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.

[Rydin]

Oh my god mccow, that's awesome! 

Yeah, I forgot to mention music....lots of qotsa & family, floyd, and wolfmother lately.

[Akzidenz]

You have your Dada history a little confused.. but then again, I think the Dadaists would've preferred that.

Look at early futurism (Marinetti and Boccioni are my favorites), it's brilliant stuff that the Dadaists admitted ripping off.

[Rydin]

Well its more of a "how do you get your ideas" thread then a history thread, so meh.  I do acknowledge futurism, I just prefer dadaism.



and to get back at Mc Cow Twenty Eight:




EDIT:
Also, just thought of this: sleep deprivation is a killer inspiration, though I think it kinda fits in the 'drugs' catagory....
(Okay, sorry, I'm done now )

[Alex]

Alex (clr)

awww, you arouse me so. we oc asap bish.

[miascugh]

Drugs (in massive amounts) and baby sandwiches are the only thing you get to eat at art school. And yoghurt.

I find tractor rides to be rather deliriating and inspiring. That is, the real deal, back and forth, to and fro on the field. Work that SOIL! Dig deep with your plow to make way for the seedz!

Then draw.

[big brother]

For those intimidated by massive amounts of drugs, I'd recommend varying amounts and types of drugs.

The "copying guinea pig friend's ideas" is interesting, but it adds another layer to your perception, obfuscating the mind's eye.

[.TakaM]

I don't really do much 'abstract' pixel art, a lot of mine is game orientated, so I guess I don't have a very wide range of things that motivate me, but the things that do:
my experiences firstly
video games, music and movies
and since I think I enjoy making tiles and tiling the most, the country I live in 
Ive said before, I don't have to walk very far to see some nice 'level design' 

Ive lately become quite aware I need to find a good source of inspiration to come up with ideas for character design, just ideas for what garbs them- so if anyone has some place that could help with that, much appreciated 

[snake]

I look at everything with some aesthetic quality. Usually, I find looking at what people would genuinely find ugly or unfinished to be very inspiring, as you get ideas on what you could do with the potential of that art. I check my old art doodles as well to get a boost of confidence, but also because the abstract ideas in children's drawings tend to wake an idea.

One of the best pieces of advice I've heard in the case of having an art block, needing to work or getting an idea is this: Put youself in a room with nothing in it. Face a plain wall or something to that extent. The lack of distractions will make you do two things. First you'll start to think about anything and everything. After that you'll feel the need to do something. If you've got a pencil and paper at the ready you're bound to start doodling something good after just a few minutes. The times I get the most ideas and draw the most are during the boring parts of classes. Only when the situation allows it of course.

[miascugh]

Provided you have such a room, and have the self-controll not to leave the room out of boredom (I know I am very restless). But I was actually serious about the tractor thing, it is quite a similar situation, being confined to this cabin, not having much to do other than turning around every 5 minutes. I get lost in my thoughts a lot while doing that, getting random ideas and pictures which I then try to realize as soon as I'm done.

[ptoing]

Haha, mia, I know what you mean, when I was younger I helped driving tractor at a friends farm when we layed out irrigation pipes. Same goes with when we went houseboating on a channel in france and we had to go through locks A LOT and they were all manual and were apart like 5 minutes, in some cases it was easier just to walk next to the ship on the riverside to the next lock then getting back on board

Stuff like that purges the brain from shit and you come up with good ideas in the process if you let the mind linger.

[Ai]

* Kon knows what he's talking about: "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.."

* Any structural elements are likely to come jointly from my code and from photos I took -- maybe this shouldn't be counted since there is a degree of creativity required to write good code. Anyway, a digital camera is handy for isolating a salient aspect of a scene compared to actually being at the scene with your eye, I find that useful; and the structural elements based on my code are usually at least sound, and sometimes extremely sound.

* I use terminal windows a lot (Eterm), and I have it set to pick two words from the dictionary, hyphenate them, and use that as the terminal title. It also logs them for future reference. It's obviously not very good at keeping a theme between ideas, but it often provides interesting silly ones. like (indecency-utilized, cornices-syntax, expectation's-knaves, cheeseburgers-discovery, peps-veep, enumerate-obloquy, decedent's-monomania, addressee-skiing, geologic-doggy)

* For just creating pieces, I rarely get art-blocked; I don't go to start a drawing and think... '?' very much at all. For individual aspects of a piece (like 'how EXACTLY should that be shaded'), I do sometimes. I believe that art-block is just a sort of artistic doubtfulness, where your choices look too many or too few to choose, and I can usually resolve it by looking at a few places or photos and being decisive about how it will go. If I can't get a ref, I just make up a likely algorithym and execute it (haha, programmer-speak.), if I can't just scribble until it looks about right.

