What are your art inspirations?
Disclaimer: A LOT of RAMBLING
Honestly hard to answer, nowadays I don't really look at a lot of art anymore but mostly just movies.
Biggest inspiration over the years (from 2020 to 2022) would have to be Kan Liu. His painting style with mostly just the round brush and hard edges really spoke to me, especially when it came to lineart I was a massive fucking copycat lmao.
Around 2022 I also began falling in love with Sungmoo Heo. The perspectives and overall style just fucks so hard.
The most obvious inspo would have to be Seonhyeok Jeon though, who I still rip off blatantly.
In general I began taking art seriously around 2020, when I found Kan Liu, because I began training to compete in bodybuilding, which I did the next year. I began getting super interested in how the body and muscles work so I just drew those a fuck ton, and those anatomy studies ended up really helping my art skills in general.
Anyway! For animation... Hiroto Nagata and Q Kawa are big inspos.
This shit is so fucking RAW and HOLY SHIT when I look at how the perspective gets just in your face I always just think "what am I even doing man I have to PRACTICE". It's like watching a Zyzz or Ronny Coleman clip before doing a lift at the gym but for art, shit's motivational.
This cut in Ghost In the Shell as well is WOW, I think what speaks a lot to me is when an animation doesn't conform to what's standard in the medium and tries to push boundaries/be unique. Be it in this case through insane details, in the case of Mushoku Tensei through bg animation mixed with extreme foreshortening or just a crazy perspective and punchy movements in the Madoka clip.
Overall it's hard to say what else my inspirations are though. When it comes to manga and comics I can think of Batman Year One, The Climber by Shin-ichi Sakamoto, Ultra Heaven by Keichi Koike, Solo Leveling (big inspo in 2021) and Homunculus.
Also, even though everyone assumes it, I haven't played Cyberpunk 2077 or am that big a fan of the Blame! manga, I guess I just have a fairly similar artistic vision to both of those.
For animated fiction it'd be Spiderverse recently, Millennium Actress, Silent Voice and a million other anime I've forgotten the name of. Naoko Yamada's directing for Silent Voice or other anime like Hibike Euphonium and the Liz movie has always been amazing to me because she is able to express characters personalities through their body language, like they way they walk or stand, in a way I have never seen done before. Extremely recognizable and iconic style imo. A long time ago I used to be really into watching anime, but I don't care much for it anymore.
Other inspo would be this guy on twitter, his stuff is insanely cool https://twitter.com/be_myvu/status/1725069515107533178?s=46
It's like that Ralph Waldo Emerson quote - โI cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.โ I think throughout the years I've been so obsessed with all kinds of artists that I've taken in inspiration from everywhere. I cannot recall them all anymore, but they have made me the artist I am today.
Currently, like I said, I would consider movies to be my biggest inspiration because I find it interesting how cinematographers are able to stylize real life, which I'm trying to get closer to. If I could direct a movie, I would probably stop making art right then and there, but I'm not really working towards that goal anyway lmao. One day, being able to make a short film in animation would be something I would like to do though.
I'm not deep enough into the movie scene to get the street cred of being called an expert but I love them a lot. Fallen Angels made me fall in love with fisheye back then for example. Fight Club and The Batman have a grit to them visually that I find inspiring, and movies like Persona and Heat also come to mind when I think of movies I just love. I could look up my letterboxd for a more thorough answer but I feel I've already been writing way too long.
For video games, I guess you can imagine that I would say Signalis lmao. Besides that I can think of Subahibi (vn), Muramasa (vn), and Va-11 Hall-a for inspirations
Lastly, I guess huge inspirations are also a fuck ton of music. I mostly listen to either metal or hard techno, but I think I'll refrain from any more yapping.
I feel that this isn't really a great answer to the question, but it's the one I consider the most correct, because it's never as simple as just mentioning one artist. With a lot of these you wouldn't see a visual resemblence to my art, but in all of these I recognize a feeling that I also find in my own art.
Thank you for the question!
