lack of inspiration : solution ?

[komart663]

So how do you deal with a lack of inspiration ? what's your way to go back in the creation way ?
In my case, i'm fluent with driving my live act, but my question is more about what i put in (sources ).
If i'm ok for the technical side, i need to improve my artistic side now, and i really dunno how to deal with that , any idea ?

[Amukidi]

That's a BIG question, I. personally would be able to offer more help if I had a bit more info on what you've created thus far - i.e. what interests you visually, culturally and spiritually. I know so many on this forum who are suspicious/contemptuous of the "art" thing, but I find that my art training and experience is the best thing that I have in these time - not least because it teaches you to "see" and not just look. The more observant you become, the more of a visual vocabulary you will develop, and then you can convert this vocabulary into footage, drawing, at this stage, upon your technical skills. Tell us more (either here or PM me) what lights up your eyes, then we can talk about where you are going as an individual.

[komart663]

In fact what "ligthned my eyes" was this : during my last gig, at one time i told me, what the hell i wanna say ? This happened 2 or 3 times during the show
The fact is that i don't really got a lot of homemade footage and that hurts me at this point, because if i'm ok with sampleattitude, remixing old footage , i'm off for creating my own stuff.
I need 2 things (in my opinion ): something to say and a tool to exprim it
My interests are rather about :
- the paradox of the human condition : a mass of individuals perception that have to live together
-the place of the nature
-the future of the man (biotechnology stuff)
-our spirituality (chamanism,trance..)
The thems pointed above are the imagery i wanna include in a set for an electronic dub band.
My question got in fact 2 points of view : artistic/technical
For the artistic side, i think i need to ask me some new questions dealing about the stuff i wanna exprim, for the technical,well,:help: i'll put it on stand by for a few

[labmeta]

Alot of the ideas i work with come from what i read and the silly internal dialouge i have trying to understand it all. So for me researching an idea is very important and will help produce a feeling of consistent intention.


But on a more visual level Inspiration comes from everywhere at the most inconvenint of times, my memory is terrible, even from day to day and i forget all the inspirational things i see and think of, so one of the most useful things to inform my work i`ve ever started is a written journal. Each day i try and sit down for five minutes and just write down all the funny, or wierd or interseting things that popped up during the day. wether it be a observation, or i deceide i like a certain shape.whatever. Whenever i`m low on ideas and thoughts i can just sit down and read back through a yeras worth of thoughts, and everything comes flooding back.

Its a pain initially to get into the habit, but nowdays i find it a resource of inspiration i cant do without

[Amukidi]

Good plan visualnaut, why not add drawing to the journal? (stands back for fear of flaming!!). Or carry one of those cheapo digital cameras to capture a moment / idea? I'm like you, I forget stuff too easily (old age) and frequently have my best ideas last thing at night when I'm at my most relaxed (and 2 minuutes away from sleep), so I keep a bit of paper by the bed and swiftly write it down. You are so right about ideas / inspiration comes from any/everywhere, which is where the observational training comes in, it allows me to spot it as it happens and log it as a potential idea.

[komart663]

cool, the next hardware i'll buy is a pen and some paper ! :P

[Amukidi]

You may well surprise yourself Komart! Just taking the time to sort out the many things whizzing around in your head at any given time will almost certainly reap rewards. Its all part of a well established and time-honoured art and design tradition. In fact, it doesn't just cover creative processes, a lot of business heads will tell you just the same. If, as you say, your technical front is sorted out, it would be the best use of your time to give some hard thought to where you want to go visually - many members will avoid this like the plague!! If you have a video camera, or access to one, maybe you should allocate some quality time to gathering footage, get on a bus/train and go somewhere unfamiliar to you and wander around looking for interesting stuff. I give myself the odd week to concentrate on gathering material - think of it like beach-combing - you'll have a long job wading through all the footage at the end, but its really rewarding and rarely fails to produce some great stuff.

