Sources of inspiration thread

[mcc]

Three awesome tumblr's full of random but intriguing videogame images:

http://noirlac.tumblr.com/ (when Kevin wins, the planet loses)
http://spikemaze.tumblr.com/ (Anna Anthropy's Time Tunnel)
http://fmtownsmarty.tumblr.com/ (FMTOWNS Marty, posts images from Japanese horror / eroge PC releases)

These never fail to get me going when in a lull.

Oh! Also useful for these purposes is weird5cience, which to me is the tumblr to end all tumblrs (some NSFW images?!):

http://weird5cience.tumblr.com/

Just thousands and thousands of animated GIFs of 80s ephemera and NES games glitching and it just keeps going forever.

[Alistair Aitcheson]

I've been inspired for quite a while now by the Godzilla movies, but I've still not managed to come up with a cool game based around them! Something about the rubber suits, and the mix of awesome punch-ups and kitch value that I really love.

Cinemassacre ran a video series on them once, and that's what started me off. Recommended viewing :)

Also these animations by Cyriak

[AndrewFM]

I find Eyvind Earle's art to be particularly inspirational, especially in terms of environmental design.

Mary Blair's art is also really good.

[Ian Snyder]

Oh man, what excellent colors!

[Stephen L (inactive)]

I heartily concur!

[Bread]

Three awesome tumblr's full of random but intriguing videogame images:

http://noirlac.tumblr.com/ (when Kevin wins, the planet loses)
http://spikemaze.tumblr.com/ (Anna Anthropy's Time Tunnel)
http://fmtownsmarty.tumblr.com/ (FMTOWNS Marty, posts images from Japanese horror / eroge PC releases)

These never fail to get me going when in a lull.

Oh! Also useful for these purposes is weird5cience, which to me is the tumblr to end all tumblrs (some NSFW images?!):

http://weird5cience.tumblr.com/

Just thousands and thousands of animated GIFs of 80s ephemera and NES games glitching and it just keeps going forever.

That Tumblr is so amazing, I've spent the last maybe hour just scrolling down it remembering things from my childhood. Thank you.

I've also found tons of inspiration for stuff by just searching keywords in Tumblr, like architecture or landscape. It's a pretty brilliant website.

[NoxiousHamster]

Some abandoned theme parks:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2344523
http://home.f01.itscom.net/spiral/t_rando/t_rando1.html
http://sbno.illicitohio.com/menu.html

An amazing short film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH5sacgeY5Q

A smattering of anime:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiba
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemonozume
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino%27s_Journey

[Abel Toy]

Those abandoned theme parks, specially the second, are really cool and creepy!

[TaintedFork]

I find a lot of my ideas stem from conversations I have with people, or hear other people having.

For instance, I was talking with my brother, and he mentioned how 5 minutes is no time at all. Now I find myself in the process of making a game where you only have 5 minutes to save the world.

These types of conversations get my mind working and I may get an idea from them.

Maybe this means I'm an auditory learner or something, I dunno. :P

[nyarla]

Oh! Also useful for these purposes is weird5cience, which to me is the tumblr to end all tumblrs (some NSFW images?!):

http://weird5cience.tumblr.com/

Just thousands and thousands of animated GIFs of 80s ephemera and NES games glitching and it just keeps going forever.

That Tumblr is so amazing, I've spent the last maybe hour just scrolling down it remembering things from my childhood. Thank you.

Whoah, I love that tumblr, thanks for the link. That's magic.

[Kor]

An amazing short film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH5sacgeY5Q

Wow! Thank you for sharing this.

[deadeye]

Oh! Also useful for these purposes is weird5cience, which to me is the tumblr to end all tumblrs (some NSFW images?!):

http://weird5cience.tumblr.com/

Just thousands and thousands of animated GIFs of 80s ephemera and NES games glitching and it just keeps going forever.

It's like someone condensed my entire childhood into a singularity. Though I was never as obsessed with Saved By the Bell as this fellow seems to be.

I dig the animation of David OReilly. Here's my favorite: http://vimeo.com/3388129

[Abel Toy]

An amazing short film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mH5sacgeY5Q

I just fell in love with that film *_*.

Really inspires me a lot. I want to make some surrealist / abstract game like that!

[yeah, cilantro]

Oblique strategies are not necessarily a source of inspiration per se, but useful as a way out of creative ruts:
http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/oblique/oblique.html
The basic idea is that you draw a card at random and take its message as a sort of divine edict. Adhering to this rule will at a minimum force you to do something other than stare at your monitor / notebook / whiteboard, lost in a sea of possibility. A similar game-specific thing is Jesse Schell's deck of lenses: http://artofgamedesign.com/cards/ adapted from his very nice book on game design.

[NoxiousHamster]

Glad you guys are digging Cat Soup. I can't even think about that short without getting inspired to make something, it's just so great. Two of the anime's I linked, Kaiba and Kemonozume are by the same guy, so definitely check them out if you liked it. He also did an anime I haven't seen yet called Tatami Galaxy, and an awesome movie called Mind Game.

Also, I'm lovin' this whole thread. So much good stuff here!