This thread is about what inspired you to do what you do know. If you don't have an occupation, what inspired you to choose what you want to do later in your life?
For me, Phoenix Wright inspired me to want to be a Lawyer. I'm doing some research now. 
I never had any real inspiration to draw, I just liked to believe I was the best artist in class growing up. Anybody that threatened that position in my mind became something of a rival for my part, and I guess that kept me interested until I discovered the internet and yerf.com in the 10th grade (compared to which, my art was shit). I have had some inspirations on what kind of art I want to do..
Comics: Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes, and also SINFEST
manga style comics: pokemans manga
webcomics: Tracy Butler's Lackadaisy
and of course, animation: the behind the scenes features on the Incredibles and the Corpse Bride, and by simply watching well animated films (Iron Giant, 8 Crazy Nights, Cats Don't Dance, 90s Disney) and shows (venture brothers, invader zim, hey arnold)
 
Uh, my inspiration to draw fucking boss shit is because my ideas are fucking boss shit.
Seriously, my hobo? You wish you could dream of making up junk like that.
Err, I guess when I was 7 I wanted to draw the people from Harry Potter, so I made Dad go get me my first sketchbook. >w< I'm not sure if anything really inspired me other than that. Then it just kind of worked itself into being my obsession and passion. So, now I want to be an animator when I get myself up there. Of course, I guess cartoons are what have inspired me all the way to now. Disney movies, Zelda games, etc, are all a big part of it.
There are a few people I know that are quite exceptional at drawing too, though, so I have to work real hard to make sure I never slack off and end up behind them. Frances already beats me hard at greyscale coloring and realism. XD
Frank Zappa-I really liked his music and started working on my own things now too bad I'm a lazy fuck to actually get things done
@Cyringohn:
Uh, my inspiration to draw fucking boss shit is because my ideas are fucking boss shit.
Seriously, my hobo? You wish you could dream of making up junk like that.
hows that inking shit coming along
 
hows that inking shit coming along
its on hold until its not on hold anymore
I've just recently stopped feeling shitty from my wisdom teeth; they were a lot more sore than originally expected. What sucks is that I've been playing WoW to pass the time, so now I've been sucked back into playing and am trying to wean off that shit again. What a fucking time sink.
Am going to try to dedicate tomorrow as GET YOUR STUPID HONKEY ASS IN PHOTOSHOP YOU FUCKING WHITEY day.
Basically, in… 8th or 9th grade I read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, and I absolutely loved his writing style. I thought something like "I could probably write like this, do something like this," and so on.
So I started on the fun path of writing and literature.
cyringohn-sensei inspired me to be a mangaka.
Saturday morning cartoons inspired me to be an artist…
I see someone besides me likes Lackadaisy. Whoo~
Uh, I just want to be a dinky little high school teacher. I'll probably end up teaching History as my main subject, but I might end up doing a Folklore class of some sort. You know, four periods of history, one period off and then one Folklore class. But that all depends on how many periods are in a class day at whatever school employs my crazy ass.
I had a rough time throughout school. In elementary school I was "Little Miss Know It All" and totally got flack for it. Hell, I woulda kicked the crap out of me back then XD. My dad finally got tired of me being a wuss and decided to start sharing more of his interests with me besides reading. Like boxing. 
So there's one inspiration. My dad teaching me about history and letting me stay up late so I could learn how to throw a punch right and memorize the order of Henry VII's wives. Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived.
Middle school was meh. The school and teachers mostly sucked, but I met my kickass friends there. Finally appreciated how to properly kick someone's ass, as all of those friends were boys :p. I helped a lot of them with History and English homework, and in return, they helped me with my Math.
So when High School rolled around, I was a lot more mature and having a grand time with some of my teachers. They were really, really awesome. Even in subjects I didn't particularly care for. I got a A in 8th grade science, so I qualified to take Biology freshman year. I did it just to get that and Chemistry over with so I could fufill those requirements for college. My teacher ended up making me love science all over again.
