CREATIVE HABITS - The Mystery of the Subconscious World

[Gors]

tVGRians, tell me.

You are creative, right?

You make art and stuff - music, drawings, text, programming, ya know, those kinda shit. Creativity is essential to our lives, especially since we are in a creative forum.

However, where do you get your C R E A T I V I T Y from? Where do you find your will to continue? What are your creation quirks? Do you have a specific habit before/while/after making your creation(s)/art(s)/other(s)??

Show me the vortex that's going on in your head!

[NICKtendo DS]

You'll have to take me out to dinner first before I show you my vortex 0///////0

I've been giving up on a lot of things lately. You may have noticed the lack of sprites and games since I finished Super Bouncy Cat. Right now, I don't see the point on working on a project like that, though I am willing to join a team and make a game we can sell. Not that I'm looking for a team here. I have a friend who knows a thing or two about programming and is trying to work on a project of his own.

I still make MIDI music. There's something satisfying about getting a song to sound the way it sounds in your head.

But most of my creative activity is on Hentai Foundry. What? So I make Sonic porn. DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!!! I'm so sorry...
Yeah, I'd link you the stuff if it weren't for the fact that it's NSFW as fuck.
Why do I bring it up? Well, it has everything to do with this topic. There's a Sonic hentai fan comic I've been writing for the past 2 years and I'm currently at 249 regular pages and 12 special pages. I've been keeping that up thanks to my fans. Just the fact that they come back to read the next page gives me the motivation to make more. I also love seeing how ridiculous the page count can get and I see steady improvement with each page. The first pages look like shit compared to the latest pages. There's also the added challenge of keeping it fresh after so long.

[~Axis~]

Oh my goodness Neko...

Awesome.


For me it all depends on the situation. If I'm drawing a character I already know how to draw very well, all I need to do is just look at some references to help me figure out a pose or a scene to put the character in. Example, If I wanted to draw a Goku vs Vegeta scene, what I would end up doing is looking up all the manga pages or anime screenshots of their battles so I can get a general idea of the intensity I'm going for, doodle, then done! It's if I'm drawing my own characters/a completely new one where it's more difficult.

For a new character, I try gathering all the information about the character I can and then try and portray it into the design. I get the creativity for this by looking for real life references and anime or cartoon ones. Then..... I turn on some tunes! My favorite ones, and I try to picture what the character would be wearing and start from a basic design. Draw clothes, then put in all the facial features that would describe the character at a glance.

If it's for one of the characters I already made, I just jame to my tunes and look through references from various media.

[TomGuycott]

But most of my creative activity is on Hentai Foundry. What? So I make Sonic porn. DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!!! I'm so sorry...

Not exactly what I expected to read today.

Not judging, mind you, just took me totally by surprise. Truth be told, one time I tried to draw an adult-themed picture. It was awful both objectively and subjectively, so I've never shown it to anyone and I've never tried ever again. I'm also so sorry.

I feel like most open-minded artists, withholding those with a strong moral compass and those just totally disinterested in the concept, have tried at least ONE drawing like that. It sometimes makes me curious to know if certain artists or animators of note have a single secret adult drawing that nobody will ever see, but that's just probably me being in denial about doing one myself.

ANYWAY, to the subject at hand, I find it difficult to work on art these days, mostly because of the distractions of work, video games and just general anxiety about not being good enough, which further compounds by the fact I don't practice and I become worse.


I get spurts of inspiration when someone compliments me about old work, because I'm like "hey, now I can do something ten times better!" and I just go for it. To maintain focus, I tend to listen to a lot of music, mostly video game music, but anything with decently high energy and minimal vocals is what I love to use.


I find that the easiest way to get into the flow of drawing is to watch or listen to things that have inspired you in the past. For example, one time I got the idea to animate a thing using an album from Caravan Palace, which I have not even started, but at the very least listening to it makes me remember my idea, and I do a few random drawings just to try and improve for later.

