I've never been one to draw or create without a solid, concrete idea in my head. I'm trying to change that.

When I was a teenager, I took an art class where the teacher gave us a canvas, paint, and said to just paint, period-- to just throw paint at the canvas and see what happens. I froze. The very notion was completely absurd to me and a perceived waste of time.

The other day, my wife sent me a video of an old lecture John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) did on the topic of creativity. In it, he outlined various tips for a creative person to prevent stifling his muse, as there is no formula for creativity in general. The one that struck me most was in regard to being of both an open and closed mindset-- in another wording, to switch from silly to serious and back.

In the silly mode, you play and are free to create whatever, without regard to consequence or reason. This breeds creativity, especially in a groupthink setting. But once a good idea is set upon, one must switch to the serious mode in order to execute it.

I have always, and am persistently, a very serious person, even when I'm being funny. I've very rarely allowed myself to be creative without considering some boundary or guideline or consequence. This is especially true for me when dealing with anything dealing with the Bible. There is so much biblical irresponsibility, inaccuracy and outright misinformation in our culture and I refuse to add to that with my work. This very much keeps me in a rigid state of mind when dealing with Seraph. Hence, my current creative block.

I have no plans to alter the seriousness of the subject matter I intend to approach with Seraph. However, I do intend to alter my approach. At the very least, I'm going to start doing warm-up sketches and exercises to get the creative juices flowing. My mind never has any shortage of ideas (I currently have 15 stories, original and fanfiction, unwritten and in my head), but it's a matter of sorting the good from the bad; of pondering the good ones to develop them into something great. My exercises will do no such thing. Silliness and absurdity will be allowed to flow simply to get ideas rolling.

When my mind is left to itself with no boundaries, it resorts to the 3 themes it likes best: Holy knights/noble warriors; Powerful, sexy women; and Smiting evil. There's not really a good way to reconcile these ideas in a responsible manner.

However this stream of consciousness creativity is very easy for me. In the span of 24 hours, I unconsciously created a ridiculous idea for a shonen-type anime project and a spin-off series that would actually work based off of those 3 themes (anime is mostly absurd anyway). The character designs and even the blasted logo came to me immediately. I figure I can do warm-up sketches of this idea and move on to more polished ideas.

In case you're wondering, my silly series idea is entitled Smite. It's completely ludicrous but boy does it sound fun. You might see some designs down the road if I post my warmups.