So where do you get your inspiration?

[Rkolter]

Simply put, I am an eternal science geek. Been one since I was old enough to read. The first books I owned were a series of invention stories throughout history written for kids. I knew how the cure for rabies was created before I knew how to play baseball. Guess which was more fun for me?

I guess it started though with a news article about different kinds of bombs that talked about stuff that didn't exist, and a news reporter telling a kid a bad answer about why helium balloons rise.

Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye surprisingly didn't make much of an impact on me. By the time I knew them both, while I liked their antics, they were teaching stuff that I already knew. Except for the 'break a piece of wood with a piece of newspaper' episode. That was just cool.

Anyway, I decided to give some answers to common science questions I received, or had heard wrong answers for. It became 'answer my readers questions' kind of by default, but that worked out too.

[Catlegend]

In middle school, I wanted to be someone else for awhile, so I invented that someone and they stayed until it was alright to be me again. My comic is so I don't forget what I had when I needed it.

[Nicked]

I draw inspiration from film. I like to pretend that my comic is a storyboard sometimes (perhaps for a slow-moving Jarmusch movie ).

[Mvmarcz]

I wanted to do something different.

I always wrote stories and comics full of school girls and magic and yaoi and all that run of the mill highschool stuff.

I wanted to do a boring real story. About a guy. Really challenge myself and work on my dialogue problems. Since I was using people based heavily in reality and mostly based on real people the dialogue should come naturally, and for the most part I feel like it does. A bit after I started the story I had a falling out with the girl I based Lina on (the only difference between her and Lina is the name is only slightly different and The real girl is fairly flat chested-much to her dismay). So I had to bring in more characters because I was going to remove the character-but obviously decided to keep her.

Anyway so I rewrote the basic story over and over in my head and finally decided instead of a story I'd make it a comic. TADA!

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

I had a character I drew a lot, and I decided that puting him in a context and making him do stuff with other people is infinitely more intersting that just the random doodles I had. Supporting characters are based on people I both like and despise.

[LibertyCabbage]

For Freedom Fries, I doodled this in high school (cuz i was bored) and then I drew another. And another. And I kept drawing them until I was drawing comics all day and I figured it was time to put them online, which is how I found Keenspace/ComicGen.

[Twentyfour]

I was in College taking animation and a girl in my class introduced me to Sluggy Freelance and CRFH. Maritza hit me back and encouraged me to draw plenty and even try my hand at webcomicking. Words of encouragement froma stranger are great, and being introduced to a whole new medium, with these monstrous archives(Sluggy had maybe 2.5-3 years at the time) and the stories continiued each day. I guess that's what I fell in love with, the whole idea of a neverending story(now I have to go watch that movie)

So, uh.... Maritza's kind words, Pete's story telling, and when I started looking for a host Keenspace had had just been created 3 days prior, methinks it was fate!

[G-Lode]

Like so many other webcomics, the handful of comics I've managed to post on the web are about myself, my brother, and my best friend and some altered reality with video games as the medium. I really just wanted practice being able to create what I could see in my mind and I figured, what people do I know better than my family and friends?

Since about January I have been working on two different stories with separate characters that I am still trying to piece together into a cohesive and enjoyable adventure. Brothers Forever was a great jumping off point for me to begin and get my feet wet.

My main influences growing up were always fantasy based. I loved the artwork on Magic: The Gathering cards, the DnD manuals, elf and fairie books of all kinds. The characters of my next brainchild will be decided more mythical.

[Blackaby]

And where did yours come from Blackaby? eh? EH?!

Um. It wasn't really inspiration, just a kind of... slow progression of stuffs?

1) I wrote an animation script for a university course. It was called Fiends and it was just like Friends, except instead of boys and girls living opposite each other, it was creatures of EVIL (a demon, a vampire, a werewolf) living opposite creatures of GOOD (an angel, an elf, a fairy). It was the BEST EVER.
2) I learnt through the grapevine that Sortelli had actually read my badcomix and didn't poke out his eyeballs afterwards.
3) I ran into Ken Klaus online - the guy who did Boredom Tastes Like Chocolate which I'd read fannishly billions of years ago.
4) I wanted to do something different with Viger - she did illustrations for my writing/website and we've written together before, so... it was either that or becoming cam girls.
5) I was possessed by an alien.
6) The name Blackaby came to me on a train. I thought it was brilliant. Sadly, later I discovered that it was also the name of a famous Christian philosopher/writer/preacher person...

Uh, the rest of the inspiration was all Veege's.

[Simbot]

Mine was taken straight from life but the more comics I do, the less time I have to do interesting things...

Reading lots of other webcomics has been really motivating. Yet once again it is time spent not doing my own comics or having a life...

