My Influences

I got around to putting together my own influence map in Photoshop. With me wanting to be an animator, my influences are powerhouses of the animation industry, and here they are in order, starting from the top row and going right.

1. Hayao Miyazaki: A recent addition to my influences, but better late than never. While I have my sights set on animated TV shows, Miyazaki is a filmmaker who's methods and imagination should not be limited to one medium. Out of all film directors out there, I feel Miyazaki has the biggest amount of creativity. Once you stick one of his movies in the DVD player, you witness an experience like no other, and after that, you can never mistake another persons work as Miyazaki's. I love this guys work so much that I hate him for it. Why can't I create such beautiful and imaginative worlds and characters the way he does? No matter, I can still try. Being a lover of fantasy, I'm looking to put my own personal stamp on the genre, and I can't think of any other work to look to for inspiration than the work of Master Miyazaki himself.

2. Craig McCracken and Lauren Faust:  The power couple of animation are one of the reasons why I'm going into the business. Craig McCracken's work was inspiring me before I even knew about it. I grew up watching his career take off from his first job as an art director on 2 Stupid Dogs to storyboard artist, director, and writer on Dexter's Laboratory, to finally creating his own show, The Powerpuff Girls, which was my favorite Cartoon Network show as a lad. I wasn't afraid to admit that to my fellow guy friends, even if it resulted in a massive amount of wedgies and swirlies. I loved how PPG shared similar qualities to the classic cartoons that CN was airing reruns of at the time, and I could tell from the start that Craig was a cartoon animator. Shortly thereafter, he got married to his sweetheart, and the other half this spot, Lauren Faust. Lauren doesn't just ride on the same boat as her husband, she has lots of talent of her own. She's only the developer of a little show that doesn't seem to be catching on that much. It's called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Haven't heard of it? No big deal. Anyway, Lauren's philosophy of animation matches her husbands as he's against making cartoons that'll cater on only little kids, and the animated female characters that she brings to life are some of the most inspiring and groundbreaking that I've ever seen. When these two are separate, they are both equally talented, but when they're together, they're unstoppable. They both put forth equal effort to make Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends one of the best written shows that I've seen in recent memory, and Wander Over Yonder is becoming even more wacky and fun with each new episode that comes out. While I share equal amounts of love for both of these talented people, their passion and heart for the medium fills me with hope that I might meet somebody who's just as enthusiastic about cartoons as I am, and become my life partner in helping to put my mark on the medium in the future.

3. Matt Groening: He's not much of an animator, but I would slap myself silly if I didn't include him on my list. Besides being the creator of yet another little known show called The Simpsons, his method of creating characters is one that I not only find interesting, I use it as a benchmark for creating my own. Little known fact, a lot of the characters in The Simpsons are based off of people that Matt grow up with in his hometown of Portland, Oregon. Truth be told, all the members of the Simpson family are named and modeled after Matt's own family. That's one of the qualities that makes animation such a wonderful medium. The best characters aren't carbon copies of trendy cool kids that are popular for popularity's sake, they are based off of the wacky and wonderful people that we know in our everyday lives. Being surrounded by lots of crazy people, I take note of their personalities and stories that involve them just to see if I can make a future character out of them. That's a method that I believe all future animators should live by if they hope to create characters that stick around for generations to come. It's debatable whether it was Matt or his crew that made The Simpsons such a massive hit, but you can't deny that if it wasn't for his basic idea and the creation of the characters, the show never would have become what it is today.

4. Preston Blair: The man who changed the way I make my drawings. Early this year, I was looking at the drawings I posted on this site, and I was devastated. "My drawings are horrible," I would tell myself, "maybe this isn't the right path for me to walk through." But, half of me wasn't willing to give up like that. I decided that I'm going to need help from the masters of the medium. I quickly jumped onto Amazon and bought every animation book I could afford at the time. While the others were very helpful and informative, Preston Blair's "Cartoon Animation" is the one I stuck to most, and I still take reference from today. Every guideline for every question I had was in his book. How do I make villains look more threatening? How do I make cute characters cute? How do I program the timer on my VCR? Okay, not all the questions I had were in there, but for a struggling artist like me, the book was what I needed to put my visions on paper. The changes were instant as I was able to draw how I always wanted to, and every single character I designed after reading it are just how I picture them looking on TV screens in the future. I wish Preston was alive today for me to give him a great big hug and tell him that he made me want to become an animator even more thanks to the little book he published.

