Creativity is a vast and exciting subject! As you know, it's one of Cabinet d'Illusions' core values, as our goal is always to publish creative and original ideas or concepts! We refuse to publish anything too "classic" and do everything we can to find interesting tricks or writings that provide real added value, not just to the technique but also to everything surrounding magic, such as staging, reflection, etc.
But one of the most frequent questions at conventions is: how do you create a magic trick? How can you be sure that your creation hasn't been published before? How do you ensure you always have new ideas? How do you stay creative? This article aims to answer your questions and provide avenues for you to explore, so you too can infuse your personality and ideas into our beautiful magical art.
It's rare to invent
Let's be honest: inventing something from scratch requires knowledge, time, patience, and sometimes even... luck! What we want to tell you is that you also need to stay humble: inventing something, whether it's an illusion or anything else, is difficult and cannot be commanded. Often, we'll think we've invented something when it already exists, either identically or in a slightly different form.
The first thing to do, therefore, is to cultivate the broadest possible knowledge, to keep up with new developments (not only in your country but also abroad), to attend conferences, to discuss with other people, and to read what has already been published, sometimes decades ago!
While it is rare to invent something from scratch, it is by no means impossible: every year there are various creation competitions (FFAP prize, ICI prize, ...) proving that it is still possible (and we had the honor of receiving the innovation prize at the International Congress of Illusion Creators for Code)! Innovation can also sometimes come from a detail, an improvement (we then speak more readily of "refinement") that can create a new effect or a new method.
Also, remember that an effect is not just a series of techniques, but truly a show in itself that requires staging, appropriate music or text, almost a choreography. The same trick performed in two different ways can quickly go from flop to miracle, so focusing solely on the technical aspect of creation is not good; it's a whole, and sometimes an original presentation idea will give a 100 times better effect than a new technique that is impossible to do but original.
We deeply believe that everyone has a part of their experience, their character, their sensibility to contribute, and in this sense, each person is a potential creator, whether in technique, effect, or staging. It's up to you to find which path you identify with the most!
How to get inspired and find ideas?
Something very important for creativity is to constantly immerse yourself in different sources, of all kinds and on all themes. A (very) serious mistake would be to only participate in magic conventions under the pretext that you want to keep yourself informed and know everything that is being done. It is obviously essential to carry out this constant monitoring, but it is much more profitable to step out of your comfort zone and broaden your horizons. How can you bring something new to a field if you remain confined within it?
To extend the example, imagine a box containing a few LEGO bricks. You can assemble one brick with another, a third with a fourth, try many combinations, but after a while, you will be limited by the number of bricks in the box and will not be able to build anything new. If you only consume magic all day long, you will stay in this LEGO box, unable to get out and continually stumble upon effects already created, because the authors will have had access to the same bricks as you.
To overcome this problem, you need to soak up everything else, what's outside the box, and for that, nothing is too much. This can include (non-exhaustive list):
- Visiting an exhibition, a museum
- Reading books
- Listening to songs, going to a concert, attending shows
- Walking in the street
- Wandering through supermarkets, especially creative stores
- Browsing Instagram accounts you like
- Etc.
The example of concerts is not chosen by chance. To give you an anecdote, one of our great illusion ideas came to us while attending a concert by a famous band. While the singer was rising into the air in a particular way (but without anything magical, as she was seen attached to a metal structure), a detail caught our attention, a detail which, after much thought, was able to materialize into a full-fledged effect. We intentionally cannot give a precise description because this effect is currently in development, but how many times can fantastic scenes painted on canvases inspire us, how many songs can provide leads for stories or scenarios for our shows, who has never browsed a creative or art store with no other goal than to find what one is not looking for?
In short, let yourself be carried away, without any pressure, by a flood of arts and cultures of all kinds to create your own imagination. You will see that the brain is a muscle that trains and absorbs more and more quickly, and you will be amazed at the number of ideas you can write down daily by immersing yourself in a moment of relaxation with a little "cultural extra."
Playing with chance
Generating ideas on the fly and being creative on demand, does that sound like a dream? Yet that's what Sébastien Thill's Kleroterion game, published by Cabinet d'Illusions, offers! The principle? Several families of cards are present within a deck: staging, type of effect, accessories, etc. The magician will then draw one card from each family to compose a routine or a show with these imposed random constraints!
A wonderful idea to stimulate imagination, and to associate universes that don't seem to connect initially. Learn more about this project in the Détours de magie episode below:
An idea is never bad
If there's one thing we've learned, it's that an idea is never (we repeat, never!) bad (unless, of course, it's illegal!). If an idea germinates, it's because the brain concludes it has potential. Perhaps it's not feasible due to lack of time, human resources, money, or knowledge, but in absolute terms, there is a world where it could be realized.
Take note of all your ideas to build a real repertoire. This can be in the form of a paper notepad, a computer file, ... whatever suits you. You will see that time sorts things out, and so does the brain. A single idea may yield nothing, but give it a day, a week, a month, or even several years, and one fine day, as you turn the pages of your notebook, you will come across a note that illuminates your mind. It becomes obvious; the idea you had must be associated with that note for the puzzle to be complete. This is also the point of revisiting your notes from time to time: to see which ones can be associated to create new things.
Let your brain work
This time, I'm speaking as a person and as the author of this article to share my personal experience with the hope that it might help you if you feel the same way I do.
Ever since I was little, I've always had the unfortunate habit of having dozens of ideas a day, and above all, this irrepressible need to write down or draw my ideas. I can't explain why, but it's as if my brain "was full" and writing down my newly arrived ideas allowed me to rest it and finally think about something else (before new ideas kept appearing again and again!).
For a long time, I wrote down my ideas as soon as I had them, and I realized that I was accumulating a lot of them without really exploiting them. I noted them down but almost immediately moved on to the next idea without even taking the time to really study it.
