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Description
EXPLANATIONS:

1. Preacher, and its creative team.
The day I picked up Preacher is the day I decided to spend the rest of my life drawing comics.
It's blasphemous, filthy, violent, full of deviant and disturbed amputee villains and good'ol texan heroes, and Proinsas Cassidy, who would probably nail the Cullen family to a roof and set them on fire. But the story's gripping, the artwork is astonishing (and oh boy, so much of my style's fed from it) and Glenn Fabry's cover art makes my ovaries tingle. Garth Ennis's writing, Steve Dillon's art and Fabry's cover work shaped my early forays into comicking.

2. Tank Girl.
One of my first comicking loves, and contributed heavily to my love of buff, unabashedly filthy heroines. Kit's got a bit of Tankie in her somewhere.

3. Nicola Scott.
The first female pro comic artist I met face to face - I still nurse a bit of a girl crush. She decided she wanted to draw Wonder Woman all day and spent the next few years of her life making it so. Her style's sexy, proportionate and full of character. And she's Aussie. <3

4. Batman: the Animated Series and its creative team.
Blame my housemate for this one, but Paul Dini's attention to detail and surprisingly dark plots remind me how I want to write; and Bruce Timm's character design catapaults them into life. Half the comics I've ever drawn have been in front of Batsy marathons.

5. Kelly Turnbull aka Coelasquid.
I was lucky enough to meet Kelly in the flesh. Her devotion to her work, her BAMF attitude and her fiendish attention to anatomical detail really inspire me. She's a great friend, and was the kickoff that got me hooked on drawing muscular characters. I still don't get it right.

6. Transmetropolitan and its creative team.
Good Morning, Sinners.
Warren Ellis, the bad granddad of the internet, is responsible for this, and Darick Robertson brings it to manic, detailed life. Transmet's my second great comicking love, and the colouring and inking techniques used by Nathan Eyring and Rodney Ramos helped shape what I want my comic work to be.

7. Keith Thompson.
The only man I know of who makes dodge and burn work. I'd hate him for that if he wasn't so damn talented. His love of steampunky nasties really chimes with me.

8. Frank Miller.
Noir, deliciously textured inks, dramatic shots and the concept of light and shade as character - he wasn't the first to do it, but he was one of the first to popularise it, and he certainly gave me my love of inkwork. It says something that every single one of my original works fails the Miller test - more than half the female characters are hookers or strippers.
Oh well. I'm a bad feminist.

9. Del Borovic.
Del's just talented. Again, lucky enough to meet her IRL, and she's as cute as she is helpful. She taught me the basics of layer cut colouring and showed me how to anti-alias my work. Most of my colouring is based on the foundation of techniques that Del taught me.

10. English Breakfast Tea.
I get through litres of this stuff per working day. If that's not an influence, I don't know what is.

11. Tony Moore.
A later discovery but by no means an insignificant one. This guy's got serious ability - his character work combines skillful penciling with bold, evocative expression work, just perfect for black humour. Like most of my favourite artists, he works a lot with Vertigo. His expression work's helped mould my ideas for what I'd like to do with Thief's Honour.

12. Discworld, Terry Pratchett and Paul Kidby.
Yup. I love this stuff. He just made a world that WORKS, that makes your sides ache and your eyes mist up. That, and it feeds my anglophilic fixation with victorian crime and fantasy. Kidby's illustrations lend life, vibrance and energy to the cast; his combination of oldschool techniques, detailed research and madcap energy make his works memorable and enviable.
And for those who need to ask? I'm a Vimes nut.

13. Charles Dickens, Ron Moody and OLIVER.
I get a bit of flak from reffing from Discworld but the truth is, we borrow from the same source material - Dickensian london. I got into Dickens at the age of 11 and never looked back. The combination of crime drama, human interest, historical grot, ambiguous morality and big top hats really hits all the buttons. Thief's Honour is really just a sort of rehashing of the classical Oliver Twist tale; you can pick character likenesses for my entire cast from the musical movie (Kit's made up of bits of about four).