[Shade]

Music.

That's where most of my creativity comes from. Any kind of music works, but video game music specifically really pushes me to work harder and practice spriting/drawing/making my own music/e.t.c. Likely my inner competitiveness screaming "Hey I bet I can make something just as good!!!" serves as my ultimate motivation, ehehe. I definitely think seeing/listening to the works of others is my strongest driving force. Always reminds me that I do want to improve and be better than I am.

The Shade Formula of Boundless Creativity: Music+Competitive=Creative

[Hiynastrike]

Well you see, I look at stuff and I kinda steal it because I think it's cool, I've gotten more original throughout life but the base has always been another work

Otherwise... I want to see things, like a 1930's futuristic gun that shoots lasers... I Always try to design things because of impulse

[psychospacecow]

I'm no good with posing. I love designing things, but I've never been good at setting a scene. Heck, I can't even draw proper hands, and I arguably don't have proper hands.

I usually carry a sketchbook with me if I can help it. I draw a ton, but its never when I have something else I think I can do unless I REALLY get an idea in my head to where I can't stop thinking about it, which doesn't really prove the first point wrong. I love a good project and I'm currently thinking about getting together some concepts for Fallout style power armor so I can wrangle a 3D modeller in and trap them in general interest! Muahaha!

I actually don't post all that much of what I doodle. I'm not proud of most of it. Some of its better than what I do post, but I don't like it for one reason or another.

The other reason I draw things is community. I doodled this in around two minutes because I was watching a street fighter streamer play Pokemon and his Clefairy metronomed into sonic boom.

Spoiler

Edit : Would also recommend this for when you get in the mood and don't have any good blocking noise. http://ff9.ocremix.org/

Another thing in regards to community would be one of the first things I did when I found this lovely end of the pond 2 years ago. I never did get around to drawing the human character.

Spoiler

[TomGuycott]

Not ENTIRELY on topic, but does anyone know a good blog-like format? I've somewhat disenchanted with DA these days, and I've thought about Tumblr, but I'm not as sure if I like the format, but I may be open to at least trying that.

Any suggestions? I feel like I need to make myself draw more often and I'd just want to post it for posterity.

[Garamonde]

My creative ability... it's a work in progress, but I function best when I have a beloved foundation to work off of. One could say I grew up with an overactive imagination. I have always loved to spend up to hours on end daydreaming/brainstorming/fantasizing about my favorite fictional universes in any setting I wanted, where anything I wanted could happen. It's always been my favorite thing to do and still is to this day. You could say that my creativity is being somewhat stifled by clinging to premade concepts that I'm already attached to, and you'd be right.

But, while I am making more of an effort to develop original content here and there and am occasionally even finding some that I actually legitimately care about -- I feel it's much more effective, productive, and enjoyable to just bounce ideas off of a setting that I know I enjoy since most of the point when I fall into these moments initially is just self-indulgent fantasizing anyway. So why not use these opportunities to exercise my imagination if I feel like it and develop original ideas within these worlds? I feel that, even if I'm not progressing creatively as much as I could be, I'm still always learning and exploring and expanding my horizons at least to a degree. I mean, it's how my new AU story I've been brewing up that I mentioned in the happy thread came about. It started out as just a little entertaining AU thought to satisfy ... specific interests as a result of thinking too deeply into a piece of artwork I saw and loved, and then since my mind has played with the idea and expanded it into a full-fledged story that I'm serious about.

So I guess this post so far has been a combination of my creative habits as well as inspirations, but I primarily tend to draw inspiration from others' work as well as gathering helpful feedback on my own. It also helps now that I'm looking at my most recent work and appreciating it more than I used to. I'm looking back at older work and seeing flaws that I didn't quite catch before. I'm still learning and struggling with stuff but seeing how far I've come is already inspiring in itself IMO.