[labmeta]

Totally agree amukidi. the pen and paper certainly rules and if you can get some sketchs in there then even better. Having a laptop and a digi cam is a nice luxury too. sometimes when i`m travelling its just nice to stop in cafe and do a quick doodle in photoshop

Also i find that after i`ve spent a few weeks researching and thinking about a concept i start to see it everywhere in my life, i start to become the obsessional artist, lol. over the last year i`ve been thinking about storytelling, its so in my head now, i even see ideas when i`m in sainsbury`s looking for jars of honey.

another appraoch to generating work i`ve found useful is using silly process`s to force you to make something. Like saying i must make 5 still pictures that use the colour red and make me think about 9-5 day jobs. Its kinda like having a big prodding stick and for me has helped me produce allsorts of visual possibilities i never considered.

Paul

[MoRpH]

wow some great advice in this thread.

Personally I find sitting down and watching some movies with a sketch book to be also very inspiring.

[Anyone]

pretend you're sick,
spend a few hours in a doctor's waiting lounge
leafing coffee table magazines....

Ne1

[labmeta]

haha, your crazy oli.

might give it a try though;)

[komart663]

Hehe thanks Oli ! Any help is welcome !:yep:

[dennisdezenn]

Well,
what i have to says?
What's my place in this world?
Where do i come from?
i 've an "Alien", growing inside me, what i have to do?
where is love?
am i a sexual obsess zombi?
How to save my mother from her own death?
My first memory is blood, why?
...
Yes a pen and a paper!!! to find inspiration, what i can't tell, i paint it.
in ( side ) spiration.

Happy to find here some existentials questions. :love:
Dennis.

[many2]

Originally posted by visualnaut

another appraoch to generating work i`ve found useful is using silly process`s to force you to make something. Like saying i must make 5 still pictures that use the colour red and make me think about 9-5 day jobs. Its kinda like having a big prodding stick and for me has helped me produce allsorts of visual possibilities i never considered.
Paul

This is the creative tool I prefer, I use it almost all the time. I feel that setting rules for any work I am planning also helps me to define my message and leads me into new esthetics. It also helps to break down your whole project into little tasks and to build a realistic work schedule. Now that I am familiar with this trick I can see that what I prefer in the whole artistic creation process is actually to define those initial rules : for me this is like writing a magic formula you have yet to try in your alchemical lab.

Many-2

[Anyone]

yes, that's a good idea too...

contrain yourself your sefl imposed rules.
having 2 many (hehe) options can be paralizing...

Ne1

[neoteo]

my 2 cents

when i have lack of inspiration i normaly go to one of my 2 creative softwares and stay a bit just looking at it .. empty

then i start collecting stills and small videos ramdom from my harddrive .. stuff from the net and some old i did ...

normaly after the stuff is inside a small ideia comes ...

but if it doesnt

ill pretend the ideia is there and start the rotine steps that i do when the inspiration is here

when im in the edge off the unknow ... the clics in the mouse cant stop anymore ... something starts to apear ..

most of my gratest things came after lack of inspiration

i think its a great thing to create freelly ...
with no outside objective
just pure moment emotion
let it out

stop thinking in the poeple that will watch , go deep inside your selfe and do it for you ...

[many2]

Originally posted by neoteo

i think its a great thing to create freelly ...
with no outside objective
just pure moment emotion
let it out


This is not creativity, it's art therapy. It might be good for yourself but I wouldn't try to produce work using those very personal guidelines. But that's me, if it works for you then all the better.

[neoteo]

Originally posted by many2
This is not creativity, it's art therapy. It might be good for yourself but I wouldn't try to produce work using those very personal guidelines. But that's me, if it works for you then all the better.

mmmm ,

------------------------------------------------

its not creativity .. its therapy

it might be good (for your selfe) but i wouldnt ...

try to produce work ...

using those bla bla bla guide lines ...

------------------------------------------------

when im giving my opinion about solution for lack of inspiration what kind of advice do you want ? insted of my own personal technique ??????????????????????????????????

