I have seen the constraint method at work – sometimes, I feel – only under constraint do we become more creative.

Photography – yup. Yet another way.

Come to think of it, after I wrote this post, many people have suggested a lot other methods to get inspired. I guess I will be doing another compilation of them.

You can fix yourself a constraint like color, shape, subject, etc, taking a dictionnary to find a word, think a this word, and the meaning and image for you.

An automated generator can be as simple than for exemple 3 lists, with :
1. a character (animal, human, monster, even object),
2. an action or more generally a verb
3. a place (less necessary)
you can decide to use a second caracter (or a second an object) depending on the verb.

This is generally enough to kickstart inspiration

Lot of writters/graphical artists take lot of notes too. Have always a little notepad on you, and fill it with ideas you see, you hear or you meet. Some life experiences. You can later search on it for ideas.

And you forgot photography !
Now than cheaper phone take photography or you have good (enough) digital camera for low price, than you can use to your computer. That could be a database of inspiration, but that’s like a notepad, it has to be heavily filled to work fine . It is often better to work after photography than other artworks too. This allow to avoid to add other artist errors to personnal errors, but can be a source of inspiration for moving own style(s) another way.

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