Oh man, I don''t think I could possibly make a list of books that inspire me, there''s TOO many and that wouldn''t count fanfic where a lot of my inspiration has come from... Anyway, I don''t re-read books right before I design something, not fiction books anyway - I''m much more likely to flip through a visual reference book of some sort, like a dictionary of symbols or illustrated encyclopedia of animals, or all about armor.

And movies, they''re too much information all at once for me - I like them, but I don''t design movies, I don''t think in terms of movies, so I don''t use them for inspiration. Although I suppose the exception to that would be anime, I''m often inspired by anime because as the product of a different culture it often has ideas I haven''t seen before.

What I do use for inspiration while I''m writing is music. Poe, Garbage, Live, Tori Amos, Leonard Cohen and Depeche Mode/Erasure are my favorites.

Games? Hmm. I''m currently hooked on neopets, of all silly things - if you haven''t heard of it this is a graphical mmorpg geared toward 15 yr. olds and housewives, etc. You get up to four pets and you can feed them and groom them, and you earn money by playing card games and little flash games. So I suppose this inspires me just because I''m playing it so darn much, and because I named my pets after the characters I''m trying to write a novel about. But I wouldn''t call it a seriously inspiring game. The games that have inspired me in the past are probably about the same as the ones on my favorites'' list: Vagrant Story, FF7, Obsidian, Sanitarium, Woodruff and the Schnibble, Lighthouse, Myst, Tender Loving Care, Warcraft and Starcraft, Yoshi''s Island, etc.

I find that its best to draw inspiration from topics, that your interested. If you for instance your interested in the far east. Read literture from there, watch movies and play games from there it will give you lots of ideas. Also try and find some of the more obscure games you''d be surprised how many interesting ideas are out there for you to draw inspiration from.
For instance an rather obscure rts game out several years ago which is very similar to warcraft III. In fact its almost as if warcraft 3 was a rip off of that game.

Or take the rpg Persona 2 a great psx rpg that almost no one has heard of it. It deals with the interesting idea that rumors are becoming reality. For instance normaly a clothing store don''t sell armor but you can spread a rumor and all of sudden they do.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

I always get good ideas from cross-genre stuff like Shadowrun and the book Angry Lead Skies. They have weird combinations of ideas, which get me thinking about weird ideas, which can sometimes become good ideas.

-"The enemy is in front of us...the enemy is behind us... the enemy is to the right and the left of us...they can''''t get away this time!"-
-General Douglas Macarthur

Hmm, If I was going to recommend manga/anime specifically for its good _writing_, I would recommend:
Paradise Kiss
Crest of the Stars and Banner/Battleflag of the Stars
Mars

and the American series Gloom Cookie


[edited by - sunandshadow on October 19, 2003 11:53:23 PM]

i get my inspiration from a certain herb, not everyones cuppa tea though

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle