My Mentors

~StephanieNicole1002 had a question for me:

I have a question, during the time you was illustrating and coming up as an artist before joining the Udon crew, did you ever have a mentor?

Hmm, I had a quite a number of artists that I admired. The first anime I was introduced to was Plastic Little by Ureshihara, and after that I got into mangas like Gunsmith Cats, Oh my Goddess, You're Under Arrest, and Ranma 1/2. These artists we a major influence on me.

Soon after that i wasintroduced to Capcom artist by way of a strategy guide for Darkstalkers in which there was concept art. I would say Capcom artist had the biggest impact on me. Especially Kinu Nishimura which i have the honour of meeting along with Shinkiro, Ikeno, and Shoei. Recently i had dinner with Ono san the producer of SF4 when he came here to Toronto to see us at UDON , i mention it to say that tat was also an honour. I still have to meet Edayan and Bengus.

Also i should mention Mazukazu Katsura and his book I"s is one of my favourites, i have my friend Jim to thank for introducing that to me. His facial expressions are great. I actually feel like doing some fanart of that too.

These are the people I looked up to before UDON, and learned a lot from. And even still to this day i look to them for inspiration. Nowadays i would add a few more artist i really admire and learn form namely : Arnold Tsang, JAxer, Chamba, and many other artist on dA.

The goal of course is not to become copies of them, rather to freshen you outlook and try to see things differently so you can improve.

In the end you will draw it your own way anyway.

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