So much so that I took his AP Environmental Science class after I took Chemistry in 10th grade. Then my senior year I was his lab slaveTeacher's Aide. So I got to know our totally awesome Science Department head. He's the resident mad scientist. I've had a few other teachers that stick out in my head as well.
My Honors English 9/Folklore/Creative Writing (Yes I took her 3 times~) teacher was the SHIT man. She didn't care what people thought of her, and taught the way she wanted to. It worked. If you broke one of her rules she'd make you do any number of things, including (but not limited to) singing an improvised song about why you did wrong, doing a table dance, or standing in front of the class and teach something while she decides to give you a taste of your own medicine and act like an ass. And God help you if no one answers a question. She'd lie on the floor, blanket and all, until someone said something. Unfortunately, she wouldn't let me bail the class out :p. But if no one answered for the period, she let a couple of people who she KNEW understood what she was teaching leave. No one else could, and they wouldn't get tardy passes to their next class either.
She also licked a knife once in class when a kid giving a lecture on Shakespeare kept using "like" as EVERY OTHER WORD. That and "Uh, um."
There's more teachers I'll get to later if people are interested. Like the English teacher my dad almost ran over with the car. She and my Folklore teacher would squabble with each other over my choice in readings.
whoever made the pokerap
all time inspiration
It's funny, there's a lot of artists and writers on this forum, but most (if any) won't even get their work shown/published for the public. Especially those who write their own "manga".
As for me, I was watching Law and Order SVU once and I really liked the idea of working as a psychiatrist for the police and interviewing criminals.
I grew deeply interested in what's going on in the world and I innately like to argue. I like compiling data into speeches and I enjoy writing papers.
Then one day, I actually thought about what I want out of life. I decided I wanted to have a life of meaning; I wanted to do something to impact the world, however small it may be.
So I decided to strive to become a lawyer that would write on the side. I suppose the idea comes from one of my favorite authors; John Grisham.
My English 11/Philosophy 12 teacher was basically my inspiration for me wanting to become a teacher, because he was absolutely amazing. He was one of those teachers that just did whatever the hell he wanted, and he was just someone you wanted to learn from. And it was in either Grade 11 or 12 that I became very interested in 20th century world history, and pushed me to want to study it more intensively. Put the two together, and now I want to become a history teacher.
For the longest time I thought I wanted to be a computer programmer. My dad does it, and I'm good at it; plus it makes a lot of money and I enjoy solving problems with code, so I figured, "Why not?" As I learned more and more about it, though, I realized that the deeper I get into learning code the more boring I find it. Plus, I have no idea how computers work and don't particularly care, dislike math, and whenever any of my friends that like computers start getting all excited about something I find myself becoming very bored very fast.
I read One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest last year. It's by no means the best book I've ever read, but while I was reading it something just clicked and suddenly I understood the hidden side to English. All the literary devices, the symbols, the metaphors, the words and images, all seemed to make perfect sense now. I always liked to write stories in my spare time, and understanding all of this was the greatest feeling in the world; it felt like I had a whole new arsenal to work with. I read other books, too, like The Great Gatsby and Brave New World and Grendel and Slaughterhouse Five and others, and after reading them I knew more than anything that I really just wanted to write stories like those or talk about stories like those for the rest of my life. As a result, I want to be an English teacher of some kind, and write a lot in my free time.
There has been couple peoples in my life whom has been sort of role models for what I would like to become. And I would be glad if I could become even half as good person as they are. I think I want to be like them because of jealousy though. Dunno. Anyhow, those people has been my inspiration.
But my current "occupation" and "inspired" don't really go hand by hand. Even though what I do does include making another person's life better, I really do it just for the paycheck. So money is also my another source of inspiration.
I can't write. I'm actually a pretty aweful writer, no kidding, and ain't that much an artist either. Sure, I would love to do the both, especially art, but my drawings are avarage at the best. Still, both fields has people I regard very highly and their works once in a while motivates me to push my own limited artistic capacity. And it's always a nice feeling to hear people praising your own works, even though if they don't really mean it, so my last bits of inspiration comes from getting ego boosts.