Description
EXPLANATIONS:

1. Preacher, and its creative team.
The day I picked up Preacher is the day I decided to spend the rest of my life drawing comics.
It's blasphemous, filthy, violent, full of deviant and disturbed amputee villains and good'ol texan heroes, and Proinsas Cassidy, who would probably nail the Cullen family to a roof and set them on fire. But the story's gripping, the artwork is astonishing (and oh boy, so much of my style's fed from it) and Glenn Fabry's cover art makes my ovaries tingle. Garth Ennis's writing, Steve Dillon's art and Fabry's cover work shaped my early forays into comicking.

2. Tank Girl.
One of my first comicking loves, and contributed heavily to my love of buff, unabashedly filthy heroines. Kit's got a bit of Tankie in her somewhere.

3. Nicola Scott.
The first female pro comic artist I met face to face - I still nurse a bit of a girl crush. She decided she wanted to draw Wonder Woman all day and spent the next few years of her life making it so. Her style's sexy, proportionate and full of character. And she's Aussie. <3

4. Batman: the Animated Series and its creative team.
Blame my housemate for this one, but Paul Dini's attention to detail and surprisingly dark plots remind me how I want to write; and Bruce Timm's character design catapaults them into life. Half the comics I've ever drawn have been in front of Batsy marathons.

5. Kelly Turnbull aka Coelasquid.
I was lucky enough to meet Kelly in the flesh. Her devotion to her work, her BAMF attitude and her fiendish attention to anatomical detail really inspire me. She's a great friend, and was the kickoff that got me hooked on drawing muscular characters. I still don't get it right.

6. Transmetropolitan and its creative team.
Good Morning, Sinners.
Warren Ellis, the bad granddad of the internet, is responsible for this, and Darick Robertson brings it to manic, detailed life. Transmet's my second great comicking love, and the colouring and inking techniques used by Nathan Eyring and Rodney Ramos helped shape what I want my comic work to be.

7. Keith Thompson.
The only man I know of who makes dodge and burn work. I'd hate him for that if he wasn't so damn talented. His love of steampunky nasties really chimes with me.

8. Frank Miller.
Noir, deliciously textured inks, dramatic shots and the concept of light and shade as character - he wasn't the first to do it, but he was one of the first to popularise it, and he certainly gave me my love of inkwork. It says something that every single one of my original works fails the Miller test - more than half the female characters are hookers or strippers.
Oh well. I'm a bad feminist.

9. Del Borovic.
Del's just talented. Again, lucky enough to meet her IRL, and she's as cute as she is helpful. She taught me the basics of layer cut colouring and showed me how to anti-alias my work. Most of my colouring is based on the foundation of techniques that Del taught me.

10. English Breakfast Tea.
I get through litres of this stuff per working day. If that's not an influence, I don't know what is.

11. Tony Moore.
A later discovery but by no means an insignificant one. This guy's got serious ability - his character work combines skillful penciling with bold, evocative expression work, just perfect for black humour. Like most of my favourite artists, he works a lot with Vertigo. His expression work's helped mould my ideas for what I'd like to do with Thief's Honour.

12. Discworld, Terry Pratchett and Paul Kidby.
Yup. I love this stuff. He just made a world that WORKS, that makes your sides ache and your eyes mist up. That, and it feeds my anglophilic fixation with victorian crime and fantasy. Kidby's illustrations lend life, vibrance and energy to the cast; his combination of oldschool techniques, detailed research and madcap energy make his works memorable and enviable.
And for those who need to ask? I'm a Vimes nut.

13. Charles Dickens, Ron Moody and OLIVER.
I get a bit of flak from reffing from Discworld but the truth is, we borrow from the same source material - Dickensian london. I got into Dickens at the age of 11 and never looked back. The combination of crime drama, human interest, historical grot, ambiguous morality and big top hats really hits all the buttons. Thief's Honour is really just a sort of rehashing of the classical Oliver Twist tale; you can pick character likenesses for my entire cast from the musical movie (Kit's made up of bits of about four).