Inspiration tends to come to me through osmosis more than my seeking it. It seems as if I'm more humbled than inspired any time I specifically look for inspiration because I'm looking at art that I will probably never have the capacity to match. Sometimes I'll get inspiration from a gallery image, a magazine, or sometimes from a movie or some other real life source. There are times when a contest theme pushes me in a different direction and makes me think about doing something creatively around that theme. Occasionally, I'll do the equivalent of doodling in Poser where I decide to use some specific content and then let an illustration evolve somewhat organically from playing around in Poser. Concepts come and go. Some concepts and drawings go nowhere or I don't have ths skill to push them in a direction that's satisfactory. Other times, I'm really happy with the results and I've created something that wasn't initially planned for, but becomes a pleasant surprise. That surprise factor can make the end product all the more satisfying. I always have a hard time understanding how somebody can be creatively stuck when using Poser. Unlike a blank canvas, where nothing exists till an artist starts creating, Poser is a library of 3D objects waiting for something interesting to happen. I don't have to research what a viking ship looks like or find reference photos of a building to begin drawing one. All I have to do is drop them into the preview window and use that as a starting point for inspiration. When I see artists, who bemoan that they are in a creative rut, I look at their galleries and they've been doing the same narrow thematic art over and over and over. As simplistic as it sounds, all the artist has to do is try something different. Pick a different genre, use a different character or outfit. Dig out some props that have never been used before and create a new image with them. There's a lot of inspiration just sitting in our runtimes and on CDs. Every Poser artist who has bought content has tons of content they spent good money on and never used. Anybody, with creative doldrums, should try using some of the stuff they bought and buried on a CD--there had to be some reason to spend good money on it--do something with it. As I'm writing this, my brain has been background thinking how to combine a viking ship and a building. There could be a time travel story with a viking ship mysteriously transported to a modern street corner. Or, maybe the reverse idea of a viking ship sailing past a modern building and not understanding how it got there. Or, use a room inside a building where the ship is a museum piece. Or the viking ship is a toy that kids are playing with outside their apartment. There are so many different ways to let the imagination play with our Poser toys. I'm not saying "toys" in a derogative sense, but in a fun playful sense. Art should be fun and should be approached that way.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon