Than Fiction, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Music - The Monkees, Weird Al, Y-O-U, Lindsey Stirling, They Might Be Giants, Lemon Demon
Books - Animorphs, The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Enormous Room, Real Ultimate Power, Dogs Don't Tell Jokes
Shows - Mystery Science Theater 3000, Pete & Pete, NewsRadio, Numb3rs, Homestar Runner, Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series
Comics - Ms. Marvel, Irredeemable/Incorruptible, Persepolis, Calvin & Hobbes, Bloom County/Outland/Opus, Problem Sleuth
Games - Super Smash Bros. (full series), Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, Sonic the Hedgehog (1-3 & Knuckles, Unleashed, Colors, Generations, Mania), Portal, Risk (Genesis), Pinball
Rinku:
That would be very difficult for me to narrow down to an answer. I'll have to think about it.
Off the top of my head, I might say that it's a Black Clover fanzine done by one artist. It's primarily a ship that I wasn't even super big on, but her art is so good and you can just feel the passion and love radiating off of every piece that it inspires me to make something that can hopefully elicit that reaction in others.
I get real bad impostor syndrome to the point that I will look at things I've made that I know are objectively good and hate them, but I know this artist does too and she's so obviously talented that it's silly to think, "Oh, I'm a fake, I'm a hack," and that I shouldn't be so hard on myself. I hope that makes sense.
Fussy:
I get inspired by my colleagues
They all write such amazing things
I dunno if that counts
So I'll also say Tom Grossi and Brandon Perna. Two sports comedians that I really admire
They took their writing and love of sports and made it into successful full time careers
One of my colleagues is writing a really lovely series about Don Baylor and it's so good
ArcanaXIX:
- How to Train Your Dragon, books and first movie. The movie soundtrack was enormously inspirational to me and the books possibly even moreso, although for different reasons
- Final Fantasy VIII & IX, for completely different reasons. The former for being like "sometimes making something absurd and unhinged is great" and the latter for its incredible soundtrack that reminded me it's important to listen to so much music to write better music of my own
- Extremely cheesy answer, but honestly, my friends. Like when I see one of you guys here, or even some other friends who aren't on here, sharing art you've made... I'm like YEAH!!! THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT!!! I love seeing the kind of art that's just so 100% personal to the individual who made it, I love when I can see the artist in the art, y'know.
- Wandersong and Umineko, which seems like the wildest combination of games I could put together, both inspired me in a way that felt tangible - like "maybe making a game and scoring it is something I can do" - these games were made by such tiny teams compared to many of my favorites so it's really inspiring to see how fantastic they are and it makes me feel like I could do the same if I work at it.
S1x:
toby fox is ridiculous
How is he good at so many different things
ZeroJanitor:
honestly this channel has been a huge inspiration for me the past year or so. one of the big things keeping me going when working on something is thinking "oh man leo is gonna :pogsire: when they see this"
toby fox is also a good source of inspiration because his music is largely made with a hodgepodge of vgm samples, free resources, and default fl studio plugins, and yet he consistently makes some of the hardest bangers ever created
and i've talked about it before but from a composition perspective, david wise is the single biggest inspiration for me. his style is so engrained in my subconscious that i write stuff that sounds like dkc2 without even trying sometimes
Spritedude:
I think I've already talked about how Captain Underpants and Fullmetal Alchemist are the most influential works to me ad nauseum, so I'll try to come up with some different ones:
- Animorphs! I checked out the 1st book from my school library in 4th grade and was immediately hooked. I never actually finished the series (there's 62 dang books), but I loved the premise, tone, and how unabashedly unafraid it was to get weird and dark. It went from lighthearted kids being kids one moment to "every night I wake up screaming" the next. The contrast just made the story all the more tense, and you could always feel the stakes. I decided then that those were the kind of stories I liked best. I love when stories get me to care, and then turn around rip my heart out. It just shows how powerful and compelling they can be, and Animorphs did it incredibly well. Also, I drew fanart of one of the characters a few years ago and the author herself commented on it!
