Inspire Me

I've been inspired a lot from Animex so I wanted to post a blog specifically about the people who have inspired me recently.

Firstly, who I'd mentioned in the previous post, is Tori 'Cat' Davis. Her portfolio is stunning! Her work is the level I want to achieve. She has done a lot of environment work as well as character work, which is something I lack. So I've made it a personal aim to draw more backgrounds and environments, starting with drawing from life as I often find I have no idea where to start when drawing from imagination.
What I like most about her drawings is that you can still see some of the sketched lines under the colour and her characters are so animated!

Karen Prell was a lovely person to talk to, she even let me be geeky for a second and signed my Portal 2 collector's guide!. I loved (and still do!) the Muppet films and without sounding like a 'Valve fanboy/girl', I really enjoyed Portal and Portal 2. I thought the games were fantastic because I love puzzle games and I think artificial intelligences are one of the scariest things in the world. So naturally, I both love and fear Glados. I also really like characters with complex relationships, such as Glados and Chell and, for instance, Batman and Joker. I believe complex relationships add much more interest to the characters and the story.
Anyway, her animation work on Wheatley was great. She showed us some pictures of the rig which I found really interesting and answered some questions I had about the way it worked!

Other people that I find inspiring but are non-Animex related:

Endling (The Starving Artist) on DeviantArt
I especially like his rough work where it's very sketchy and he's exploring either styles or a character. Here's a few links to examples of his work (I don't want to embed his images without permission):

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Example 4

Glen Keane
Glen Keane is an amazing animator who has worked on a range of Disney films. I know I'm working on 3D animation right now but I will always have a soft spot for 2D. His 2D animations are beautiful.

Art of Glen Keane

Living Lines Library - Glen Keane's Pencil Tests