WHAT HAS INSPIRED YOUR WRITING/ART/MUSIC?

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I was bored in work one day and I randomly decided to write down and categorize everything that has produced some sort of substantial inspiration for my writing. These are not just things that affect you, but a song that you could listen to for intellectual motivation, a book that you pick up and flip through and you can instantly "feel" an idea coming, a painting you can look at and all sorts of images come flooding through your mind. List things that not only affect your creations but, when you see it, it makes you want to create something yourself?

BOOKS
Miguel Street, by V.S. Naipaul
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
The Stranger, by Albert Camus
The Sound and the Fury, by William Faulkner
Rage, by Richard Bachman
The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham
Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger

MOVIES/TV SHOWS
Angels in America
Magnolia
Six Feet Under
Before Sunrise/Sunset
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A Clockwork Orange
2001: A Space Odyssey

GAMES
The Mother series
Majora's Mask
Shadowman
Yume Nikki
Space Funeral
Final Fantasy VI
Grave Spirit

Too much music to list...! But I listen to a lot of ambient stuff that produces the "wanna create something now!" effect, like Brian Eno, Vangelis, and a lot of soundtrack composers, like Hans Zimmer, John Murphy, Alexander Desplat and John Powell.
I don't write much, and I don't make any music.

but I do do some art, I'm inpired by games like:
Myst, Riven, Myst III, Myst IV,
Shadow of the Colossus,
Secret of Mana (never played it, but saw some screenshots that basically started me doing pixel art)

I might post some more later, I can't think of anything else at the moment

~Books~
HP Love craft
Arabian Nights
The works of Edgar Allen Poe
Alice in wonderland
DMT the Spirit Molecule

~Music~
nobuo uematsu
Death
Symphony X
Cynic
Vivaldi
Saint Saens
Handel
Black Light Burns
Emilie Autumn
Frank Zappa
Primus

~Games~
Final Fantasy I-IX
Resident Evil I-III

~Other~
Cigarettes
Sam Adams and Guinness
Cannabis
psilocybin Mushrooms
Salvia Divinorum

~movies~
Thank you for smoking
Funny people
Networks(Not the facebook movie)
Legend of the fall

All of these have been an idea generator at some for something, usually an idea for game or a joke
rock music is the work of the devil. so i have to say the devil


and acid
I can pinpoint two things that had major impact in everything that came afterwards.

First it's the book Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein and second it's the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I mean obviously I get inspired by every single thing I see/hear but I tend to discard it the moment I see the next thing that inspires me. I guess I'm scatterbrained that way. But much of what I do is in part inspired by Starhsip Troopers and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
I can't make art, so nothing inspires me to do that :(
But as for musical stuff (and writing) I'm mostly just inspired by things my friends say, and the arguements they have.
And a lot of the original Grimm Brothers fairy tales!
Musical influences:
Skillet, Thousand Foot Krutch, RED, P.O.D., Mega Man X, Chevelle, Mozart, Demon Hunter, Lorreena McKennitt, Mannheim Steamroller, Daft Punk, Andy Hunter...
Only some of the few...

Writing influences:
The Bible, Isaac Asimov, Archie comics, things people say, random books I pick up in stores, anime, conspiracy theories, games, life...
Again, only some of the few...

Visual-art influences:
Mostly anime, manga, Powerpuff Girls and Dexter's Laboratory, though none are executed very well. I draw 'cause I like it, not 'cause I'm good at it.

