what's a non-media Thing that you're inspired by in your work? I like hearing about people's niche interests/inspirations
My no.1 amateur interest is 100% Buddhist sculpture and artistic traditions, with a specific focus on Japanese esoteric Buddhist sculpture and Tibetan thangka murals. I have... almost all the major books in english on the subject. I don't profess to have a profound or academic understanding on the subject but i'm pretty proud of my ability to identify and categorize statues/paintings at a glance, and i'm always interested in learning about or pursuing ever more specific/rare forms or portrayals of certain deities or figures. It started with a fascination with the depiction of wrathful deities in the Japanese tradition - specifically the Godai Myo-o ("Five Wisdom Kings") a grouping of wrathful aspects lead by the well-known Fudo Myo-o, the "Immovable One". I felt like if I wanted to draw artistic inspiration from a religious source, especially one outside my own cultural background, it was incumbent on me to learn as much as I could about the subject, and what began as an attempt to put some names to faces developed into a more complete appreciation and desire to learn, although I have no real spiritual inclination towards Buddhism itself in any tradition. When we were in Japan I had the opportunity to climb Mt Takao and reach the Yakuo-in Temple at the summit, a Shugendo sect temple with some incredibly gorgeous Tengu statues, I nearly cried. It's a shame I wasn't permitted to see the Honzon (Chief/central statue at a given temple) but that's normal - still though, it was a statue of the very esoteric "Izuna Gongen", a mountain deity/dharmapala who takes the form of a fiery winged and beaked tengu with the lariat and sword of Fudo Myo-o riding on a sprinting ferret. It would have been something.