To get to a certain level of creativity you need to learn several aspects. Not all people will agree with certain parts but in my opinion it should be a good starter to move forward in the level you’re at now.
1. BASICS
Learn the basics of a medium, learn basic drawing, how to layout, learn the structure of music & harmony, learn how a camera works, learn to animate in different ways.
2. RECREATE
Follow online tutorials, try to recreate your favourite mograph piece or special fx shot. Try to get as close as possible. This will give you insight in how things can be done. Don’t feel bad about “copying” other people’s work in this stage, some will call you a copycat, a thief or whore of society. As long as you explain people what your intention is with what you’re doing they should understand. The fact is, you’ll never be able to make it better then the original anyhow.
3. EXERCICE, DISCOVER AND EXPERIMENT
Try different approaches to achieve the same result. The “one way” isnt always the right way. Do stuff over and over again untill you find “your way”. You’ll discover a lot by doing stuff wrong. So do make mistakes and experiment.
4. CREATE / INNOVATE
This is the hard part. Some people got talent for this, they can come up with instant ideas, at least so it seems. Talent is something tricky doh. Talent can be thought, at least to a certain level. It’s about making the right connections between images you encountered, music you heard, a certain mood/emotion/event you’ve been through, datastreams you learned. So the most important when you focus on creativity and innovation is to get away as much as you can from your desk. Ideas don’t come when you’re behind your fancy 30 inch screen. Get out and taste life, talk to strangers, listen to your grandfolks’ stories, try the new McFlurry on a sunny beach, go parachute jumping, go to the opera, watch a documentary on the whale mading season. Whatever your interests suit you, but get away from the screen.
Buy yourself a little notebook or a memo taperecorder, use the techie tools on your new cellphone, buy yourself a small digital cam you can put inside your pocket. Feelings and emotions are very important during creation. Try to bring certain parts of your life before your eyes when creating. Your life is like a hike on a long road. While hiking you collect several items and put them inside your backpack. Good things, bad things. Every object is attached with references and emotions. When creating stories, you can go sit by the road, have a picknick and open your backpack to use certain items to find the right mood. This way you’ll easily find visual elements, atmospheres to help you further on your storyquest. Bad things arent always negative. It’s your own choice to give it a negative aspect. MAKE MISTAKES, RUN INTO WALLS, DROP YOUR PANTS. Swallow, put it in your backpack and further down the road you’ll find a time and place where you can use that experience. In cliché words “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”
As I stated before, it’s important to be multidisciplanary. You don’t need to stand out in every field but you’ll learn a lot from using different media. Music will learn your more about cutting video, photography will learn you more about putting stuff in frame in a faster, efficient way. With visualart.be we tried to make a journal alike sketchbook where we explore all those fields, using different media to cross-explore possibilities.
TIP 1
Pick a random word every day, write it down and start adding references to it during the day. For example, you start with FISH, then you add cook, seaweed, bbq, sea, fisherman, atlatnis, fishsticks, beach, mermade, summerlove, boat, whale, le grand bleu (the movie), diving, etc.
This will train your brain to make connections. The more you do it, the faster you’ll be able to come up with ideas and more importantly you’ll start thinking further then the usual 1st level reference.
TIP 2
Reserve a wall in your working habitat to put stuff on.
If you see something interesting, take a picture of it, print it and put it on the wall. You see a fancy colour or typo in a magazine, cut it out, put it there. Once in a while, rearrange the wall, put things together, take off some stuff. This will be a source of inspiration for combinations.
TIP 3
When you’re brainstorming in group, think upload. Some mumbling words could trigger a reference in someone else’s mind, even if it’s farfetched or ridiculous. Als write down keywords and start referencing them.
YOU NEED CHAOS TO CREATE ORDER
Some people say I’m quite chaotic. That’s just because they havent got the same brainconnections I do. For me lots of things I do the way I do seem logic. It’s always interesting to brainstorm together with other people with different methods. Everyone has their own methods and the more people you encounter, the richer your own method will become. If you got some spare time, try to come up with a concept or idea to explore just for fun. Share it with other people and discuss it. See how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Simulations or dynamics is an artificial way of trying to make stuff move as close as the real thing.Try to use them in new different ways. They can add a sense of realism to abstract situations.
USING REAL LIFE DATA
There are several solutions to capture real life motion into useable data. Motion capture, 3D or 2D tracking software etc. It’s interesting to play with them on more abstract forms.
For example the human behaviour clip in the motion section, when viewed as a still it’s an interesting abstract form but once the mocap data applyd it gets a human behaviour. What I think is amazing, is to explore to what level, balance there is between the abstracting and recognizable level.
Make a library of 3D tracked camera moves. Take your DV cam, apply some trackable points in your room and film some specific moves or just randome camera holding. There’s some real affordable software for tracking you can use to convert the data to your software by choice.
Use filmed scenes to animate 2D elements. Track elements to parts of the video.
Discovery is an important aspect while creating.
Imagine you’re a child, your mom/dad gives you a dime, you propably gonna feel happy you got the dime and will spend it on some candy or whatever.
Now imagine you find that dime instead of getting it. The fact you found it yourself will give it a new dimension. Maybe it’s art of a treasure, maybe it’s brought to you by a fairy god mother. Etc.
Discovery triggers more feelings. It creates a sense of communication (did you notice that ?) and will create more interactivity towards a viewing crowd and will keep them more active.
Be a perfectionist, that’s what will divide you from “the others”.
Try to perfect your “Big picture”, not what you’re actually producing.
You need to leave holes for interpretation where the viewer can fill in the blankets.
Your big picture should guide the viewer, not tell the viewer what to think or feel.
It’s important to have a large knowhow for being able to get the full potential out of your medium.
Unfortunatly there are a lot of technical geniuses who get off on scripts/plugins or programming, but in meantime forget what they’re actually doing. It’s not a bad thing, we do need people like that but they should work more closely with the creative people.
I pleat for multi-disciplinary artist education. It’s important to learn why something works and what not, on all levels. Even if your job consists only of animating an eyelid of a 3D character, try to understand the big picture, imagine the rest of the animation, put a moodboard frame on your desktop, listen to the guideline music, put a coloured lightbulb in your desklamp, when needed, ask your fellow sitting next to you to dress up like heidi if that’s what you need to get visually set.