I realized that forcing myself not to write down an idea immediately, but instead forcing the brain to store it, would make it unconsciously think about it, as if it had to "simplify" and "materialize" it to store it better and take up as little space as possible. I would then wait a short time (a day or two) before writing down the idea that had time to germinate. If I initially abstained from doing that, it was because I was afraid of letting go and forgetting an idea that could have been the idea of a lifetime, the one that would stand out from all the others. In fact, after years of experience, I realized that we had to trust our brain and that few ideas were actually forgotten. Most came back later in one form or another, but remained there as long as they were not put on paper. On the other hand, by letting the brain think about a thought, we make it more concrete and give it more potential. I thus had fewer ideas in my notebook each evening, but of much higher quality and, above all, more concrete.
So don't be afraid to trust your brain, even the most scatterbrained among you! 🙂
Keeping a logbook
If you don't dare to try the previous advice, which is to let your brain work without writing anything down for fear of forgetting your ideas, then you should like this approach. It involves keeping a logbook, like a kind of personal diary where you would put all your ideas. Whether they are good or bad ultimately doesn't matter; the main thing is to write down everything that comes to your mind, to scribble, to cross out, in short, to appropriate the surface of the notebook to record your slightest thoughts.
By doing this, you will create a real little bible that will serve as a source of ideas and notes when you want to search for an idea. Carry this little notebook everywhere with you, whether you go to an exhibition, watch a movie at the cinema, or anything else; the idea is really for this notebook to follow you everywhere. Writing is like a muscle: the more you write, the easier it will be to write, but also to put words to your thoughts and thus exploit your ideas that will come to you more naturally. Remember that it's your notebook, so for this one, there are no limits, either in content or in form! Tear off a piece of page if necessary, paste in candid photos, quickly draw a sketch; it doesn't matter, this notebook must reflect you. You will then see links forming in your ideas, which you can represent with mind maps, and which will help you explore the universes you touch with your pen.
In this digital age, one might also be tempted to use a mobile phone for note-taking. An initial approach is indeed to use your phone's notes app to jot down ideas, but you quickly reach its limits. It's fine for a start, but as soon as you want to revisit something, search for information, or add images, it immediately becomes much more difficult. Although in my opinion nothing will ever replace paper, its organic feel and the fact that you can fully personalize it, there are now technologies that combine the qualities of both paper and electronics. Think of digital tablets (iPad or equivalent) which can transform into either a drawing tablet or a computer for writing. We now swear by them for work: the text of a book will be written using the keyboard, and the plan of an illusion will be drawn by hand directly with the tablet's stylus (in our case, an iPad). It has been a real game changer for us. For those who don't want to be bothered by tablet apps but want the practical side of digital (moving elements, erasing, duplicating...), there are hybrid tablets like Remarkables that mimic the texture and appearance of paper with the advantages of a tablet. This can also be a solution,
In any case, and whatever medium you use, keeping a logbook can only be useful for drawing ideas and interesting leads from it.
Using mind maps
This tip can be included in the previous one, as it is a note-taking method used to sort through our thoughts. Do you have several related ideas and want to organize them? Use mind maps! Also known as cognitive maps (or, more pompously, heuristic maps), mind maps are diagrams that represent the connections between your thoughts. Starting from mostly oval or round shapes, all linked together, and armed with a multitude of colors, you will establish the relationships between each entity with graphical patterns and visuals.
It's a superb tool that helps unleash creative power, especially by "pulling the thread." You can start with a basic idea that you place in the center of a circle, then you "pull the thread," meaning you derive a second idea from this first one. From this new idea, you derive a third, and so on. All these ideas will be linked by arrows, by colors; there are no rules, the main thing is that you find your way around! Finally, the advantage of this type of map is that it allows you to visualize how you thought about a project, which can be interesting once it's finished, by taking a step back.
Get inspired by social media
We are fortunate to live in an era where sources of inspiration are right at our fingertips, on our smartphones! Apps like Instagram or Pinterest are true goldmines of inspiration, where you just need to enter a theme and your feed will automatically be filled with diverse inspirations! Make full use of the save post features for interesting content to guide the algorithm, so it offers you increasingly relevant content likely to help you in your creative phases.
Group brainstorming
"Alone we go faster, together we go further"... this also applies to ideas! You will mechanically have a better chance of finding THE right idea if you brainstorm with several people. So launch into collective brainstorming sessions: dedicate a specific time during which you lock yourselves in with your colleagues, armed with a whiteboard and a marker, something to drink and a few snacks – in short, everything to get the creative machinery going, which once it starts, never stops, especially with several people!
Remember to open your mind and perhaps ask for the opinion of people who have a radically different perspective than yours. This doesn't prevent you from having affinities with these people, and they will bring a breath of fresh air to your whiteboard, adding their own contribution to the project. Do not underestimate the power of group work. You can also, if you are many, work in small independent groups that do not communicate with each other. For example, you have 3 groups of 3 people who will each take turns presenting their research results to the others within the allotted time. This way, you can see leads emerge that would have been nipped in the bud if you had all been in the same group, as you would have only pursued one single line of research.
Conclusion
If I had to conclude, I would say that I sincerely believe that EVERYONE has the power to create, and that it is absolutely not reserved for an elite or a group of people touched by grace.
I sincerely believe that everyone has something to contribute, whether in terms of effect, pure technique, or staging, and that all of this can be called "creativity." What is certain, however, is that this creativity needs to be worked on or at least maintained. If you are reading this article, it means that you have looked further than the end of your nose and that you are curious. Continue to use this curiosity to explore as many different universes as possible to broaden your culture and do not hesitate to contact us if you need help realizing your ideas; we will be happy to advise you!