* For landscape, just chuck down some tiles, and more tiles, and more tiles (I can produce copious quantities of tiles with relative ease.), then I have some tiles and some elements to use in a drawing.

* The old technique of just throwing down some lines, and more lines, until it looks like something, then drawing what it looks like

* Weirding out my drawing process -- like drawing white on black rather than black on grey, incremental rather than one-shade-at-a-time,...

* Any kind of vigorous exercise is always good for clearing the mind, providing you breath properly. It usually helps me improve my perspective.

[Rox]

I can believe the tractor thing. Mowing huge amounts of grass and shoveling snow also generates a lot of good ideas over time. Doesn't work well for art in my case, however, as I always come up with story-related ideas, game design concepts, or catchy musical snippets. For art, the thing that makes me want to draw the most, is watch other people draw, or look at their results while discussing how it looks. Eventually, I'll feel an urge to edit something just to explain what I mean as I discuss. After that, I might end up feeling like drawing something, myself.

Happened two weeks ago or so last time. But I need a tablet for that kinda art, and I don't have one yet. Will be getting one for christmas, possibly...

[Panda]

Taking a shower helps me a lot.
The sound of water running makes you be in your own world, and since the whole washing thing has become more of an automatic thing after years of repetition, you are left there with plenty of time to think and just think. Works nice especially when waking up.

Art blocks (normally) go away with time, but there are occasions where you can't afford suffering one (when you have tight deadlines for example), so you better keep some sort of "inspirational art library" or a brainstorming list of what you have to do, or sketches or something on those lines.

And well the normal things, I get inspired by other art, cartoons, comics, movies, games, memories, dreams, experiences etc etc...
There are many ways to get inspired, but I think it's all in perceiving things, willing/needing to create something, and keep going on avoiding rust.

Oh and of course, try to use the inspiration while it's hot. If you think too much, it most likely won't happen. So do while you can :0

[Skull]

Music... TV... Video Games..

If it's going to F you up, you might as well get some art out of it.

[Blick]

I can believe the tractor thing. Mowing huge amounts of grass and shoveling snow also generates a lot of good ideas over time. Doesn't work well for art in my case, however, as I always come up with story-related ideas, game design concepts, or catchy musical snippets.

I've always liked shoveling snow for getting ideas as well. There's just time to think and doing physical work somehow puts me in good spirits every time.

Another thing I like to do is walk around downtown at night. I live right in the middle of the city, so it's easy for me to walk around at night. I wouldn't recommend it for a dangerous city, and avoid alleyways at dark et cetera. I guess walking during the day might work too. But I prefer night. Listening to music that brings a nostalgic mood while doing this always brings me a couple ideas. It's sort of the same as that moment right before you fall asleep, when you're just laying there thinking as you slowly drift off, except with walking downtown I can actually remember what I was thinking about.

[Rydin]

For the past month or so, I've been carrying a little notebook around and just jotting down anything that seems like a good idea to me.....not really intending to use it for art related things.....but that may be one route you could go for artisic inspiration  .

[Meta|Fox]

I read somewhere that the creative half of your brain is more active during relaxing exercise (such as a nice walk) then any other time. and that seems to work well for me.

But most of the time i just start drawing and something comes out of it.

[Skull]

For the past month or so, I've been carrying a little notebook around and just jotting down anything that seems like a good idea to me.....not really intending to use it for art related things.....but that may be one route you could go for artisic inspiration  .

If I get any really good ideas, I will do my best to write them down, since otherwise you'll forget.
So I advise the use of a notebook or paper.. or a little desktop thingy.

[skeddles]

If I get any really good ideas, I will do my best to write them down, since otherwise you'll forget.
So I advise the use of a notebook or paper.. or a little desktop thingy.

i agree. i always thing of great ideas, but then forget all about them. =/

[Gunne]

Most of the time I go to the ideasfactory and buy me some ideas there. But when back at home I have problems executing them, ugh

Nah, but now serious. I get my ideas most of the time when I try to get some sleep, midnight-ish. Next day I write them on some paper somewhere laying around my room. Some movies, books, other artists may also be inspiring, but the execution of them is a very hard thing for me...

[Ryona]

I'd like to say that my ideas come to me as precognitive visions through acid trips much like Issac from the hit TV series "HEROES", but alas, that is not the case.

My ideas come from nostalgic thoughts, personal interests, and even self-inspiration.

[goat]

My ideas come from nostalgic thoughts, personal interests, and even self-inspiration.

This is almost entirely the case with me.  All of my personal work is extremely self centered.  If it seems otherwise, it's a trick :p