Creativity cultivation

For years of doing animation and some designs I've been learning things that was helping me earn more because I can apply my skills and can easily find freelance projects that's easy to accomplish.

I didn't bother about fulfilling creative reserves. Didn't learn Design in the University. For me it was questionable when someone was telling that learning how were created paintings of great masters will help you to design better in Photoshop.

Technical things is all I was interested about. What does each particular tool in the application, but I wasn't thinking about what you can do with your imagination, PLUS some application. I wasn't training myself to see and solve creative problems.

When it was needed to start the project, it was the moment when everything stops and you just can't make a step towards the solution. But what the main problem, I couldn't see clearly the final goal and was unable to build the path towards this goal. And it was impossible to do on that stage.

Creative problem solving requires research, discovering, practice and attempts. Thinking about the best optimal route from the beginning till the end will not lead you anywhere. It's needed to be constantly in the environment, where you can fail safe.

Practice play grants you the possibility to transform your unconscious, childish, artistic and emotional senses to grow on the rocks of technical skills. If environment will be supportive and suitable for growth - one day your creative tree may bloom.

Good news is that you may not rely on higher forces, and build your creative environment by yourself. It's necessity. Without supporting own creative growth and environment it will be slow resource depletion. 🙁

Build your creative environment. Surround yourself with things that are boosting your imagination, fun, joy, style, health and mood.

Remove distractions, limitations, negativity and any type of demotivations. Remove bad content and fill free space with creative sources.

Transition from creative observer to catalyst is not a one day event. It's a gradual transformation. Invest time and you will adapt.

Keep practicing and have fun

Find one word or describe your project as a word and build new associations around it. Use this mind map to describe similarities and characteristics that can be later easily applied for building mood boards and design boards. It helps to find grounding and explanation for your design and animation thoughts and approaches. Why did you use such lines, textures, shades, colors and proportions. It gives many variations, the rest is to clean up those arrays of information and imagery to focus on some best options.

If your place of work will be reminding about your life path, it will be much easier to move forward. Rearrange and improve, replace if something limits your thought process.

Journaling

"Jour" is a Day on French. Daily noting your thoughts will help you become more comfortable with daily planning. Sometimes everything grows from what you've done at this moment. Step by step, Line by line, outlining your future, directed by your senses, imagination and spontaneous sparks of ideas. Maybe not always controllable, but Yours. We can't avoid mistakes. At least, we can write them down and then track the process to eliminate wrong choices next time.

Set deadlines

Can't avoid some TikTok/Shorts time? Check your Digital wellbeing application on your mobile. Learn how much time do you spend on these videos.

Or try to use intervals for each task. I've tried with Pomodoro 25 minutes intervals, but it's quite limiting to use the mobile each time for some tasks. Probably later will do a research about using it with Smart Watches.

Short deadlines it's what stops from spending too much time for nothing. Expectation of accomplishing something within some period of time can be stressful. But if you'll find how to deconstruct the task into very simple tasks, it will be quite easy to adjust to your style of work and capabilities.

Harder routes, not the hardest please

Train yourself for gradual loads. Don't push yourself into the Hell, without the chance of surviving. It gives nothing except the fear, even if you'll survive. You will have a long pause before you'll try to return back to such type of trials. This breaks the chain of learning and practice. Your approach should be based on a relatively constant rate of absorbing information and learning some cool tricks. That's why creative environment will be helpful to build the tunnel/bridge, through which you'll be able to escape from the area of mediocrity.

Engage with the world

It's cooler to stay in the shadow during the hot day. But the Sun isn't so bad in small doses. The Sun shines equally for everyone, so why not bring clarity and light on yourself and what you're doing. People can see and find interesting ideas of such a great person like you, especially if there's something cute and fun. Being open minded, smiling and non egoistic builds connections with others. It's supportive and rewarding, when the rainy days will be a constant thing.

Observer or Catalyst

It's a personal choice. Same as how we learn to ride a bike or drive a car. It's needed to change the speed, feel the road and know the traffic rules. When you do it daily - it's something simple and normal. You can drive, listen to the music and signal to other drivers, and someone will feel your vibe, and will smile or beep in response.

Life is not just a pain and starvation, take it simpler as like a journey. Your reaction is what people read and interpret immediately. If it's sparkling and moving, it will bring you to new horizons. And someone always will be helping you while bright imagination will be lighting the road.

Till the next time. Have a nice MotionDay!

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