Inspiration Strikes! #3

[jameson (ST)]

Inspiration Strikes!

Intro: Sometimes inspiration rolls a 1. It happens, you sit down to work on a game, or a character, or what-have-you, and you draw a big old blank. A goose egg. Nada. Niet. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Zip... you get the idea. What do you do? You could try again later, or you can taunt inspiration to take another swing...

[end_news_blurb]

Issue #3: Making Your Own Inspiration

Sometimes, when you are lucky, you stumble on a picture, or song, or video that sets your imagination going. Other times you gotta take a cattle prod and get medieval on it. It happens to me often enough, often enough that I've made a hobby of sitting with Google Images while I watch TV.

Google, specifically Google Images, is one of the best places to jump start a stalled imagination. This is my experience of course, your milage may vary. Google is my search engine of choice, but if you have another you prefer I'm sure that will work well enough too. Just plug in a term that is related to the work you are having trouble with and then peruse a few links. View a couple of photos, or visit some webpages; regardless you almost can't help but to find something that will help get the creative juice flowing again.

Wikipedia holds a similar value in my mind. Sometimes I find some obscure fact about the subject I'm working on. Others I find something on the front page and start clicking through, moving through pages via provided links until I find something that triggers an idea.

Music, at least for me, is also capable of lubing that creative engine, and granting new ideas. Be they works by an artist I am familiar with, or something new, music, lyrics, and video can often do the job. Especially useful, I find, are online "radio stations" that will take your input and then find you new music that is similar in composition and style. Likewise YouTube will give you a slew of user reccomendations in response to a video. I've found entire new bands in this way, and plenty of video that made me look at some of my favorite music in a whole new way.

Lastly are bookstores and libraries. Sometimes just walking through the fiction stacks and pulling random books out based on their title or cover artwork will get you something you needed, and idea or concept, or even that specific work of art or fiction. If nothing else maye you can find something to read to help pass the time while your brain recuperates.

How do you kick start your imagination?

Previously On Inspiration Strikes!

• Issue #1: The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas ...
• Issue #2: I'm Sick of This!

[Dawn OOC]

Primarily music. I find that nothing gets me going faster than to cue up a playlist designed toward a certain mood. I have Angry, Sad, Fight!, etc in my iTunes. When I need that mood, I head over to that playlist.

You didn't mention inspiration destroyers, but I find that one of mine is television. It's hard to write when I'm sitting in front of the boob tube, and when I come back and read it again, its always inferior.

[Joani]

I am like Dawn - music inspires most of my postings and I think some of my best stuff was done during a "high" on tracks that really got me inspired.

My taste of music is rather broad so inspiration can strike from any corner and it never let me down.

The second thing, at least when it comes to creating PCs are good pictures for my Avatar. To be honest - if I can't find a good picture for my Avatar I find myself unable to complete a submission/create a character. I need that visual input. To some extend that also applies when I read other Player's posts. I generally find it more pleasing if I can assigne a face to the PC instead of some generic Avatar (don't mean to critizise anyone, just sharing how I feel).

I think this comes from lack of having "real" interaction. Without bodylanguage and all other stuff that is missing when we communicate over the internet a good Picture of your PC in shape of an Avatar helps me make a better connection to the PC I'm dealing with. That's one of the reasons I have one login for every single PC of mine I play here.