Apr 25, 2010
Finding Inspiration
Written on June 28th, 2010
Sometimes we can be walking down the street or driving in our car and then all of the sudden, BAM! An idea comes to you and you know the minute you get home you wanna start drawing it or modeling it or doing whatever creative thing you like to do. Other times, you know you want to express yourself creatively but the ideas just aren't coming to you. How do we solve this? We look for inspiration...well, I do anyways. Here are a few places I go to when I am running a little low on the imagination.
1 - DeviantArt
Being what is probably the most popular art community, DeviantArt is a good place to go to get some inspiration. While there are many horrible works, big scribbly messes, and debatably non-artistic nude photos (if ya know what I mean), there are many amazingly well put together pieces of art that can really get the juices flowing. Being able to sort the categories allows you to look for the kind of works you want to look at and being able to sort by popularity can weed out the most crappy ones. Although, it works the other way too. Sometimes you will have to dig for some good stuff that is covered up by the non-artistic nudes and the popular artists that really shouldn't be popular.
2 - CGSociety
While DeviantArt has the sheer amount of art behind them, CGSociety has the talent. CGSociety is my favorite place to go when I want ideas. I haven't found any art on that site that wasn't worthy of a good deal praise. As a bonus, they tend to have great articles that go over how CG is used in popular movies and you can learn a great deal of tricks and methods for doing your own works. There are a few drawbacks though. The first that their gallery is in forum format, so you will be constantly scrolling down to see all the images and you cannot really find the very very best works because pretty much everything that gets rated is given a perfect 4 stars and some older images are buried because of the forum format. Also, there are no categories, so everything is pretty much jumbled together. However, all the art is pretty much sci-fi/fantasy or portraits anyways so it's not too big of a deal.
3 - Smashing Magazine
This site is slightly more shifted to web design but even if that isn't your thing, they still have great stuff for inspiration. While using the main inspiration page via the inspiration link in their menu you will find mostly web design stuff, so if you are into that, this is a perfect place for you. But if you want to avoid the web design, there is a nice wallpaper section that should suit you. The only issue with this is that, just as you may expect, all the wallpapers are pretty much abstract or fanboy (Mac, Firefox, video games, Windows, etc.) stuff. However, if you search for wallpapers (via Google, Bing, Yahoo...) you can find some great artwork, but the thing about those sites that bugs me is that I haven't seen anyone give any credit to the original artist unless it was the artist himself who uploaded it.
4 - Go for a drive/walk/jog/bike ride...
All my other places are websites, but sometimes just going out and thinking to yourself and looking at the scenery can the the ideas flowing. There isn't much more to it and there really is no downside (unless you drive, then you are paying for the gas) and a little exercise is good for ya.
5 - Vandalay Design
This site is my favorite place to go when I need ideas for web design. There is a great design inspiration section that sorts well designed sites into nice categories in terms of the style of the site. The great thing about these is that the sites are live as well, so you can actually go to the site, play with the links and such rather than being stuck with an image of one. There are many other blogs that have great lists as well, but I always find myself starting here.
Those are my main destinations for inspiration and ideas but there are tons more places to go to. If you have a place that deserves a link, post 'em in the comments we'd love to see them.