WTF

im sorry .. i must be portuguese .. i dont get your point


:zzz:

[Amukidi]

This could ramble....
I believe (and have done for many years) that the word "inspiration" is highly over used and, for that matter, over-rated. The ammount of times I've seen students sitting around scratching their arses under the guise of "looking for inspiration" beggars belief. I think that what I'm saying is that it is rarely of any use to actually go looking for "inspiration" - it will find you if it is there. Every now and then, as an artist or designer, you will be / feel "inspired" - where this comes from is rarely known, and is often mistaken for being "influenced" (but not, of course, always). Enjoy these moments - they are magical, but please don't expect every job / project to be guided and created by them.

An awful lot of our work comes, imho, under the banner of design, ie, we have a client, they have a brief, we deliver a workable solution. If we have either served an "apprentiship"(started as tea-maker / photo-copier and worked our way up) or been educated / trained at at an art & design college, we will be aware of many processes developed to help us achieve said delivery, through drawing, visual research and not to mention drawing upon past experience.
Any experienced practitioner of our field will have their own way of kicking off a project, but staring at a blank computer interface is unlikely to be listed among the favourite methods! As ideas often come into our heads at unpredictable times, it is, imho, a good idea to log them in some way for later, this is simple time-honoured practice, and a discipline that , not being rocket-science, more people ought to try, as it is almost guaranteed to give results. Sure, they won't always give staggering results, but it beats the shit out of staring into space for this elusive "inspiration". Call it a stepping stone if you like. As we all know, creativity is a tricky phenomenon to define, and the more experienced we become, the more choosy we should be, now we enter into the realms of what some folks round these parts call "artschool intelectual wank"! And I'm putting my neck on the line here - Just making a picture / video is NOT creativity. There is more to it than that I'm afraid, and to make matters worse, I cannot define it for you. I've had 16 year old students come into an art school environment who make amazing marks instinctively, they spill a cup of coffee, it looks great, its innate in them, out of their control initially (I considered it one of our key jobs to help them learn to "control" it. I've also had others who come in and can make incredible photographic representations with pencil or charcoal that would probably blow many people here away - but it turns out that they don't have an ounce of creativity in them. Am I making any sense? There is, of course, room for both ends of this spectrum in the world of visuals, and none of what I've written here should be seen as judgemental, I'm just saying that let's not get carried away in some romantic notions of what inspiration is, if you've got a 4 hour set to do next week, the last thing you want to be doing is to be sitting in front of a blank canvas looking for inspiration, cos for the most part you're going to be disappointed (or your client / promoter / audience is)!

[neoteo]

ok thank you Amukidi for making it clear

normaly the time looking at the blank AfterEffects or Photoshop in my case , is just a few seconds .. one minute maximum .. its like meditation ... you dont need to understand that .. or try it .. i have never told anyone that i do that .. this was the first time.

inspiration is one thing .. that you use for a lot of things

doing something creative .. IMO requires more then just inspiration ...

im a Professional video editor , when i have something to edit , i dont lose any time looking at any program .. of corse
i dont wait for inspiration .. there is no time ... just look at what i have over and over and it comes right out

when i do that meditation stuff .. psycadelic stuff is coming out .. and my boss doesnt want psycadelic

i was thinking in FREE VIDEO ART .. not stuff sale ,not for work

[Amukidi]

And before anyone tries to pin an "Elitist" badge on me, think on.... I personally have always rejoiced in the discovery of the "natural" I couldn't give a toss about their background etc, if they've got it, then that's all I need to know. My pal Jim (myogenic) is a good case in point - never had a days "art" training or education in his life, other than school - he's a total natural, he's got the magical (and oh so frequently absent)visual awareness.

Neoteo - fair point!

[Lara]

When I feel like cardboard, I like reading. Good fiction, modern classics. I love the stories, the characters, the description. Or else I write something myself. I find that I can't separate the words from the images, so maybe it isn't the best process to recommend, but there you go.