RAMBLING OVER

[-Ash-]

I'm not very creative, I just base things I make from shapes, or my interests. So I like to mess around with things by making a few shapes and work from there with my interests. Typically use this for designing monsters. Will also look at google images for ideas.

Quick workflow thing I did to show how I do it. Setting limits also helps breed creativity from me.

[NakaBalloonFox]

In terms of creativity, I just think for a long time about anything, and if I come across something interesting such as a character design, I then begin thinking: "How big or round can I make this?" and then I try drawing it, often times I will just stop and pick it up later, mixing new things into it, including things I've seen somewhere else. You can see that Naka is basically a "Rounder, blue Tails with one tail", more or less. I'm weird like that.

[Kosheh]

But most of my creative activity is on Hentai Foundry. What? So I make Sonic porn. DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!!! I'm so sorry...
Yeah, I'd link you the stuff if it weren't for the fact that it's NSFW as fuck.
Why do I bring it up? Well, it has everything to do with this topic. There's a Sonic hentai fan comic I've been writing for the past 2 years and I'm currently at 249 regular pages and 12 special pages. I've been keeping that up thanks to my fans. Just the fact that they come back to read the next page gives me the motivation to make more. I also love seeing how ridiculous the page count can get and I see steady improvement with each page. The first pages look like shit compared to the latest pages. There's also the added challenge of keeping it fresh after so long.

I'm not into furry stuff, but ngl I've always thought Furry Bomb was classic. It's kind of a shame that the author ceased to work on it because it was leaked onto the Internet.
But I'm actually intrigued right now. 249 pages?! How can hedgehogs have sex for THAT LONG and how do you like actually write a plot for something like this.
"Sonic had sex with Sally but Shadow would have none of it so he went back in time and used Chaos Control to touch Sonic's mom's breasts and this made Sonic very mad causing him to go SUPER SONIC and also find out that Shadow was his DAD"

In terms of creativity, I just think for a long time about anything, and if I come across something interesting such as a character design, I then begin thinking: "How big or round can I make this?" and then I try drawing it, often times I will just stop and pick it up later, mixing new things into it, including things I've seen somewhere else. You can see that Naka is basically a "Rounder, blue Tails with one tail", more or less. I'm weird like that.

We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better
Rounder
Fatter

[Gors]

I think that creativity is very personal and intriguing.
Deep inside, anything can make sense and not make sense at all.
Especially if you're an artist, you're eager to make more art and creative things.

Empirism and a bit of technique helps me a lot when drawing or composing:
Personally, I like to listen to music and look at others' art for inspiration, just
like some of you.

Yeah...

Realism is fun to draw too, so sometimes I try drawing from life. It helps with your style - you
extract some of the elements of real life and distort it to create your own style.

Gors here likes to find inspiration from basically anywhere, from texts to mythology or
retro games. I usually make sprites with this mindset - of developing upon what other devs
elaborated, making something new by adding your own spice, after all your own
touch is what makes your art Your Own.

Mythology in particular is a great well of inspiration for me, because it's very creative. Deities, gods and creatures:
Apollo, Thor, Gumihos and Saci-Pererês often pop up in my mind.

Keeping track of those ideas and inspirations can be tiring, however, and even though I try to be hard-working and
inspiring, I am just a human and sometimes I end up facing art blocks.
Not just drawings or pixels...

Game design, Spriting, Composing and Drawing.
They eventually get dry and stall, which is bothersome, as some of my work depends on them.

Horrible, I know...

In the end, this is how I work and maybe they don't apply to your modus operandi. Everybody's
special, with different kinds of abilities.

Though, I think it's interesting to try applying what I said to your everyday life and try different things
hollistically. Art is not just pretty strokes, or good colors. It's the sum of all parts that make a greater thing, and if you
reasonably keep your abilities balanced, you can make impressive things.

Equilibrium is the key of life.

Art is the key of life.

Dramatic, I know, but this is how I roll B-)