Finding Your Muse and Spinning Your Wheels: Assignment 1B

Mitch Ditkoff's "14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas" is, in my opinion, a very useful article about different ways to brainstorm to shake out or conjure up any, as Ditkoff puts it, brilliant ideas. I would definitely recommend this article to anyone struggling with his or her normal brainstorming methods and would like ideas on how to do it differently.

Here is a link to the article: 14 Ways to Get Breakthrough Ideas

Ditkoff starts off his article by detailing the two schools of thought behind coming up with ideas. The first school entails the coming up of ideas through rigorous and purposeful mental ability, a western approach championed by Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. This school believes that ideas are primarily of conscious origin. The second school prescribes to the idea of the transcedencey of ideas, that they already exist, but are only revealed to those specifically in tuned to receive them. Think of the concepts of the muse or the collective unconsciousness. This school of thought is the inverse to the first, characterized by the Cartesian view “I am, therefore I think”. This school believes that ideas are primarily of the subconscious realm.

Ditkoff goes on to say that both approaches are valid and that very likely our own views are a hybrid of the two. He then introduces his 14 ways by saying that the only thing needed for these to work is the willingness to try something new. For the remainder of this entry, I will pluck out three of his fourteen ways to review and throw in my two cents.

1. “Follow Your Fascination” – In this one Ditkoff talks about how if we are fascinated by something it is calling out to us.

I think that this one might be the most, if not in the tippy top, important thing you can do as an artist. If something is fascinating to you, as Ditkoff mentions, there might be something meaningful to explore behind that fascination. I know that, in my personal work, that if what I’m working on does not enthrall my interests, it’s not going be fun and, if I learned anything in MDIA 101, it’s that if your not passionate about your work, it’s going to feel like work and that is the worst thing that can happen to your outlook. I myself, when something strikes my fancy, tend to voraciously eat up any and all information about said subject and help the creative gears inside my head turn so that I might extrapolate new and original ideas. This is a very good suggestion of Ditkoff’s.

5. “Fantasize” – Ditkoff explains in this that in our society the word fantasize conjures up only images of children or perverts, an unfortunate thing seeing as our future employers want fantastic ideas, but no fantasizing. He says to throw out that notion and fantasize more often.

This is another good suggestion of Ditkoff’s, as the use of the imagination is one of the most important components to creative thinking, it what’s separates us from the machines such as Deep Blue (as used in the example in the actual article). No matter how much we strive to define things rationally and logically, there will always be the longing to free ourselves of that logic and immerse ourselves in the fantastical. I occasionally indulge myself in little daydreams, letting them float here and there within my brain letting what wanders in and out to do so freely. This has been useful as often times I will spot and idea or concept or character that I like and save it for possible use at a later date.

12. “Look for Happy Accidents” – Ditkoff discuss in this method the process of turning one’s mistakes into new ideas.

This one, while a good suggestion, is most likely the most difficult of the 14 methods. If you’re like me, you get frustrated at your making of mistakes and only admit that your less than perfect through gritted teeth and much to your chagrin. However, if you can soldier past your “failures” you can turn those “failures” into new venues for ideas. Personally, when drawing something, occasionally I’ll mess up and erase, but when I look at the work as a whole, I’ll notice how the “failed” part of the drawing sparks a whole new drawing in my mind and opens up new avenue to travel down in my imagination.

For the ending of this update, I’m going to take one of Ditkoff’s methods and see through it to completion. The method I’ll be exploring is Method #1 – Follow Your Fascination.

~What new idea is fascinating you?~

A new idea that has peaked my interest as of late is the notion of using music, or sound as form of weapon. Specifically in an RPG setting, but being advanced enough to have some of the instruments I was thinking about weapon-izing (see: saxophone).

~What new possibility has captured your attention?~

At first, when thinking about weapon-izing music, I only thought about using the music to conjure forth different elemental magics. I thought that perhaps since different types of instruments could produce different sounds, they would produce different magics when used. But then I thought, what if they were not only instruments, but physical weapons as well? This led me to devise different weapon/instrument hybrids, such as an Axe/Saxophone hybrid.

~In what ways can you honor this inspiration today?~

How I can honor this inspiration is research different instruments and weapons on the Internet so that I might better be able to amalgamate them together into the musical weapons I desire. By looking at pictures of instruments on the Internet, I’ll also be able to draw the instruments more realistically in my concept art.