- Marvel's Runaways. The comic, not the TV series (I haven't seen it yet). I guess I sorta have a thing for "us against the world" groups of young superheroes. I like how the characters are technically superheroes, but don't feel like symbols or icons, they're just... themselves. Heck, they don't even wear costumes. The story focuses more on their interpersonal relationships, growth as characters, and their personal goals and desires more than whatever new big threat they have to deal with, and I guess I wish that's something more "superhero" stories did more. Also, I just like how unique their powers are. One character has magic that works based on how much she bleeds, another has rainbow cosmic energy, one is a genderfluid shapeshifter, one has a psychic link with a freaking velociraptor...
Here's the Animorphs author thing if anyone's interested. I've probably posted it before but I'm still just so gosh dang jazzed by it: [link]
monstrman:
this is gonna be a long one so I'll break it up into parts
part 1: System of a Down
System of a Down was the first band I heard that didn't fit any other sound or style I had ever heard before, and for a long time I don't think I'd heard since. They have such a unique quality to their music and I can't help but love them no matter how ridiculous the lyrics may sound when spoken or taken out of context - "pouring gravy on her thighs still" - Marmalade from their self titled album
The entire band is incredibly talented, and to say I have a favorite song from them would be a lie
but there are some that are more influential than others
This song's lyrics really hit me hard, especially the chorus: "I think me, I want life, I think me, I want a house and a wife"
yes there is lots of screaming but I was an angry teenager and in some ways I'm still angry!
I always respected System of a Down hugely as artists and maybe today they're still one of the most influential bands to me, but maybe not my favorite
Part 2 is video games. I've said this before but good video game music is almost always a hit and it can be hard to make bad video game music
Eddie Van Halen, Buckethead, Liquid Tension Experiment, Dragonforce, Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Avenged Sevenfold
MCR, Blink 182, Rise Against, Dream Theater
80s music
this song specifically
I have now hijacked this to be a conversation about my favorite music
Classical music is big too
Green Day, Foo Fighters, Audioslave
anyone that made a one hit wonder in the 80s-2000s
Beastie Boys, Fallout Boy, most of the boys
who doesn't love
Backstreet Boys
Black Sabbath, Pantera
Alkaline Trio is another HUGE influence
I could talk forever about this but anytime I hear really well done music I get inspired
life would be pointless without music
any time I get depressed I play my guitar
The last song has an especially poignant message in the chorus too, "loud and clear with your heart, big and bright are the places you might someday go; with one million things holding you down, why you're one of those things, I don't know"
that's always inspired me too. I guess AS A LAST ANSWER the message in the music, and the ability to send emotion through sound, has always been most inspiring to me
Vapor:
SOPHIE's album Oil Of Every Pearl's Un-Insides is way up there, for reasons I've mentioned before. Really unlocked something in my head like nothing else. Also 1000 gecs by 100 gecs, another assortment of weird and wild (and very transgender) sounds that melded into my brain so good. I'll need to think a bit about non-music influences.
Because people are saying things like their friends, I'm going to say that the Albany-area DIY punk scene has been a huge inspiration to me. Since I started going to basement shows and making friends throughout the scene over the past half year or so it's been a huge inspiration for me to take initiative with my own music.
Someday I too will be yelling into a voice distortion box in somebody's garage while a bunch of gay goths slam into each other for fun
And this discord channel too, the positive feedback has been vital for keeping me going :biggrin~1:
Here's some of that local scene I mentioned, if anyone is interested. Its mostly punk, metal, and shoegaze [link]
AReallyFrog:
I would like to echo that this channel and all of y'all posting your own stuff and having a place to share stuff has been great and inspirational.I've also mentioned Quibbs/Tess Thompson's work n her webcomic Soil That Binds but she has been doing nearly daily life comics that are a bright spot for me (besides just that the amount of art she puts out while never having missed a webcomic update is insanely impressive)
Otherwise, mythology and folk lore definitely influence a lot of what I make. And I may not write music but it definitely helps put me in a place to work on things. The Oh Hellos do some indie folk stuff I've benn very into lately