[Influences] Influence Map [ONGOING]

There are a lot of things that influence my animation work, whether it be other animations, places or even people. In this post I'm going to list as many as I can think of as well as a brief reason how and why they have influenced me.

JOSH PALMER (ZEUREL)

This animator would without a doubt be my main influence. I've also been told in several comments that my style has some similarities, so the influence certainly seems to be shining through. My favourite aspects of his work would be the unique character designs and backgrounds, something that I feel is extremely important in animation. Bland characters make for a bland story. It's because of Zeurel that I now strive to improve my frame by frame movement, rather than using symbols and models. I also like the general bounciness and life to his work, as shown in the link below he is great at emphasised movement:

EDD GOULD (EDDSWORLD)

Edd Gould was a British animator and founder of the internet series "Eddsworld". This series was  avery early inspiration of mine as it was one of the first web series I saw focused around the same three characters, rather than every animation being completely different. I thought that this was important as viewers will remember the characters and want to watch more episodes, which increases the chances of people sticking around for more.

WEEBL'S-STUFF

HARRY PARTRIDGE

Like Zeurel, this animator is great at frame by frame animation in Flash and is another big influence to my work. His use of colour also interests me, although he doesn't do all of his own backgrounds, but this allows him to work faster.

ARIN HANSON (EGORAPTOR)

A very early influence from when I discovered Newgrounds.com

This animator often does parodies, which I started to dislike writing for myself, but his sense of humour and voice acting still make them very entertaining to watch.

MAX GELARDI (HOTDIGGEDYDEMON)

A more recent influence to my work. This animator uses symbol animation in Flash rather than frame by frame redrawing, a style that I've been neglecting lately but still feel is very important.

NIGHTWAYFARER

TOM RIDGEWELL (TOMSKA)

A member and now director of the aforementioned Eddsworld series. I like Tom's sense of humour and writing. As a director rather than an animator, he can put a lot more focus into the writing side of things and he knows his target audience extremely well. His own series, ASDFMOVIE is aimed as viral videos, so it is filled with short, nonsensical clips that people will want to spread around.

TERRY PRATCHETT

The work of Terry Pratchett (author of the "Discworld" books) has been an influence since my childhood, as my Dad's side of the family were always referencing it. Looking at it in relation to my own work, I have learned the importance of creating a world full of imagination that will keep the viewer interested. However I've also learned to add limits to these too. His characters are also among my favourites, the video above shows my favourite of his characters, Teatime.

FABLE 2

Another influence that people seem to have picked up on is Fable 2, a game for the Xbox 360. The world of Oddball has some strong influences from the art direction in this game and I often use it as reference material. Something I learned from this game is colour too, the non-important characters in Oddball now tend to have muted browns and greys for their clothing. In the Fable picture above there is also a strong sense of identity in the two classes, which are both unified by the art style. A strong style like this also allows the important characters (like my protagonist Redi) to stand out from the crowd through colour and design.

Redi is the only character with bright orange hair, which helps to enforce her "oddball" personality, her clothing choices are also a more gothic style in comparison to the Victorian styles the other characters wear. As I said earlier, a unified style is also very important. As the city my cartoons is set in is full of snow, I make sure that there are some similarities in the warm clothing they all wear.

DR STEEL

As it turns out, music is also influential to my work. In fact, I have a playlist specifically for Redi, with the sort of music I associate with her, this is a big help when I'm getting her character down. Dr. Steel is a multimedia character, spanning across music and videos. I've taken a fair amount of inspiration from his character and music videos.