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Description
I'm probably quite late to this party, but I recently discovered that a lot of Deviant Art people have completed "influence maps" of this sort, documenting the various artists (and other things) that have influenced their particular art style.

The original template was created by someone called Fox-Orian, which you can check out here: [link] But give the term a search, there are tons of awesome completed ones floating around.

Anyway, this is mine. Here are some brief annotations, which are also apparently customary to provide when participating in this meme:

(Sort-of clockwise from left)

1) I was quite obsessed with Mario games as a child, and equally obsessed with learning how to draw Mario characters completely "on model," so they'd look just like the pictures in the instruction books. To this day, I still really admire the smooth, clean, and colorful design of the Mario universe, and the way there is somehow a stable design logic that unifies all of it.

2) Don Amussen is not very well-known, but he's an American newspaper cartoonist who influenced me enormously in highschool. He did a Flash animated series at the time called "Like, News" that really got me into caricatures, and indeed, political commentary in general. What particularly stuck with me was how absurd and grotesque his depictions of famous people were. I found his lack of pretense very liberating.

3) Sprites, especially from very old video games, have a sort of compact "tightness" to them I really like. It's the whole principle of having to do more with less, which I guess is a pretty consistant theme of the sort of art I like.

4) "The Simpsons" is simply my favorite television show of all time, and my favorite franchise of anything, period. I think almost every aspect of my life is influenced by them in some way.

5) "Retro PC games" is sort of a broad category, but I'm particularly referencing games from the whole Amiga-Commodore-Amstrad-whatever era. Number Munchers, Math Blaster, the Sierra adventure games.... I loved the clean design and simple logic of these little self-contained worlds. There was a time when I was really passionate about being a game-maker myself someday...

6) Bob Staake is a fairly prolific illustrator who generates a lot of New Yorker covers and TIME magazine illustrations. I take a lot of inspiration from his very geometry-centric characters.

7) Gerald Scarfe is my favorite political cartoonist of all time, and favorite caricaturist, too. His drawings are so marvelously exaggerated and extreme, and never without a cutting message, either.

8) Miguel Covarrubias is a long-dead Mexican cartoonist who was famous in the 1920s and 30s. Everything he does has this wonderful geometric cleanness to it, with beautiful angles, shapes and colors.

9) It's kind of nerdy to admit, but I really can't get away from Mega Man. Next to Mario, it was my favorite video game franchise as a child, and to this day, I can still see a lot of influences of it in my art. The way I draw feet, for instance.

10) Al Hirschfeld was America's most iconic caricaturist for nearly eight decades. Obviously I, like so many others, was thoroughly enamored by his elegant use of line and wonderful expressions, but I was also a big fan of his full-color work, which tends to be less well-known.

11) Signs, especially street signs and warning signs and little labels on boxes and stickers, have always fascinated me. They so deftly condense a complex message to its bare essence. And isn't that what all art is about, in a way?

12) Charts, as in, the visual display of information. Anything with a lot of pictures and data on a single page warms my heart, for some reason.

12) Corporate mascots were probably my favorite thing to draw for many, many years. When I look through my mom's collection of my kindergarden artwork, it's mostly just crayon pictures of the Hamburger and the guy from "Title Town." I guess the propaganda worked on me.

13) I still am a pretty big toy collector to this day. My favorites are plastic or vinyl figurines, especially ones with chunky or simplistic designs. I'm a big Gumby fan, but also partial to things like Happy Meal toys, or Playmobil.

14) Flags are great. Wonderful interplay of bright colors and simple shapes. My room is full of flags.

15) Like most pretentious artist-types, I like "classic" Disney so much more than the "new" Disney (scoff). Classic Mickey, Goofy, Donald, Pete... you can't beat characters like that.

16 and 17) Maybe a cop-out, but I figured I should just come out and say it. I like solid colors and I like perfect shapes. In case that was not clear by now.

Thanks for reading all my pompous dribble. If you like anything I've produced over the years, be sure to check out some of these other guys. They're much better, I can assure you.

