How do you get your ideas?

[skeddles]

Post here how you get ideas.
Any brainstorming techniques?
What inspires you?
Any links to idea generators?


discuss.

(sorry if this is a duplicate topic)

[Blick]

I look at a lot of artist's stuff. Preferably artists that do a lot of drugs. My top three sources of inspiration in the past and now have definitely been Miguel (madafacka/Ndeal), David and Alex (clr). Then when I'm good and inspired, I just give up and end up coloring their lines instead.

I've forgotten how I get my ideas. Music usually brings about certain feelings in me, which often decides the palette for me. As for the actual image though, I don't know. I don't make much stuff from scratch anymore.

[Akzidenz]

The best advice about beating artist's block that I ever got came from Ed Fella (www.edfella.com). He told me to go find 100 images, from at least a few different places.

It doesn't matter what you're looking at images of - whether they're news images, architectural diagrams, cartoons, film stills, posters - if you look through 100 images, you always have ideas by the time that you're done.

[pkmays]

Massive amounts of drugs.

[skeddles]

heres a cool invention maker: http://thesurrealist.co.uk/priorart.cgi
i had another awesome one like it, but i cant find it now

[AlexHW]

If you're doing drugs to get ideas,chances are you are only hurting yourself. So i wouldn't recommend them at all. There are far greater ways to getting inspiration and ideas which are healthy and actually build upon your mind rather than destroy it.
If you want to be good with ideas, you must exercise your mind and take an active role in creating ideas. You'll improve the more you do it. drugs however create ideas from sideeffects of direct tampering with the mind and such. Why limit yourself to be dependant upon something other than yourself?
as for inspiration, you'll get that from any experience which moves you. all you have to do is search for them, they dont always have to be exterior things or physical things..

[Helm]

I remind myself of what has happened so far.

[The B.O.B.]

Ussually listening to music just automatically makes me want to doodle, or sketch. I also like to browse for other works on the net, both pixel pieces and other media.( Though I suck terribly at EVERYTHING else)

[Rydin]

I have a few sources...

Most often, I draw about 2-3 random lines with no idea of where I'm going, and after about the 4th or 5th line, I've got a direction going...(usually turns into some sort of eye or simple, cartoon-y character).  This plays heavily on boredom, and is really good practice for Dadaism, for which I oh so love.  It's basically where you let the art take you, instead of you taking your art....if anybody remembers my phase a while ago where I made like 1351235 shitty 100x100...they were almost all entirely done in this fashion.

When I'm trying to improve my creativity, I bite from the people who get their ideas from heavy drug influence.  Seriously... I'm with Kon....let other people suffer the damaging effects.  There's this kid in my grade, and I swear, he's the next MC Escher (been trying really hard to get him to pixel)... and a lot of my "tripped-out" stuff is influenced from him....

Another good substitute for drugs is dreams . I haven't pixelled much based on dreams, but I think it's a great "untapped market", and I think, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't that where Dali got most of his ideas? (though looking though galleries of his earlier stuff, I can see blatant paraphernalia references).

I often do something similar to the 100 images thing, too....search google images for a while and you'll be sure to find something worth while to attempt.

And then, for the most extreme cases of artist's block: do a still life.

But mostly for me, it's a dada thing.  Whereever the pixels take me, I follow.

[Cow]

it's a dada thing

JPEG'd too for extra points.


I get idears from music, other people's pixels (I'm not original, sorry), and good ol' fashion literature. Those're pretty good sources, for me at least. Oh, and I get ideas from my surroundings. Looking through the large window beside the computer is a nice thing to do. I get to see a subdivison being constructed, and a large influx of suspicious looking chaps arriving at my neighbour's house in the wee hours of the morning. Nothing gets the creativity going like that.