[Radewagon]

sort of an unecessarily long story. here goes.
been drawing since i was a kid. Got to college with dreams of writing my own comic book. My first two years, I tried to pitch two different strips to the campus paper. One was about god (which i regret writing) and the other was about my radewagon character and his friend joseph (i still like that one). Both of them were rejected, and since life got a bit more busy with upper-division classes, i decided to quit my efforts. one year later, me and my friend shannon discovered the webcomic (through penny-arcade). We decided to get a keenspace account and write/draw the strip together (my so called knife). I completed one strip and she completed none. one more year later, i met my now ex-girlfriend. She was the editor in chief of a small press magazine and asked me if i would contribute some work. I decided to start a new strip and called it My So Called Knife even though everything about the original concept had been scrapped. I had three strips published in her magazine when I decided to revisit my keenspace account with the new comics. She dumped me (and i did a strip about it) and one year later, I'm still doing the strip and now only really have one person that's non-fiction, me (as opposed to the three that i started with). So, i now have a completely fictional story with completely fictional characters and I couldn't be happier.

[Kris X]

I just find it ironic because I never have owned a cat in my life. But I had friend who owned cats? So maybe...Yeah I don't know exactly what inspired Chat Rouge.

[Prettysenshi]

Wow. My inspiration. Alot of things. History, anime, etc. Lemme think waaaaaay back. I wrote my first real series when I was ten, and was inspired by the show, Babylon 5. Great sci-fi show. Then, Circle Arcadia, KotG, believe it or not, was inspired by Powerpuff Girls, Totally Spies, Josie and the Pussycats...yes, Josie and the Pussycats. Notice a pattern? All three of those shows are starring girls with the hair colors of red, black and yellow, with the red heads being the leader. If you ever read my comic, you'd pick that up immediately.

Other inspirations would be Star Wars, Sailor Moon, and music. My art are comes from the moods I get when listening to music. If I'm listening to Rammstein, I'll draw a great fight scene, and so on.

Basically, every thing inspires me. Anything, really. But mainly music and animation.

[Lintjinks]

I really really really needed to make fun of the fantasy genre.


Sorry.

[Xavier]

after years of reading webcomics (i started reading megatokyo and boymeetsboy @ 14) i finally decided that i wanted one, but didn't have the skills necessary to put it online. one day, however, my friend messaged me, and informed me that we now had a Keenspace account, and i was going to have to fork over the comics. after that stunning "ho shit! i have a comic!" moment was the turning point in my career. i guess it's worked out ok so far.

-X

[McDuffies]

Wow! Twentyfour!

Anyways. I've been drawing comics since I was a little kid, and when people ask me when did I start drawing, I answer that I never stopped in the first place. So I was drawing comics just as well, when I discovered existance of webcomics. Now, living in Serbia, I have little to no chance to get published, printed, or even get enough money to self-publish. So it was inevitable that I'd go with webcomics.
Though, webcomics I read were very influential to me. "mcDuffies" is more or less a "CRFH" ripoff.

As for inspiration, I get inspired from everywhere. Mostly from real life. I want to present what I felt in real life in a comic, but to do that succesfully, I always have to twist real events or even disregard them to different story that is more telling.
I also get inspired by films, comics, books... Bad stories inspire me a lot, specially when they linger on a good initial premise. Then I think "I could do better" and try to actually do it.

[Netpoet]

TTG came about rather oddly. Michelle and I are both moderators on Elfwood, and we've known each other there for a few years. I've loved her artwork for a long time, so whenever she posted something new, I went to look at it.

She posted a picture one day of an elf woman holding an amulet. Her description was "I don't know why she looks like she's almost naked, I don't know why she's kinda smirking, and I have no idea why she's holding that amulet."

I asked her if I could write a story for her based off that picture, because it intrigued me (that, and I love writing short stories inspired by pictures... great practice). The original short was about 3-4 pages long... and a month later, apparently it had been eating at her because she really liked how I expanded on the character.

She came to me and asked me if I'd consider reworking it with her into a webcomic. Three months or so later, I'd written three full chapters for it, we had 30ish draft pages completed and the website design nearly complete... you know the rest.

>Net

[Blackaby]

TTG came about rather oddly. Michelle and I are both moderators on Elfwood, and we've known each other there for a few years. I've loved her artwork for a long time, so whenever she posted something new, I went to look at it.

She posted a picture one day of an elf woman holding an amulet. Her description was "I don't know why she looks like she's almost naked, I don't know why she's kinda smirking, and I have no idea why she's holding that amulet."

I asked her if I could write a story for her based off that picture, because it intrigued me (that, and I love writing short stories inspired by pictures... great practice). The original short was about 3-4 pages long... and a month later, apparently it had been eating at her because she really liked how I expanded on the character.

She came to me and asked me if I'd consider reworking it with her into a webcomic. Three months or so later, I'd written three full chapters for it, we had 30ish draft pages completed and the website design nearly complete... you know the rest.

>Net

Soooo, Net... any way we can get ahold of the story that launched a webcomic?!

[Starline]

I heard that Aaron Carter remake of "I Want Candy" in Spring 2001 and thought, "Hmm. I wanna make a comic about a girl named Candi."

After several story remakes and designs.... there she is.

Brief History here- http://packy.dardan.com/walky/album26

[Vorticus]

From My Brain!

I have a need to be silly and I take it out on the internet.