To sum it up, what has inspired me are jealousy, money and (false) praises. 
My inspiration to write probably began when I started reading H.P. Lovecraft, then I was introduced to stuff made by Anthony Burgess and Douglas Adams and I thought how amazing would be writing in my own style like these guys.
Now my inspiration for mangas (or comics generally) started when I read One Piece by the first time.
I'd say Jimi hendrix inspired me to play the guitar. Too bad I don't have the fire in my belly to really do it.
@Natty:
It's funny, there's a lot of artists and writers on this forum, but most (if any) won't even get their work shown/published for the public. Especially those who write their own "manga".
Yeah, probably not. However, most of the people on here probably don't have any desire to actually go through with their ideas – it's just for fun.
But that doesn't make you any less of a pricky, shit-faced bitch for feeling it necessary to point that out to everybody.
Hmmm. I'm actually not too sure how my inspiration for writing came to life. I've read books ever since I learned the alphabet and I love it when I lend a bunch of books from the library and add them to the ones I have home, which I haven't read either. A good book sucks you in to its world, it feeds your imagination and rouses emotions. What could be better than make someone feel like that by reading something you wrote? So yeah, I guess basically my inspiration for becoming an author is in giving enjoyment to other people who love to read.
Now, being an author might not be wise to totally rely on as a profession and thus I'm going to strive to become an art teacher as well. I especially have a knack for the history of art and it would be too awesome to teach it to those who are interested and want to learn. My inspiration for this comes from all of the cool art teachers I've had and it would be a dream come true if I could return to my current school as a teacher one day.
Art in itself and practising it is the most fascinating thing there is, so that's another source of inspiration.
@Natty:
It's funny, there's a lot of artists and writers on this forum, but most (if any) won't even get their work shown/published for the public.
Good thing I don't write about Luffy and Harry Potter.
I could make up a long explanation about how I wanted to be a mechanic, but I'd be lying.
No one would read it either
I want to buy an island and welcome as many persons as I can while I offer a nice collection of reindeers for them to do what they want with them.
I dunno what inspired me, tough.
I read the Kite Runner a little while back, and boy was that book awesome. His writing style, the emotion, and all that other stuff, made me want to try writing!
Even though I wrote short-stories about penguins taking over the world, I wanted them to go deeper and have more of a plot. I submitted one to a contest last year, and I won! Best Fiction Story!
Yes…
I didn't really enjoy Kite Runner. Oh well, different strokes.
What inspired me to start writing? Naked Lunch. I was pretty young and it blew me away in terms of it's use of language. I wanted to emulate that, so here I is now.
@Cyringohn:
Yeah, probably not. However, most of the people on here probably don't have any desire to actually go through with their ideas – it's just for fun.
But that doesn't make you any less of a pricky, shit-faced bitch for feeling it necessary to point that out to everybody.
And here I thought nothing anyone said would ever insult you or make you react in that way. I accomplished something today.
@Cap'n:
Good thing I don't write about Luffy and Harry Potter.
I'm sure you would write something I would read even if it was about Luffy and Harry Potter.
@Natty:
And here I thought nothing anyone said would ever insult you or make you react in that way. I accomplished something today.
I'm not insulted. You just said something a stupid bitch would say.
@Cyringohn:
I'm not insulted. You just said something a stupid bitch would say.
That's why you called me a bitch twice right? Because you aren't insulted at all. You weren't the least bit offended by my post. Nope, no ill feelings at all, right?
I find this whole situation extremely ironic and humorous.
@Natty:
That's why you called me a bitch twice right? Because you aren't insulted at all. You weren't the least bit offended by my post. Nope, no ill feelings at all, right?
So what, this one time out of the billion times I've used profanity demonstrates some sort of grudge against you? DO YOU NEED A FRIEND, NATTY BUMPPO?
@Natty:
I find this whole situation extremely ironic and humorous.
You used "irony" incorrectly. ]:
Natty Bumppo inspired me to be a dumb scanger
@Cyringohn:
So what, this one time out of the billion times I've used profanity demonstrates some sort of grudge against you? DO YOU NEED A FRIEND, NATTY BUMPPO?
