Ever hit a creative dry spell?

I'm currently in a creative slump. I used to be teeming with character ideas. My problems would revolve around trying to get the costume creator to match up to my mental image, or trying to most closely match what I thought the character's powers should be.

Lately, I've got nothing. I have to start by deciding what AT/powersets I'm interested in and then putter about trying to come up with something visually appealing to strike my fancy and hopefully stir up a ghost of an idea as to the origin. Not to mention coming up with some sort of fitting name.

I feel that's quite normal for anyone who is creatively inclined. You can't keep coming up with new and amazing ideas from the same pool of inspiration time and time again without suddenly realising you're running out of material and not knowing what to do. The trick is solving the problem, and I have a couple of suggestions, if you're interested.

The first and easiest is to just branch out. Watch more movies, play other games, read books. Basically, expose yourself to as much of other people's fiction as you can and don't think about things too much. Sooner or later you'll come up against something that makes you go "Bloody hell! That is so cool! I want one of those!" That's how inspiration starts, much as we try to deny it. Find a character in some fighting game, some obscure anime, some fancy cartoon or some such that just seems cool and try to roll with that. See if you can't make your own that's kind of like that.

The other solution is a bit harder to achieve, but I've found that it REALLY helps. Find someone to bounce ideas off of, preferably someone who's going to discuss with you, rather than just be a spectator. Present your idea seeds, ask questions, take opinions, deconstruct, reconstruct and keep going until something pops up. It's not always from anything either of you suggests. Sometimes just laying it all down into words helps you see new angles.

But whatever you do, don't just keep wailing at it when you're out of inspiration. You'll just sour yourself on the concept, and possibly on the entire franchise.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Head over to SeventhSanctum.com and mess with some of the superhero name generators (or power name generators). You can hit some seriously spiffy names, which then in turn might help you come up with something for CoH.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

When I transferred a particular character over during the recent free transfers, for some reason I lost the bio. I remember what the basic idea was, but the specifics and how I worded it all are forgotten. I've started putting something in again a few times, but every time it just looked bad, and the character concept seems a lot less interesting now than it did. (Of course, whether it was interesting to anyone else but me in the first place is up for debate, but still.)

Similar things have happened before too. I was driving home from work or grocery shopping, had a flash of inspiration, and hurried home...only to hit a wall when it comes to actually putting it down so that it makes sense. I have a Fire/Storm Corruptor for example that I came up with an excellent name for, and I had an idea of what her background would be, but when I start typing it out it gets lamer and dumber by the word. The devil is in the details. Probably doesn't help that I'm wordy as heck anyway, as you can probably tell by this post, "short and sweet" is not one of my skills, and the flaws just get more and more highlighted.

So yes, I feel ya.

I feel your pain.

Lately it seems like my characters keep turning into catgirls from anime and my fix for it was to make a catguy

Definitely. My INV/SS Tanker made it all the way to 50 before I could think up a bio for him.

WARNING: I bold names.

I feel like I'm in a perpetual creative slump.

I never have very good ideas for my characters, so I end up deleting them all before they get to level 8. (The 2 in my sig are my ONLY characters)

I would have to say "no"

Let us help you, Ten. I gots me ideas to burn.