Post written by Renato Vargas. Follow me on Twitter.
Some say creativity cannot be forced; that it is something that is either there or it is not; that you either have it or you don’t. Does that mean that you have to sit around and just wait for it to strike you? Well, I say NO, because if I learned one thing is that the longer you sit around doing nothing, the further away you get from being creative. Especially for people who do not necessarily work in a field related to their creative passion. It’s hard to keep up with your daily life, and then come home and burst into a creative frenzy. It is true that you cannot will yourself to be an excellent animator, or just force yourself to have an excellent idea, but there are certain elements of the creative process that you can be intentional about that will eventually lead to a creative explosion. This is not a new idea, but I would like to share with you how I’m slowly applying it to my animation project.
An update on Rezadores’ character development.
You have to intentionally set time aside for your magic. An hour’s work can be very rewarding.
The idea behind being intentional about your creative process is that you have to make an appointment with yourself to develop your skills and to simply, well… use them. In that time, you have to give a hundred percent, as if you were getting paid to work on your project, and the client expects nothing but greatness from you. Play with your craft, be curious about new techniques, but do it for the sake of it and not because you expect compensation. Of course, to be able to do that, you have to take in stimulus, not passively, but in an active and focused manner.
What does this mean? If you were working on an animation about Africa, for example, it would be in order to spend some time researching about the wildlife there, maybe do an internet photo search about the place, familiarize yourself with the physical appeareance of the people that live there, or listen to some sounds that were recorded there. You probably knew that, but what you don’t know is when or what to do with all the materials you’ve researched. This is the tricky part.
You have to set time aside for three things: taking in stimulus, processing that stimulus, and putting things into practice. In that time, the activities you do must reflect an interest in seeing how you can apply the things you perceive to your current project or problem. This is how I’m doing it:
1. One hour a day for me and my creative self. You might be asking, “hey, didn’t he say he’d only be animating three days a week?” You are right, that doesn’t mean that I’m not doing anything on the other days. The actual animation is my practice. The other days I might take in stimulus, process it, or just find another creative outlet (like writing posts about the whole thing 
). I try to make a schedule, and if you want to do so at this point, I suggest you do it on a weekly basis. That way, in any given week, you are able to direct more of your attention to any of the three steps I described. At the beginning of any project you might want to spend more days a week taking in stimulus. Later, you might want to cut down on your stimulus intake, to favor the processing part, and once you are well aware of what you want, you might spend more days just creating, until your next project comes along.
2. One hour, and one hour only. Start with a little until it becomes a habit. Oftentimes, when people read posts like this one, they get enthusiastic and set their expectations too high. They think: “Hey, I have more than an hour a day, I can spend three hours doing all this”. Eventually, they get burned, and drop the whole thing altogether. Start with an hour a day. Half an hour would be better. Everyone has half an hour to spare. Refrain yourself a little in order to go on longer. At this point, I realized I was more receptive to creative thoughts at night, so I decided to have my unnecesary creating time around seven in the evening. Some days I’ll animate, others I’ll just work on some concept art or write some thoughts on the subject.
3. Taking in stimulus is an active endeavor. Things like watching youtube videos can be considered stimulus if you take an active approach when doing them. This means that you have to think about whatever project you are working on when you sit down to watch awesome animations on youtube. I will take a blank piece of paper and I’ll write down interesting things I see that can be applied to my project. Is there a cool effect they are using? Are there any interesting camera angles being used? It doesn’t matter; try to get ideas from an otherwise useless activity. Do you have to do this all the time? NO. Remember, this is something you will do in your Unnecessary Creating Time; your hour for yourself.
4. Process your stimulus. The next day, after you’ve taken in stimulus of any kind (web vids, movies, art, television, magazines, etc.) you have to sit down and let your mind generate new thoughts based on what you’ve absorbed. Remember, you don’t have to copy people styles. You are coming up with your own ideas about things. I will take the notes that I wrote when taking in stimulus and think hard about them (maybe, the following day). I then write something about my project or draw some concepts based on that stimulus, taking advantage of what inspired me. New brain connections are created at this point, and you are able to see things under a different light.
5. Apply what you’ve learned. Hopefully, after taking in all that stimulus on purpose and processing it, you will be eager to use it on your project. That means that when your animating day comes you will be full of ideas of what to do and how to do them. This is when your body switches to auto-pilot and creative explosions happen. Put things into practice. Work your magic!
Staying creative is a crucial part of the animation process for hobbyists (and even for professionals, I think). You have to build disciplines and be intentional about some aspects of the creative process, to be able to respond creatively when the time comes. As I said before, the ideas expressed here are not original. They are just how I’m interpreting and applying them to the animation process. If you want to learn more about this subject, I suggest you visit Todd Henry’s Accidental Creative site and listen to his podcasts.
I would be delighted if you shared your thoughts on this subject in the comments.