You used "irony" incorrectly. ]:
No, but you disliked what I said which made you call me a bitch. I don't really mind, because it's mostly empty insults mixed with rage that I reminded you that there was a possibility you might not get your work published. So in turn you take it out on me.
Then following this stupid, childish occasion, I'm going to be put among the ranks of Lobster and co. because I said what I felt to be something humorous. It's funny, because I didn't really think anything of my post at the time.
@Really:
Natty Bumppo inspired me to be a dumb scanger
And so it begins.
@Natty:
No, but you disliked what I said which made you call me a bitch. I don't really mind, because it's mostly empty insults mixed with rage that I reminded you that there was a possibility you might not get your work published. So in turn you take it out on me.
Hahahaha, I wasn't even thinking of myself. I was mostly thinking of some of the other dudes here that I've had conversations with regarding their casual manga/fiction that they do for a hobby. And then, here comes Natty Bumppo with OH JEEZE WHY DOES ANYBODY EVEN BOTHER NONE OF YOU ARE EVER GOING TO BE SUCCESSFUL WITH THIS, as if anybody was even talking about that.
bitch fuck bitch fuck bastard fuck shit shitcock god i love penis
But yeah, my shit is too original to not be successful. The last thing I'ma do is somehow take your opinion into question.
@Natty:
Then following this stupid, childish occasion, I'm going to be put among the ranks of Lobster and co.
We can put you there, if you like. S'all up to you.
At the rate of these hilarious assumptions, you'll be there soon enough.
@Cyringohn:
Hahahaha, I wasn't even thinking of myself. I was mostly thinking of some of the other dudes here that I've had conversations with regarding their casual manga/fiction that they do for a hobby. And then, here comes Natty Bumppo with OH JEEZE WHY DOES ANYBODY EVEN BOTHER NONE OF YOU ARE EVER GOING TO BE SUCCESSFUL WITH THIS, as if anybody was even talking about that.
bitch fuck bitch fuck bastard fuck shit shitcock god i love penis
But yeah, my shit is too original to not be successful. The last thing I'ma do is somehow take your opinion into question.
Then why did you reply to me in the first place? If my lame opinion was so stupid, why'd you even bother to reply? Especially if you were thinking of other people. It's just something I would never expect you to do. Now, I am curious.
@Natty:
Then why did you reply to me in the first place? If my lame opinion was so stupid, why'd you even bother to reply? Especially if you were thinking of other people. It's just something I would never expect you to do. Now, I am curious.
What the hell, I reply to lame opinions all the time. That's about the only thing I do on AP. Where have you been?
I'm gonna go to Japan and be a famous comic artist
rofl
Good luck Carter-sempai!!!
i wish i could be like carter
he so boldly declares his dreams
I'm gonna be king of Jupiter!
Too original? A shame that most of the stuff out there is pretty much generic.
@Kaimei-Karasuhebi:
Too original? A shame that most of the stuff out there is pretty much generic.
Like what mah boi?
I worked with two really good special ed teachers, they were the ones that made me look into becoming a special ed teacher. They both really care for the future of their kids, while still maintaining a great sense of humor.
i wanna be a great martial artist like bruce lee, plus i love the sport itself and the people you meet.
I think what has inspired me to pursue art, is partially my mom because I used to find old doodles that she did when she was about my age now. That and the fact that I watched cartoons practically all my life, and I suddenly got the urge to draw certain characters and such….
I think watching all sorts of movies and cartoons inspired me to try creating my own characters and storylines... too bad I was pretty immature at that time, so looking back at that now... its quite embarrassing.
Going to art school really helped, since I improved on polishing my anatomy and such. And its around this time that I discovered One Piece, which fueled my pirate obsession and sparked my creativity again. That, and my style was inspired by the likes of J. Scott Campell, Sarah and Tessa Stone, Oda, Toriyama, and whatever cartoon I've been into at the time.
*** PlasticStar5 Instagram***
