hey everyone welcome to proco today
we're bringing you leandro he's a
cartoonist teaches drawing design and
creativity he's been working with us for
several years making fun cartoons and
critiquing student work today he'll be
sharing some ideas about generating
ideas
if you want to see more of leandro stuff
check out a site at leanjo.art
hey people i'm leandro and like many of
you i also love creating
but sometimes coming up with new ideas
does not feel easy
i suppose you've been through that too
as artists we're meant to be creative
but we also have a lot of other stuff to
juggle we must have good fundamentals
master techniques have a unique style
many of us get so immersed in the
serious part of training that suddenly
approaching a creative problem might
feel like a challenge of epic
proportions we might get stuck even by
now
so as much as we strive to sharpen our
skills how can we also light up that
magical spark called creative fun
well there are some tricks we can play
to shift ourselves into a more creative
mindset
so today i'd like to share with you four
strategies i often use when i'm coming
up with ideas for my cartoons and comics
they usually help me and hopefully they
might do the same for you
trick number one be prolific
an artist is tearing at a blank canvas
sounds familiar let's take a closer look
hmm it seems that their brain is working
trying to be creative
let's look even closer
huh see
a lot of ideas in there
but they're still locked in waiting for
that little door to open
suddenly
the eureka moment
the artist is compelled to grasp that
idea with all their power and turn it
into an art piece as skillfully as they
can but is this one idea worth it
already
what about all those other ideas should
we have a chance
you see ideas are connections our brains
make and they make a lot of connections
every day not all the connections are
necessarily creative
and since our brains are great at
optimizing tasks the first ideas we
think of are usually the ones that
require the least amount of thinking
effort thus probably the more common or
more obvious ones the ones that probably
won't lead us to our most creative work
we might get lucky sometimes but more
often than not creative thinking takes
time to brew so what do we do well we
don't grasp we take it easy acknowledge
that first idea as one of the
possibilities set it aside this could
mean writing it down to keep a record
and then we let the brain keep working
so that other ideas may come out as well
in other words we aim to be prolific
teeming abundant
thinking creatively is often about
having a lot of ideas
it is not rare for the more creative
ones to be way back behind in line
trick number two
let it flow
the second and probably most important
thing is to be open
we often judge ideas within a spectrum
of good and bad
but doing this too soon can smash her
creativity and shut us down to
possibilities
so in brainstorming the best we can do
is try to dial down that inner judge
and instead cultivate the natural
thinking process
the good ideas the bad ones
the weird or silly ones
and even the ones that don't make a lot
of sense
just let them all flow in
they're all part of the process and none
of them is a final statement yet
they're all still just feed stump
later on we can make time to be
selective and decide which one or which
ones we will actually develop but at
this early stage
how we judge our ideas really doesn't
matter much
brainstorming is simply about making the
ideas happen
hello fellow artists do you like coming
up with good ideas and want to put them
to paper my name is dr scott flanders
but i'm not really a doctor and i know a
thing or two about bringing wild ideas
to life all you have to do is join me in
the monster lab
i'll teach you how to grab hold of your
innovative ideas designing characters
from start to finish so head on down to
the lab you can find it at proco.com
monsterlab me and my monsters will be
waiting
trick number three
mess around
creativity is often about solving
problems when it comes to problem
solving most adults want to be practical
objective and efficient it makes sense
but the thing is our creative minds
usually thrive with a more childlike
approach
for example you yeah you've been a kid
before right do you remember how good it
was to play to dive in and just have fun
with your own stuff however you want it
well play is the field for creative
thinking kids play all the time and have
sort of a natural drive for creativity
for us adults the key is to redeem that
sense of playfulness when we want to get
creative
yeah i know it's not always easy we have
demands and deadlines and goals and a
far more powerful ability to be
self-critical
but here's a good place to start
instead of going straight to the first
logical solution
deliberately take just a bit of time to
ramble to get curious to speculate and
ask what if when we start to mess around
shift things and mix it up
it's common for ideas to appear
so far so good it's time for trick
number four our ultimate creative idea
generating hack
the semiotic blender
semiosis is basically our ability to
associate stuff and generate meaning the
semiotic blender is then a simple
exercise that can help us take different
concepts and
combine them into a new mix
here's how the exercise goes
pick two or three random words they will
be the starting point
if we have freedom it's usually more
interesting if the words are somewhat
unrelated to each other
think of several different ways these
words can be combined merged and blended
together to become a drawing
feel free to mess around and remember to
be prolific and let it flow
take notes of everything
if you like
you can do quick little thumbnails
some people like to use mind mapping
techniques
personally i find it best to not start
drawing just yet
but simply write down my ideas as a list
on a paper or in a note-taking app
feel free to do this however you prefer
just do it in a way that helps keep your
stream thoughts flowing
now let's see how this works in practice
i'm gonna ask my assistants to pick up
some random words for me
[Music]
okay the words i have are rabbit
dress and precious
now gotta turn them into a drawing right
well the first thing that comes to my
mind is
a rabbit wearing a dress and jewelry
full of precious stones
not too shabby maybe this could already
become a fun drawing
but just for fun and since we're trying
to be creative and look for less obvious
solutions here let's take this further
and apply the other tricks too
open up our minds play around for a bit
and have a bunch of other ideas
perhaps imagining stories might help
let's say the rabbit is a king wearing
fancy props
or a burglar hiding in a stolen object
perhaps a bride anticipating the big
moment
maybe it's a loving mama with her
children
or what if it's the easter bunny he
could be chilling after long working
hours
that's nice i like the variety of ideas
and situations
although i'm noticing the word rabbit
has always been used as a character so
far
let me see if i can deliberately steer
this in other directions
what if rabbit is not a character but a
prop maybe a stuffed animal
or what if it's the theme for a baby's
bedroom decoration
[Music]
maybe it's how the siblings will show up
on halloween
it could be an archaeological treasure
or pricey way to cause a peel
okay cool now that we've broadened the
horizon a bit i wonder if i could find
even less obvious blends
let's keep going on with that in mind
maybe it's an episode of identity crisis
[Music]
or surprisingly odd performance
if it's a family picture
perhaps it's about an incident at the
playground
or it could be the unexpected fondness
for a specific music style
whoa the last ones went so far i almost
lost track of the initial prompts but
that's how semiosis works and it's
potentially infinite i bet you'd come up
with stuff i didn't think of
so we could just keep going on and on
and on and on and on
these different ideas have one thing in
common
they all came from the same semantic
network
a web of meanings and concepts
associated with the words dress rabbit
and precious
some combinations are a bit more obvious
more immediate
while others are more metaphorical
and sometimes even diverge quite
dramatically from the starting words yet
somehow are prompted by them
now you may say i don't like that idea
well okay
but just remember that deciding which
ideas we like and which we don't should
be a different part of the process
when we want to just generate ideas the
best we can do is to put the judge on
hold and simply welcome everything
generating ideas is awesome and it's
definitely a skill we can all practice
and sharpen if you find this interesting
go ahead and try it allow yourself a few
minutes of some creative jam very
important keep it fun
thank you for watching and thank you
stan and the proco team
thanks guys if you enjoyed this video
make sure to check out his website
and if you want to see leandro teach a
full course on proco let me know in the
comments
see you next time
[Music]