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Description
Hoo boy. Lots there. Not arranged in any particular order.

1. Charles Schulz. First artist whose style I copied. Great style, solid humor.
2. Adelchi Galloni. Images loaded with chaotic detail creatures, and activity. Lovely colors. I ape his watercolor clouds.
3. Gary Larson. Love how he takes an idea, twists it just a little, and then runs with it.
4. Tony DiTerlizzi. Sketchy, attentuated figures with overlaid inks and color.
5. Hilary Knight. Breezy easygoing line art, soft colors. You're never certain where the main characters are, so while you hunt for them, you find out what everyone else in the picture is doing.
6. Brian Froud. When I first saw his goblins, I thought he had stolen mine. Now I try to make things like him.
7. Walt Kelly. HUGE influence on my comic strips. Incredible inking, incredible typography, and superb humor/comic pacing.
8. Heironymous Bosch. A neverending inspiration for weird fantastical animal/people. I identify with how he packs details in.
9. Edward Gorey. A monotone world full of odd creatures and improbable things happening to people with unlikely dispositions, tied together only with his sensible, macabre writing. Only later did I come to appreciate how well he handles composition and negative space.
10. Hiyako Miyazaki. Specifically his manga. Wonderful creatures and machines, presents a motley collection of all walks of humanity, and subtle line art.
11. Nick Park. The world of Wallace and Gromit fits my ideal world of a good natured world filled with Rube Goldberg devices, odd people and decent villains meeting humorous ends.
12. The Chuck Jones era of Bugs Bunny. The combined efforts of Chuck Jones (direction and character design), Maurice Noble (art design) and Phillip deGuard (backgrounds) who made this the golden age of BB for me. I sometimes take cues from how they drew the characters, stylized buildings and landscape, and did color.
13. Stan Sakai. A recent discovery. Sakai's given me lots of ideas about good composition, perspective, and keeping the art simple.
14. Rube Goldberg. I used to be utterly fascinated with these impossible, amazing machines. Helped seed the idea of things happening all over a picture, affecting the overall action.
15. Adrienne Adams. "The Easter Egg Artists" gave the desire to decorate everything.
16. Asterix (René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo). I love French cartoons, but Asterix had it all. Action, adventure, rampant silliness, and magic. Lots of individual personalities in the characters.
17. MC Escher. Morphing between illustration and reality, blurring different dimensions, making the audience scratch their heads.
18. Fontaine Fox. I read "Toonerville Trolley" endlessly as a kid.
19. Ando Hiroshige. The 63 Stations of the Tokkaido Road is full of interesting landscapes and all manner of people.
20. Doris Burns. I so wanted to build my own strange houseboat and treehouse.
21. Katsushika Hokusai. Love The Great Wave, but his sketches of various groups of people are fantastic. So much personality and individuality conveyed through quick sketches.
22. Bill Watterson. Fantastic humor, but incredible inking and drop-dead beautiful watercolors. Keeps reminding me that not all detail has to be shown in ink; color can do heavy lifting as well.
23. Star Wars technical drawings. Star Wars rocked my pre-teen world, and I pored over the technical drawings for details about how the ships were put together. Inspired years of grand space battles with hundreds of intricately drawn spacecraft.
24. Gary Trudeau. Cribbed how to draw facial features and clothing for my cartoon people.
25. old Disney animation. Still some of the most beautiful illustrations. If I could own a cell from one of these films...
26. Shawn Gaston. Showed me how to do quick, dynamic coloring/shading in Photoshop.
27. Ian Miller. His illustrations in the Middle Earth Encyclopedia of the Balrog, drakes, and Southrons is full of wonderfully detailed patterning that gives a certain feel.
28. Jeff Smith. Bone is a fantastic series and there's very little not to admire.
29. Sergio Aragones. The marginal cartoons in MAD magazine are the source for the newsletter cartoons. Plus, one day I hope to draw as quickly as he does.
30. Mike Mignola. I turn to him for graphic stylization and not to be afraid of massive areas of black shadow hiding details I prefer to dicker around with. Great compositions with minimal color.

