Where do KingsIsle Employees Get Their Inspiration?

We often feature highly creative people here on the KingsIsle Blog, and often get asked “where do you get your inspiration?”  To get to the bottom of this open question, we asked some creative KingsIsle employees where they personally found inspiration for their projects at work.  Here’s what they had to say!

I am pretty active in sports and living adventurously in the world. Ever since I was a kid playing baseball, I would see physics in motion in visual ways. The arc a baseball would travel, etc. That grew as I got older to snowboarding, wakeboarding, motorcross and many others. The way you fall when one crashes, dirt, water, fire and ice/snow. I suppose I have a thing for elements and the way it moves. The majority of my inspirations also come from helping the helpless. I know that sounds far off from a cinematics and FX artist, but my passion for other peoples stories and lives and helping give back to communities actually inspires me back. Well…that and old Disney films.
Russell Hughes – Principal Artist Cinematics/FX

As the lead writer on Wizard101, I get my inspiration from anywhere and everywhere I can. My foundation is based on all the books (fiction, history, mythology & folktales), comics, movies, cartoons, TV shows, music, and games (tabletop and video) I consumed as a kid, teenager, and college student. I’m also inspired by my two young children (ages 5 and 2) as I play with them and try to tell them stories. I will do specific research for whatever project I’m focused on (African myths for Zafaria; Aztec & Mayan legends and dinosaur stories for Azteca; etc.), but there are a few touchstones that I seem to regularly return to: the television series Babylon5 by J. Michael Straczynski; the Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny; Dune by Frank Herbert; The Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin; Sandman by Neil Gaiman; three Star Wars movies; two Aliens movies; and one Matrix movie.
Jesse Scoble (King Artorius) – Wizard101 Creative Design Lead

I was raised on cartoons: mostly 90’s nickelodeon shows such as Ren and Stimpy and Rocko’s Modern Life. “Golden Age” animators such as Bob Clampett and Tex Avery. Game developers with offbeat senses of humor such as Doug Tennapel and Tim Schafer help inspire me.
Robert Lovelett – Lead Artist and Animator on Pirate101 Puppet Shows

The easy answer is that I draw creative inspiration from all kinds of sources, the same as most everyone else. But that’s not really the whole picture. The best thing an influence can do is point me towards other sources of inspiration. When I encounter something that provokes my interest, I seek more about it, and even look at related subjects. This way, I am continually encountering the new and the unexpected, things I never expected to learn about. For example, while reading a magazine article about the spread of curry throughout the world, I found myself trying to learn more about history, geography, culture, and agriculture of the places mentioned. I even looked up articles about key people, and the restaurants, as well as some of the recipes mentioned. Together, all of those subjects help flesh out my understanding of our own world, which ultimately is the best source of inspiration there is.
Jason Durall – Creative Design Lead