Creativity

A friend of mine just wrote a post about creative people (Jon Varner's Blog). His bottom line was that not everyone is creative and he wanted to know how the brain of a creative person works. I thought I'd share a bit about how my brain functions when I get a creative idea.

My brain has three creative settings: modify, visual, and event.

Modify:
Since I was a kid, I always had this tendency to see things as potential to be something else. For example, you might see an empty can of Monster energy drink and think it's trash (or recyclable). I see it as a mini-sculpture of an actual monster.
When I see something, I can't help but imagine what else it could be. I have a habit of taking things apart :)

Visual:
I am a very visual person. I'm able to close my eyes and picture a design in full detail... before it's made. When I have a basic idea of something that I need to make in photoshop, I'm able to close my eyes, add/change/remove elements of the image in my head, and have the final product laid out in detail in my mind. From there, I just get on Photoshop and copy what I have stored in my noggin.
The same goes for video. I already know exactly what the movie is going to look like way before I even start a script. Sometimes I'll listen to music that we're planning on using. I just close my eyes, listen to the same score over and over, and I produce the movie in my head, one shot at a time. Then, I just make the movie match what I thought of.

Event:
Event creativity can be many things. For example, what happens on a flash site that I make? Or how can this game be more fun? Basically, making an experience fun/better.
I'll typically see something that gives me a very basic idea of something fun. I'll close my eyes and imagine, "What would it be like "A B and C?" From there, ideas just start flowing. "After C, it would awesome if D E F!" And so on. Whenever I see an event or have an idea, my primary thought is, "How can this be added to/tweaked/improved."

So, basically, my creativity comes to me when I'm able to relax, close my eyes, and visualize all the great possible outcomes. That doesn't mean that everything I come up with is gold. The bacon belt was a huge failure! <--- but that's where my creativity comes in. Now I'm going to make a bacon belt and link it to this post. Why? Because it's funny. So look out for that.

I have absolutely no musical talent! Musicians are extremely talented and creative. I'm also colorblind, so I'm never really paying attention to color and lighting... just shapes :)

And that's the mind of my creative personality. What about you? How does your brain work? Are you creative? Leave a comment!