Probably the single biggest influence besides the Bible is the anime Pokemon. That one thing stirred up more creativity in me than I have ever had drawn out of me before.
treeghost
a lot better than being a wapanese kiddo
38
mothra, japanese trash culture, addams family, horror manga, studio ghibli, jade cocoon, stephen king, final fantasy, circle takes the square, avantgarde,
experimental film, movies, japanese animations, my life and many more things

my scope of mind is way too big to sum it up with some names, no shit
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
Probably Terry Pratchett, Marx Brothers, Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, Grand Theft Auto, Ian Fleming, Douglas Adams, and Family Guy.
Oh yeah, and the Muppets.
Music:
In my ska band:
Less than Jake
Reel Big Fish
Streetlight Manifesto
Mustard Plug
Green Day
my conversations and what I see on the TV and hear on the radio
In my chiptunes:
Pokemon 1st and 2nd gen
Sonic the Hedgehog
a little bit of Mario 1-2
I like to write, but I can't say I've been influenced by any books since I don't read all too often (I couldn't name a book I've read after high school that isn't the War of the Ancients trilogy (Warcraft) or A Song of Ice and Fire).

Music, on the other hand, inspires me the most; not just musically, but I've listened to various soundtracks and constructed visual scapes, stories, and characters in my mind based off of what I'm hearing. I have a tendency to visualize story sequences as cinematic scenes for this reason.

I have one significant influence responsible for the majority of my creativity: Japanese composer Yoko Kanno. Her music has taken me everywhere, and for every character, setting, or scene I've ever devised, I could pull a theme from her vast catalog to fit it. She's that person that makes me wish I could drop everything I am doing and dedicate my life to music (except for my wife and kid, but my wife is so wonderful that she would support something like that anyway).
I'm a drudge who just makes games but I get a lot of ideas by listening to music and trying to come up with ideas that fit the mood. Mostly they never get made but sometimes these get folded into other games somehow. There's too many to list and most of them are ephemeral single songs by bands I don't know about but uh

Ted Weems - Heartaches was the original inspiration for Biggles On Mars. It seemed goofy and kind of melancholy and open all at the same time. The scene of the plane flying across the bright orange martian landscape at the beginning and end was originally meant to be soundtracked by this but I could never find a non-obtrusive way to put it in.

Alix - J'Ai Mon Amerique was going to be the soundtrack to a game called Desert Toad about a rogue arab frog fighting an occultist french foreign legion on his own terms.

Carl Perkins - Only You made me want to make a sequel to Captain Skull where he gets drunk and heartbroken and speeds across dimensions in his rocketship listening to sad country music and being followed by a deadly multidimensional horde of Every Mistake He Ever Made.

Young Marble Giants - Choci Loni was gonna be another Captain Skull soundtrack. That whole game was meant to be the start of a kind of weird series playing on old Doctor Who and scifi but I wasn't that good at it!

V. Mescherin - On The Beach is weird russian exotica stuff that was the original soundtrack for Too Many Kittens.

Loz Zafiros - Bossa Cubana made me want to make a game called "Cannibal Yacht" about a yacht of rich people (portrayed by wooden cutout doll things) who begin to hunt and eat each other to survive in a classwar-bmovie thing. I never got around to it either although I still have the dolls somewhere.

also Space Funeral was mostly based on that Les Rallizes Denudes song at the start. At first it was about an actual funeral in space.

other than that i've been inspired in graphics by old stopmotion childrens shows like Clangers and J Chastain's Monster Killers comics. In terms of writing I like a lot of people but stuff like Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and Bertolt Brecht's plays and also Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces were what influenced my games etc. And people like James Joyce and Samuel Beckett and Theodor Adorno are who make me really want to write but lets not get pretentious gulp.
In terms of writing for the games themselves I'm most inspired by the bizarre and amazing dialogue from Links Awakening and the similarly amazing writing and style of the Krazy Kat comicstrip.

Krazy Kat - inspiration for Bill Watterson and catmitts.
author=Studio Zytharros
Musical influences:
Skillet, Thousand Foot Krutch, RED, P.O.D., Mega Man X, Chevelle, Mozart, Demon Hunter, Lorreena McKennitt, Mannheim Steamroller, Daft Punk, Andy Hunter...
Only some of the few...




You ever listen to any Christian progressive metal?

Darkwater: Tallest Tree
http://youtu.be/RdBqO5iwNzQ

Wingdom:Lighthouse

http://youtu.be/lvMVKA0oWoE
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