The Creative Process

[POOPIESkillz]

What is the creative process? For me, that's something hard to define.

Just as some quick background:

As a game design student, I'm always stopping and jotting ideas down when inspiration strikes. I have multiple notebooks brimming with fleshed out game concepts.

I have a board game that I fully designed, prototyped and had playtested by more than ten people. I'm actually thinking about making a newer, higher production quality prototype and taking a shot at Kickstarter with it or other similar options.

I've written full stories for games and other projects. Directed, produced, etc.

I'm also in pre-production for a game (currently) exclusive to the Panic Playdate; I'm just waiting on their SDK and dev unit if I get approved. If not, there are other platforms the game can go to.

I have a YouTube channel that currently sucks but I have a ridiculous amount of video ideas depending on the direction I want to take my channel.

I've started delving into hardware and programming, among other things.


Anyway, I'm sure there are tons of exceptionally talented people here who have accomplished amazing things. Things that would put my "accomplishments" to shame.

But that's not why I decided to post this thread. The reason I wanted to is to ask you guys about your creative processes. I have one question in particular. I have an absolutely terrible habit of jumping around to different projects and rarely finishing them 100%. How do you guys stay focused and on task? I find myself getting lured away by new ideas and concepts constantly. My interests are extremely broad so I always feel myself pulled in a million directions.

If you guys want, use this thread for anything relating to the creative process.

[Ziggy]

I feel like I've must have posted at least a dozen threads on this forum over the years with an idea or the intent to start a project, but then never actually do or finish any of them. I guess the main problem that I have is that I want to do too many things, but I don't have enough time to do them all.

Last year I built myself a new basement workshop, mostly for wood working. I haven't been able to really use it yet though, because I have some stuff stored in there from my other basement project room...

I'm building a "studio" of sorts. Mostly for writing and recording audio. Far from a professional studio, but I do want to make decent recordings. I was even planning on releasing a 45, I have a friend in that scene.

But this wouldn't strictly be an audio studio, I want to also build and shoot my stop motion sets in there too. And probably have my electronics workbench in there too so I don't have to worry about all the sawdust from the workshop. But sometimes I try to put the cart before the horse, I guess. I really need to finish the studio room, then I can move the stuff I'm storing in the workshop out, then I can have both rooms for the creative process to start happening. In stead, I'm fiddling around with my stop motion camera gear and am currently falling down the photography rabbit hole.

I've started delving into hardware and programming, among other things.

Anything in particular? I've been messing with hardware for years, but I've been wanting to get into programming more and more. There's a ton of stuff you can do if you know how to program for a Raspberry Pi, Arduino, AVR, FPGA, et cetera.

[POOPIESkillz]

I've started delving into hardware and programming, among other things.

Anything in particular? I've been messing with hardware for years, but I've been wanting to get into programming more and more. There's a ton of stuff you can do if you know how to program for a Raspberry Pi, Arduino, AVR, FPGA, et cetera.

Man you hit the nail on the head. Too many things to do and never enough time. I know I only have such a finite amount of time in life and I have no idea what projects to spend it on.

I'm an extreme beginner as far as hardware goes. This would be my first real hardware project. And I'm at a beginner level for programming as well.
So anyway, about a year and a half ago, I worked a part time job in retail to help with the bills. They always had interesting store displays in the electronics section. They would have these iHome displays among others. So, when it was time for those models to go, my store would just throw them away. Instead, I asked if I could take them and they said sure.

The way these work is that you hit the big play button on the front of the display and it'll play 30 secs of a song. There's an aux cord on it that you can plug your phone into and play whatever you want. So opening these up, there's a big board under the unit itself and then the required components for the display stuff like the aux cord, power, buttons on the display, etc. These all play music from an SD card. I popped the SD card out and replaced the four 30 sec song clips in there with my own music and it works beautifully. The audio quality is nice and they plug into anywhere and have the optional aux cord. I would ideally like to strip the display and place the components into the model on the display but I don't think its possible.

Sorry, that was a lot of background. But anyway, one day, I got a display that played audio AND video. Not only that, but it was connected to a tablet running what I believe to be Android Marshmallow. I opened up the tablet and the really cheap feeling plastic volume and power buttons broke so that's something that'll need to be done. It does have a full SD card in there though so I wonder what I can do. Lots of possibilities with Android devices. So I took home both the tablet and the display with the screen and speaker. I did the same thing as before; I put my own video content on the SD card and it plays beautifully. It's a fairly small screen (maybe the same size as the one on the Nintendo Switch) and it looks like it might be in 720p.

So, what I want to do, is take all the components of that display (minus the tablet) and put them into some sort of case or new display. The old display was huge and solid metal. Extremely heavy and not practical or efficient in any sense. I'm not totally sure what I want to do with it yet but I want to take the useful components it has and make it more usable. I'll want a case with an opening for the two SD cards preferably so that you can swap them on the fly. I do not yet know what the second SD card does; I haven't delved into it any further yet.