5. John Kricfalusi: I can't say that I look up to him as much as others do, but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't agree with him on his approach to animation. There's no doubt in my mind that if it wasn't for The Ren and Stimpy Show, television animation wouldn't be the same way it is now. John played a part in bringing back cartoons made by creators, breaking away from the commercialized animation that plagued the airwaves in the '80's. True, John K. may be painted as a egotistic nut by some of his peers (just ask Billy West), but that's the price some artists pay in order to make it big. He may have a burning hatred for anything that's not classic or not made by him, but he still has passion for the medium that shines through in his work. What I take from him is to make what you want to see and push studios to the limit of what they want to release. I'm all for pushing the envelope of entertainment, and John K. proved that there is a lot you can get away with, even on children's programming.

6. Looney Tunes: Oh, boy. How can you be an aspiring animator and not have these cartoons as influences. They are the cartoons that practically made cartoons the way they are today. So much went into them to make them some of best examples of not just animation but film in general. So many wonderful and memorable characters were featured in these cartoons, and even the ones you don't remember the names of are still worth talking about. There's so much to take from these cartoons, and that's why I'm so enchanted by them. They teach me that every aspect of production for animation needs to be the best it can in order to ensure that what you make is going to be legendary. From the animation, voice acting, music, sound effects, timing, writing, and everything in between, the Looney Tunes are the crowning achievement of the genre that I'll always strive to make my cartoons match.

7. Walt Disney: I didn't mean for his picture to end up that small, but oh well. Yet another man that you can't miss mentioning if you talk about what makes animation so special. He may not have been much of an animator, or artist for that matter, but he had something else that helped make him one of the most powerful men of all time. He had passion. He knew exactly how cartoons should be in order to make them the best they could. He knew how the characters should act, how the stories should play out, how the jokes should be executed, and so on. He was heavily involved with every aspect of the production for each piece of film that his studio produced, and he was surrounded by several talented staff members that helped put his visions on the big screen. Walt accomplished a lot in his career, but what I take most from him is his drive to keep improving himself. If you take a look at the very first Mickey Mouse cartoons, they're not the same as the Micky Mouse cartoons from later on. This is because the only thing Walt asked off his crew is to make each cartoon better than the previous. That's a pledge that I live by. I never want to stick in my comfort zone if something is working because I know my work will get boring quickly. I want to keep getting better, taking note of what I'm doing well and seeing if I can build on top of it in the future. As Walt himself did, I'm going to "keep moving forward."

8. Tex Avery: If you know me and my taste in cartoons, you saw this coming a mile away. If not, he's the biggest picture in the piece for a reason. The Looney Tunes may have created cartoons as we know them, but that's only because this man was working at Termite Terrace when that movement was sparked. I, among with several other animation fans, believe that Tex Avery was the first to make cartoons. Sure, animation was around, but Tex morphed animation into what it's meant to be, wacky, in-your-face, off the wall, fast paced, and hilarious. I can't think of any other person who has made me want to get into animation more than the cartoons of Tex. I share his idea that "in a cartoon, you can do anything," and I'm going to take that philosophy with me on my trip to reach my dream career. Because, when I think of cartoons, I think of Tex Avery.

9. Jay Ward: Yet another animation icon who wasn't much of an animator, but you can't think of cartoons without him. Along with Hanna/Barbara, Jay Ward was one of the pioneers of animation made for TV. His cartoons may have had the smallest budgets of any TV show, but that didn't stop him from making some of the most beloved and recognizable characters in all of animation. What I love most about Jay Ward is he approached his shows not as cartoons, but as radio shows with pictures. Not having the skilled animators that Bill and Joe had, Jay instead felt that writing would be the strong point of his cartoons, and he was more than right. His cartoons have some of the most clever jokes and unique satire that has yet to be duplicated successfully. Now the scripts for Jay's cartoons are going to be my basis to make my cartoons as hilariously written as they can be physically hilarious.

10. Max Fleischer: Last but not least, the original bad boy of animation. While Termite Terrace is credited as being the first studio to rattle the cages of Disney, Fleischer Studios was actually Disney's rival before the idea of Termite Terrace was just a wet dream.  He challenged the sunny and cheerful style of Disney to make gritty and rough cartoons that played themselves for laughs rather than happiness. He's known for bringing such characters of Betty Boop and Popeye to life, which were not your typical cartoon characters. Betty was made with the intention of being a sex symbol, while Popeye was a take-no-names, almost inaudible muscle head who beats the heck out of anyone who rubs him the wrong way. Max introduced the world to a whole new way of making cartoons, meaning that it's okay to do what the other guy isn't doing. That's one thing I encourage over everything when it comes to entertainment. Don't do what others do, do what you do. While the life line of Max's studio was short, the impact that he made on animation is still felt today. Always be willing to challenge the status quo, and it will lead you to more success than you can imagine.