What inspires you ? What are your themes ?

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I recall a couple years ago watching a documentary where they gave chimp babies kid toys. Trucks and dolls. Well it was inevitable nature. The girl chimps went for the dolls and the boy chimps went for the trucks. The primate nature is for boys to be attracted by action and girls to go for the nurturing. Arguing that gender behavior is primarily instinct and not learned behavior. Try not to buy boys toy guns ? They will solve it by making guns simply out of their fingers or out of toast. Just a thought about reasons that motivate people for the things they post in the gallery.

For me, I am into nature, country, seafaring, and childhood fascination and sense of adventure and rescilience.

Here are some things that inspire me. My favorite biography "Survive the Savage sea". A true story by Dougal Robertson whose boat was rammmed by an Oraca in the Gallapegos and his family was plunged into the sea and survived for over two months in a tiny dinghy slowly starving and weakoning until the miracle of rescue. childhood advenute books like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and "Hatchet" Other books and movies or TV Shows. Loved Steve Irwin (RIP). Jaws and Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel inspire me.

I am also inspired by criminal and war themes like "Criminal Minds" or "Band of Brothers". Sadly, most of the dipictions in my imagination would no be allowed in the gallery here.

So, share what inspires you and your themes.

 

IceDragonArt

Fantasy first and foremost. I was reading well before kindergarden and read above college level in 3rd grade.  I loved and still love fantasy, medieval fantasy, dragons, good versus evil, castles and monster, ogres and giants.  I could go on but I'm sure you get the drift.  I think for me, not only is it a an escape, its that sense of adventure and the impossible as reality.  The endless possible worlds and creatures just fascinate me.  Good always wins over evil eventually and true love always wins.  I know, I know, that's why they call it fantasy.  I also love dinosaurs and have always been fascinated by them.  And despite the fact that I am frequently proved wrong, I believe that most people are fundamentally good. Except for those who aren't.  The art of Frank Frazetta is a huge inspiration, I love the iconic fantasy art.  Last but not least post apocolyptic themes. I love to explore the idea of what survivors would do, how they survive, and what keeps them going.

Edited to add that I generally have an overwhelming desire to create, and get all these images and stories out of my head.

Serene Night

I don’t really fit into the women love dolls guys love guns thing.

My earliest interest was Star Wars and superfriends then elf quest. Now I’m purely into sci-fi and guys. I like character driven stories with actual plot. Heroic friendships have always played a part in the imagery I choose to depict. I am fond of war dramas featuring oppressive governments or aliens and ww2. 

zombietaggerung

Men. Attractive men. Doing things. Ideally with their shirts off. Pants are also optional.

Diomede

I am inspired by science fiction, fantasy, and adventure.  I enjoy attractive women in skmpy clothing.  The woman can be a damsel in distress, or can be a fully empowered alpha woman, or can be a vindictive femme fatale.  There have been billions of attractive women in skimpy clothing, and there are likely to be billions more.  All good - well, some of the women are good and some bad, but I meant it is good to depict them all in art, or write their stories.   Having a physically fit man with his shirt off in the same scene is an optional extra.  The guy can be in distress, or a fully empowered alpha, or vindictive.  Beasts, monsters, robots, and aliens?  Sure, why not?

 

I am also inspired by adaptations of classic storylines.  An examples is West Side Story as an adaptation of Romeo and Juliette.  Similarly, MacBeth could be adapted to just about any human civilization.  Is The Magnificent Seven a rip-off of Japanese culture, or is The Seven Samurai a rip-off of American Westerns?  Well, we know now that each director was influenced by the other tradition (Magnificent Seven was a direct adaptation).  I believe that there are some basic human social conflicts that need to be resolved, but that history and technology change the props surrounding us when we try to resolve them.  Therefore, the stories can be set just about anywhere or anytime.

- Ordinary person is in wrong place at the wrong time.  Gets tagged with a secret.  Spies want the secret.  If intrigue, fear, and suspense ensue, it might be a Hitchcock thriller.  If comedy ensues, it might be Danny Kaye..Could set that story in ancient Mesopotamia or on a futuristic space station.

- Two people with incompatible personalities are forced together.  Could be an upper crust prim and proper person and a lower class unrefined person (African Queen), or could be a slob and a fastidious person (The Odd Couple).   Could set that story in ancient Mesopotamia or on a futuristic space station.

- A quick google search and you will find 7 or 9 or 27 or ... basic plot templates.  The number depends on the expert.  

There used to be series on US TV in which some of the details came from real events.  They would take case files from a source and adapt a screenplay - often taking lots of liberties.  One example was a series taken from the files of Wells Fargo, another adapted local police files.  I am inspired to take real stories from history and adapt them to science fiction settings.  

 

EDIT:  I like a variety of visual styles, but generally am not inspired by attempts to mimic photo-realism with 3D renders.  The fact that I am not inspired to do that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate it when someone else does.  Not a hater.  I just personally often pursue stylized visuals, including Dan DeCarlo comics (the Archies), Rankin and Bass holiday specials (Santa Claus is Coming to Town), Japanese anime, Jim Henson muppets, etc, etc, etc.   However, I think I need to get much, much better at photorealism to master the basics in order to also be better at the styles that I like.

 

mori_mann

Stories and characters. Especially charcters. Preferably in fantasy settings.

And although it's difficult to capture in images, I think I'm mostly inspired by emotions, interaction and inner demons :)

Linwelly

I started out with mostly fantasy (lord of the Rings, the book, always was a great inspiration) and its represented in my g2 things are mostly fantasy items) by now I'm deep in scifi mode with a postapocalytic aspect. I like to represent emotion and inner development of a character, which is difficult in simgle images, so I started my grafic novel.

Making art is an inner drive to keep my sanity or what is still left oft of that ;)

BeeMKay

Science Fiction, Fantasy, alternate universes (What if...), but I also love a good made romance. I can get totally distracted on world creation, which gives me a lot of fun. In characters, I like to see how a character handles the obstacles thrown into their path. I also love re-engineering characters (for example, if you take Mr Spock from Star Trek, I'd try to learn all information about him, and based on that, try to understand why the character acts as he did, and try to predict how a character would act in other circumstances. This was very handy for fan fiction writing, but having my own characters now, it helps to develope characters that have realistic reactions and personalities (I hope).

One of my recurring themes is "a person being stuck in a situation/being confronted with something that they seem to have no escape from". For example, one of my lead characters in Demon Division is a Mage Elder who can't do (much) magic any more, and by all means shouldn't be in the position of a Mage Elder, if not for circumstances.

I often think in images/movie sequences when creating something, and those images I try to convey when I set up renders. Unfortunately, my skills are rather limited, so there's a lot of compromises between what's in my head and what's ending up on the page. Though I do have some images that came pretty close to what I had in mind.