It just kick starts the imagination, and a good bit of emotion- two things I really need for creating anything :)

[julez]

ive wanted to try a sensory deprivation tank for a while cos i hear some interesting things can happen inem.

But at the moment my greatest source of inspiration is just filming randomly and then looking at the footage in slo-mo later...it always seems to lead of into interesting tangents. Apart from that methods have never really worked for me. Inspiration always comes at the most random of times. The way something catches you're eye or the way light hits an object. Coz of this i always carry a little note book around with me.

If you can draw u always have an advantage. I really like MoRpH's idea of watching movies with a sketchbook.

[topherz]

I like that idea of watching shot video slowly.

Maybe one of the paths to inspiration is just time.

Ive noticed in old animation (ie. betty boop) that there is an insane amount of things going on. (in addition to insane things going on) I imagine the animator, who spends at least 10 to 15 minutes per frame - translating to at least 1.5 hours of work per second - just has a lot of time to think about what is going to happen in this little world that they are creating. Of course they probably have a storyboard before hand - but im sure the details evolve in *real*-time.

-topherZ

[Amukidi]

You can rest assured that there was a storyboard! Those old classics were the result of months of work, a good deal of it being mind-numbingly boring work at that. Speak to any "traditional" animator (but make it soon - they're a dying breed) and you'll hear tales of 18 hour working days, living on peanuts, dreaming their storyboards at night - they have a common drive to get their project done, but I can assure you that very little, if anything, is left to chance. The self-discipline required to make something like that simply precludes it.

[many2]

Originally posted by Amukidi
Speak to any "traditional" animator (but make it soon - they're a dying breed) and you'll hear tales of 18 hour working days, living on peanuts, dreaming their storyboards at night -

Traditional animators are a dying breed, but only in developped countries : I used to work for a company doing animation and the design, the storyboard and sometime the "key frames", were made in-house but all the "in-between" frames, the repetitive tweening work, was done overseas in countries like Vietnam and India. Just like any other business, animation companies are using third-world out-sourcing to make the dirty work while they get all the profits.

Many-2

[akira_k]

There's some times one just wants to say pish-all... In the specific case you mentioned, supporting a band, it's best to communicate something, but sometimes in club scenes it's pointless to communicate anything to those drugged muppets who have jellyfish for brains because they had puffed a shitload of ketamine. I rather bomb their brains with random shit they can't digest than trying to communicate any solid idea.

[robotfunk]

now I can't draw to save my life, but this trick made me do some interesting stuff:

start doodling some abstract shapes, until you see something appear in a part of it, then start making that part into what you see in it.

working this way I feel 'possessed' in a way, similarly to making music. at the end you might feel it wasnt really you who did it, (at least I get that feeling) but I feel this way about the some of the best things i've done

[Mucha]

Get completely pissed drunk ---- then DRAW
even if the results suck.... u have a excuse.
:yep:

dont worry about the lack of inspiration, it happens!

[neoteo]

go to the supermarket and buy some !

[julez]

how much did you get urs for neo??

u must have some awesome supermarkets over there in macau!

[seex]

I guess the most inspirational thing that happend to me was geting totaly sick of my own material. This was in the first six months of my vj acts, we were doing a gig per week (six hours of live video manipulation) in diferent clubs and i guess i overused my material. The interesitng thing tough is that the public didnt notice it was all new clips to them even tough some of them have seen it for a cuple of times, i felt like im the artist and viewer and im boring my self. This than resulted in me not doing gigs for the next four months, and the set i did after that brought all the magic back in to it.

So if i lack inspiration its a good sign to take a break and become objective again, the best comfort i can offer my self at such moment is that if i had it once i will have it agin. But that exludes situations where i get payed for my work than the inspiration is the freedom i get from the money i recieve, than i focus my inspiration on the new screens that i need.

[komart663]

Thanx to all for all your answers that helped me a lot !
:yep: