hi all after i had to reformat and lost all, i find myself with no inspiration for new ideas. i feel i need to customize my desktop but I guess I'm not inspired enough to put the heavy work in right now.
where do you guys do for an inspiration and uh, what suites or vs do you guys fall back on when you are in that kind of situation?
=]
02:41 am, Sunday, September 23, 2007 (2 years ago)
A good thing to do when you want to customize, but you have no ideas, is to start rebuilding a great setup of someone else. This will often lead to good ideas how to make this setup your own and if not, leaves you with a great desktop and some hours of fun. Plus you might even learn something new...
My fall back visual style has always been Windows Classic with a nice colour scheme.
hey, maby someone can tell me how to make my own stuff cause i saw this custom skinns and i got inspired so i joined ...but i dont know where to start or how to start. help
sometimes for fresh ideas you need to step away and let your mind do other stuff, meanwhile your subconscious toils away while incorporating the new stimuli.
i think a walk in the woods is pretty stellar in this regard.
i can agree w pep on starting a tribute desk for inspiration, some of my most well-received submissions on here were mutations of tribute desks.
as far as an extremely quick, comfortable set up, look no further than elfin2 with the tango patcher applied, along with a minimal wall, maybe some grass.
Thanks for the suggestions... I have indeed been trying to do other things, improving my skills. Inspired by colossus and ether's stuff, so spending all my time googling for techniques and about 3d imaging. Also trying to learn how to make a custom internet start page (everyone seems to know how to do it and I don't =[ )
thanks for the suggestions nitzua and colossus I will try one of them. atm I am using akka's SONE, because ithink it has a sort of 'generic' feel to it.
Often the "inspiration's well is dry" sort of feeling can come about from too much, not too little. Biologically/anthropologically speaking, it's a wonder any of us can even function in our typical environments with such a constant bombardment of sensual stimuli of every sort.
Much of these "background" stimuli have been specifically designed by professionals explicitly to breakthrough your own inherent guards against too much, too soon.
Consider the startled animal.
Once a threat is identified, everything else goes away. The entire biological/sensual system blocks out everything but "predator" . . . "escape". . .
That focus is what allows our adrenaline to flow to the parts/pieces of us needing the extra burst.
When we sit down at a computer we tend to turn our focus away from everything else and "enter" into that world. This is why the "total gaming environment" gives you such a rush--with sensory overload coming at you from all (apparent) directions, Your system starts loading the adrenaline and shipping it straight to your sensory selection/processing centers.
Ever wonder why people tense their muscles (especially arm and major leg muscle groups) when playing on an especially intense system? It's the adrenaline, baby!
But having a one track mind. . ."predator--escape" (or "prey--attack") doesn't do much for the ole' creative juices. When you are running for your life you are extremely unlikely to be composing your bes Haiku. . .
Yet we also learn from patterns of behavior. Like Pavlov's dog, we start to anticipate (the dog came to so closely associate the bell and great food that it would start salivating--a task that is autonomous, not one you can consciously start--whenever the bell rang, even if there was no food anywhere around)
For many of us, especially the heavy gamers, as soon as we sit in front of the computer screen and pick up our controls, our body starts ramping up for the action. Our adrenaline starts to pump and we quickly lose track of anything not coming from the computer.
Adrenaline is not without cost, however.
Inspiration, contemplation, the ability to take a variety of perspectives: These all get shut down very quickly.
So if we want to find that creative juice (especially if it is to imagine anything that isn't blood-n-metal-n- unknown terrors) we have to find a way to get our heads out of that adrenaline-pumping state.
Because our bodies have already been conditioned to start the pre-adrenaline work whenever we sit down at the computer--even without turning the thing on--we have to look elsewhere for inspiration that is not simply a derivative of a scene (or vague impression) of a game.
Just willing it to happen won't do a thing. We are not beings even capable of "thinking outside" our biological systems, for it is our biological systems that enable us to think.
I have found that if I want a burst of inspiration, I need a setting that is not already associated in my mind with high-paced, attention-focused action. Sometimes having a second computer set up can allow this, some people have found success in going to the library to sign on one of their computers for a little while, still others need to read books. The aforementioned "walk in the woods" is great, particularly because instead of a focused burst of stimuli, we are exposed to a rich world of subtle sounds, textures and smells.
This, by the way, is why meditation of one sort or another helps so many people do the rest of the things they do, better.
What I do when I run out of inspiration but want to customize would be darn near the same thing as Pep.
Except I add, I don't necessarily fall back on stuff. But I fall back on viewing the same users old stuff for inspiration. Aero, Pep (and his many accounts), other misc. Litesteppers, etc. WinT.
Even if I've seen the screen shot a thousand times I still end up looking at the same ones over and over again. And still always find something new that I want to try or something.
And yeah, I emulate another desktop to use as my system for the time being. Hence why I'm using Nitzua's Midsummer Classic setup as my own. :P
Dopamine in the mesolimbic pathway increases general arousal and goal directed behaviors and decreases latent inhibition; all three effects increase the creative drive of idea generation. This has led to a three-factor model of creativity involving the frontal lobes, the temporal lobes, and mesolimbic dopamine.
I do think raised dopamine levels would increase creativity. Just like you listen to your most inspiring music whilst completely deprived of inspiration.
If you're more happy than usual you're more likely to want to create something I think. I dunno. I felt creative just yesterday but then preceded to get to pissed off to do anything about it.
Also I don't think that's Adz. I've discovered his tell-tale sign, and it's not there.
Also: another thing that I've noticed and talked about with other customizers is that a wallpaper will usually inspire one to create skins to go with it.
So I would probably tell you to spend the majority of your time searching for that certain wallpaper (or image to make into wallpaper) that grabs you and almost yells at you to create skins to go with it.
I am probably reiterating what has already been said.
I have indeed found, at least in my eyes, that a wallpaper either makes or breaks a look, and is really almost a foundation for the whole entire setup :o
I've been dong just that, pyro, I totally agree with you I've been looking for that special wallpaper ^_-
