Idea Generation Tips - Part 1

I recently delivered my first lecture at the University that I’m working at, it was extremely scary and nerve racking because I felt like I was going into this position with a completely different background than the other lecturers I work with, and I wasn’t quite sure if that would benefit me or hinder me in a lecturing position. I had noticed that some students were really struggling to come up with ideas and concepts when they were given tasks in a session, something that I think a lot of creatives struggle with in general. Even if you’ve been working in the creative industry for decades you can have down periods or creative block, so I wanted to provide a way to always be able to come up with your own ideas, even when you might feel you don’t have any.

I’m going to briefly cover what I delivered in the lecture in this blog post by breaking it down into different areas of inspiration.

Ideas in Concept Art

I think it’s important to firstly talk about how important ideas are in concept art. When you’re working as a concept artist, the best way to think about it is that you’re practically an idea factory, you are expected to constantly come up with new and interesting ideas, most of them will likely be rejected, and you’ll have to come up with a load more. Also remember that the concept comes first, so try to think of it as concept + art, your artistic skills might be amazing, but if the concept isn’t great in the first place, the art won’t fix that.

Yourself

One of the main reasons that concept artists get hired, isn’t necessarily their art skills, it’s usually because they’re unique, and the reason that they’re unique is because they’re constantly consuming their own inspirations and communicating that in a way that no one else can, because each person is unique.

You should always dive right into your own inspirations, even if you think it’s a little bit weird and geeky, in my opinion that’s usually even better. The example I always use is how much I love fish, especially fish that most people have probably never even seen. I know so much about why these fish inhabit the places that they do, why they live the way that they do and why their bodies are built in certain ways. I fully dive into all of my interests, which makes it easier to trail off into other areas of inspiration that relate to that too. I could tell someone the exact process of how I created a piece and they will never be able to recreate it in the same way, because they aren’t influenced by the same things as me.

Creative Bank Account

I can’t take credit for this term, but if you want to fully understand what your creative bank account is and how it’s so important to consume what’s around you to fill up your creative bank account, I highly recommend watching Jake Parker’s video below.

Inspiration

To get inspired, you need to consume. If you’re not consuming different forms of inspiration, you’re eventually going to run out of ideas. Sometimes your idea generation can feel a little stagnant if you’re always consuming the same things, so it’s important to vary your sources of inspiration, something I have a few different solutions for.

A good place to start is to just consume your favourite things, watch your favourite films, play your favourite games over and over, geek out over them like I spoke about earlier in this post. Follow that up and look into the behind the scenes of different games and film etc., by watching videos like this it helps to understand a lot more about mistakes that were made and the decision making process behind the end product, which can then influence your own decisions. Consume culture, even if you can’t travel, libraries are a great resource for this area, or pick up a random book on architecture or photography and have a look through it, you’re pretty much guaranteed to learn something new. 

One other thing that I think can be super helpful which I don’t think enough artists do, is to carry a sketchbook around with you. Draw what’s around you, and I don’t always mean draw what’s in front of you either, if you come up with an idea while you’re out, note it or draw it down. This creates another source of inspiration to pull from when you’re stuck.

I’m going to be covering the second part of this next week including the task that I gave them which you guys can have a go at too!

This is also a very brief overview of what I actually delivered, over the next couple of months I will be putting together a full workshop for this so that I can cover it in more detail and give feedback on work for those who are interested!