Description
I'm probably quite late to this party, but I recently discovered that a lot of Deviant Art people have completed "influence maps" of this sort, documenting the various artists (and other things) that have influenced their particular art style.

The original template was created by someone called Fox-Orian, which you can check out here: [link] But give the term a search, there are tons of awesome completed ones floating around.

Anyway, this is mine. Here are some brief annotations, which are also apparently customary to provide when participating in this meme:

(Sort-of clockwise from left)

1) I was quite obsessed with Mario games as a child, and equally obsessed with learning how to draw Mario characters completely "on model," so they'd look just like the pictures in the instruction books. To this day, I still really admire the smooth, clean, and colorful design of the Mario universe, and the way there is somehow a stable design logic that unifies all of it.

2) Don Amussen is not very well-known, but he's an American newspaper cartoonist who influenced me enormously in highschool. He did a Flash animated series at the time called "Like, News" that really got me into caricatures, and indeed, political commentary in general. What particularly stuck with me was how absurd and grotesque his depictions of famous people were. I found his lack of pretense very liberating.

3) Sprites, especially from very old video games, have a sort of compact "tightness" to them I really like. It's the whole principle of having to do more with less, which I guess is a pretty consistant theme of the sort of art I like.

4) "The Simpsons" is simply my favorite television show of all time, and my favorite franchise of anything, period. I think almost every aspect of my life is influenced by them in some way.

5) "Retro PC games" is sort of a broad category, but I'm particularly referencing games from the whole Amiga-Commodore-Amstrad-whatever era. Number Munchers, Math Blaster, the Sierra adventure games.... I loved the clean design and simple logic of these little self-contained worlds. There was a time when I was really passionate about being a game-maker myself someday...

6) Bob Staake is a fairly prolific illustrator who generates a lot of New Yorker covers and TIME magazine illustrations. I take a lot of inspiration from his very geometry-centric characters.

7) Gerald Scarfe is my favorite political cartoonist of all time, and favorite caricaturist, too. His drawings are so marvelously exaggerated and extreme, and never without a cutting message, either.

8) Miguel Covarrubias is a long-dead Mexican cartoonist who was famous in the 1920s and 30s. Everything he does has this wonderful geometric cleanness to it, with beautiful angles, shapes and colors.

9) It's kind of nerdy to admit, but I really can't get away from Mega Man. Next to Mario, it was my favorite video game franchise as a child, and to this day, I can still see a lot of influences of it in my art. The way I draw feet, for instance.

10) Al Hirschfeld was America's most iconic caricaturist for nearly eight decades. Obviously I, like so many others, was thoroughly enamored by his elegant use of line and wonderful expressions, but I was also a big fan of his full-color work, which tends to be less well-known.

11) Signs, especially street signs and warning signs and little labels on boxes and stickers, have always fascinated me. They so deftly condense a complex message to its bare essence. And isn't that what all art is about, in a way?

12) Charts, as in, the visual display of information. Anything with a lot of pictures and data on a single page warms my heart, for some reason.

12) Corporate mascots were probably my favorite thing to draw for many, many years. When I look through my mom's collection of my kindergarden artwork, it's mostly just crayon pictures of the Hamburger and the guy from "Title Town." I guess the propaganda worked on me.

13) I still am a pretty big toy collector to this day. My favorites are plastic or vinyl figurines, especially ones with chunky or simplistic designs. I'm a big Gumby fan, but also partial to things like Happy Meal toys, or Playmobil.

14) Flags are great. Wonderful interplay of bright colors and simple shapes. My room is full of flags.

15) Like most pretentious artist-types, I like "classic" Disney so much more than the "new" Disney (scoff). Classic Mickey, Goofy, Donald, Pete... you can't beat characters like that.

16 and 17) Maybe a cop-out, but I figured I should just come out and say it. I like solid colors and I like perfect shapes. In case that was not clear by now.

Thanks for reading all my pompous dribble. If you like anything I've produced over the years, be sure to check out some of these other guys. They're much better, I can assure you.