After dedicating my adult life to a creative pursuit such as the video game industry, I am no stranger to ideas. I see everyone around me being just as inspired and imaginative as I am. These days, it is easy to see how a simple idea can quickly make a person very famous or wealthy. For the most part, I believe that this is why people see and associate tangible value in thoughts and ideas; particularly their own. In many cases, people will insist on others signing a legal agreement before they even mention their ideas to anyone. To those people, a grand idea is a rare commodity that should be protected until they are ready to show. The truth however, is that to a truly creative person, ideas are things that come and go frequently.
People are afraid to share their ideas with anyone. It has become a coveted commodity and when they finally get it, they won't let it go. As far as I'm concerned, this is stifling our creative industries.
An idea is something that people create in their minds that they desire to share with the world. One of the best ways to do this in an artistic media is to produce something people can absorb and that fulfills the idea to the best of its intention. This way there is the potential for people to be fully engrossed in the message or concept and what was once a thought, has become as close to a reality as ever possible. As an artist, I have more of an ability to bridge the gap between what is in my mind and what is real whether it be through writing, a drawing or a game. Because of this, I know that nobody could ever produce the ideas that I have better than me. After all, who better to create the idea than the person who had the idea in the first place?
For a lot of creative people, that is the case but in many circumstances, someone may lack the skills or resources to put the idea into motion. In that situation it is even more important to share ones ideas. By putting an idea out into the world, it can help to inspire other people to take it and mold it into their own creation. After all, creativity seeds from a base of knowledge and experience and that idea could be all it takes to inspire someones own creation. This is a much better alternative than letting the idea sit where nothing can be done with it. Even if the idea that was shared is taken by someone who just wants to copy it, there would still be aspects of the idea that only its creator would be aware of and consider while creating it and that would make it stand out as its own truly unique product.
While in college, Tyler Coleman found himself with way too many ideas. As a creative person, it was a non stop flow and was probably cumbersome in some cases. He thought of how much he valued the ideas and wanted to see them made real but unfortunately, at the time it would have been impossible for him to make all of these ideas himself. He might not have had enough time or resources or even the skill to create them. Instead of locking the ideas away in his head never to be seen again, he decided to create a blog of his own that was open to the public and would catalog all of the ideas that he valued but wasn't ready to create. Now that blog is long gone but today, Tyler is in the processes of moving all those ideas from his computer, to a more contemporary web page.
Random Thoughts is a Tumblr that in the future will host all of Tyler's ideas that he is not ready to create himself. I'm sure that when the time comes, he will be taking back from that pool of thoughts and applying them to projects as time goes on but for now, it will be there for anyone to read, give feedback on, be inspired by, and blatantly copy from as they wish and they are free to do so. This is a practice I wish more people would take part in because the more ideas we have out in the open, the more interesting the industry would become and the faster it would grow.
If you want to be part of this Tumblr and share your ideas you can follow it and post comments. If you follow This Link you can even submit your idea to Tyler who will be posting them to the Tumblr for everyone to see!
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