About me? Really?

Alrighty then. My name's Matthew Humphreys. I go by the name American Ninja X on most message boards. I grew up for just about my whole life in Southern California where I currently work as an Assistant Accountant in Motion Pictures. I'm also a freelance penciller for comics.

As far as drawing and that stuff goes, I started drawing when I was a little kid. Yeah who didn't. After I did a few years with the crayons and mastering the architectural stylings of lincoln logs, tinker toys and legos, I moved on to comic book styles. I first got interested in comics seriously when I read Uncanny X-men #275, which was the first time I saw Jim Lee's art. From there my interest just grew and grew and I would ape pages from his books until soon enough I was doing my own stuff.

Over the years I've been influenced from all sorts of directions and no I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm influenced. But mostly my styles are the generation of seeing what I like in the world and taking a couple things that work and throwing them into my style.

Some people ask me about my 'realistic' / traditional style and how I developed it. Well let me tell you. Basically I took what I've learned over the years from folks like Gene Colan, Travis Charest, John Romita Jr., Frank Quitely, Frank Miller, Adam Hughes, Terry Dodson, Frank Cho, Joe Kubert, as well as a slew of European Artists comics style and then began my life drawing out in the world. I carry my sketchbook almost everywhere I go and I people watch. I like the differences of noses and lips and motion that people provide me as an artist. Everything about the world around me I try and study and incorporate it into my style.  Some people compare my style to other big name artists and y'know what that's okay because I'm honored to be held in that kind of regard, but all I can say is that they know what works in the real world and applied it to a comic book art form and so did I. =)