Description
Hoo boy. Lots there. Not arranged in any particular order.

1. Charles Schulz. First artist whose style I copied. Great style, solid humor.
2. Adelchi Galloni. Images loaded with chaotic detail creatures, and activity. Lovely colors. I ape his watercolor clouds.
3. Gary Larson. Love how he takes an idea, twists it just a little, and then runs with it.
4. Tony DiTerlizzi. Sketchy, attentuated figures with overlaid inks and color.
5. Hilary Knight. Breezy easygoing line art, soft colors. You're never certain where the main characters are, so while you hunt for them, you find out what everyone else in the picture is doing.
6. Brian Froud. When I first saw his goblins, I thought he had stolen mine. Now I try to make things like him.
7. Walt Kelly. HUGE influence on my comic strips. Incredible inking, incredible typography, and superb humor/comic pacing.
8. Heironymous Bosch. A neverending inspiration for weird fantastical animal/people. I identify with how he packs details in.
9. Edward Gorey. A monotone world full of odd creatures and improbable things happening to people with unlikely dispositions, tied together only with his sensible, macabre writing. Only later did I come to appreciate how well he handles composition and negative space.
10. Hiyako Miyazaki. Specifically his manga. Wonderful creatures and machines, presents a motley collection of all walks of humanity, and subtle line art.
11. Nick Park. The world of Wallace and Gromit fits my ideal world of a good natured world filled with Rube Goldberg devices, odd people and decent villains meeting humorous ends.
12. The Chuck Jones era of Bugs Bunny. The combined efforts of Chuck Jones (direction and character design), Maurice Noble (art design) and Phillip deGuard (backgrounds) who made this the golden age of BB for me. I sometimes take cues from how they drew the characters, stylized buildings and landscape, and did color.
13. Stan Sakai. A recent discovery. Sakai's given me lots of ideas about good composition, perspective, and keeping the art simple.
14. Rube Goldberg. I used to be utterly fascinated with these impossible, amazing machines. Helped seed the idea of things happening all over a picture, affecting the overall action.
15. Adrienne Adams. "The Easter Egg Artists" gave the desire to decorate everything.
16. Asterix (René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo). I love French cartoons, but Asterix had it all. Action, adventure, rampant silliness, and magic. Lots of individual personalities in the characters.
17. MC Escher. Morphing between illustration and reality, blurring different dimensions, making the audience scratch their heads.
18. Fontaine Fox. I read "Toonerville Trolley" endlessly as a kid.
19. Ando Hiroshige. The 63 Stations of the Tokkaido Road is full of interesting landscapes and all manner of people.
20. Doris Burns. I so wanted to build my own strange houseboat and treehouse.
21. Katsushika Hokusai. Love The Great Wave, but his sketches of various groups of people are fantastic. So much personality and individuality conveyed through quick sketches.
22. Bill Watterson. Fantastic humor, but incredible inking and drop-dead beautiful watercolors. Keeps reminding me that not all detail has to be shown in ink; color can do heavy lifting as well.
23. Star Wars technical drawings. Star Wars rocked my pre-teen world, and I pored over the technical drawings for details about how the ships were put together. Inspired years of grand space battles with hundreds of intricately drawn spacecraft.
24. Gary Trudeau. Cribbed how to draw facial features and clothing for my cartoon people.
25. old Disney animation. Still some of the most beautiful illustrations. If I could own a cell from one of these films...
26. Shawn Gaston. Showed me how to do quick, dynamic coloring/shading in Photoshop.
27. Ian Miller. His illustrations in the Middle Earth Encyclopedia of the Balrog, drakes, and Southrons is full of wonderfully detailed patterning that gives a certain feel.
28. Jeff Smith. Bone is a fantastic series and there's very little not to admire.
29. Sergio Aragones. The marginal cartoons in MAD magazine are the source for the newsletter cartoons. Plus, one day I hope to draw as quickly as he does.
30. Mike Mignola. I turn to him for graphic stylization and not to be afraid of massive areas of black shadow hiding details I prefer to dicker around with. Great compositions with minimal color.