Originality: How do you do it?

How do some of you guys get original ideas for your ride? I've been thinking about it for a wile now and it seems that I can't come up with an element that hasn?????????t been used in the real world before. Yes a combination of element's can also be useful but I'm looking for something a little more abstract. I'm already thinking about taking a freaking peace of wire, throwing it against the wall to see if some aspect of it can sort of be used.

^Then do that. Some people can think it, others, use inspiration from other things they see.

I think pure originality is slightly overrated if you dont have a good grasp of real world shaping but thats just me.


Go ahead, throw some wire. Just make sure its pretty flexible and dont break anything

[mkingy]

Yeah, in my opinion the best original elements are the ones that have decent shaping, whilst taking an original approach. I remember a stand up coaster (i forget its name) with a revers cobra roll, the track going round the back of the two half loops instead of infront. I always thought my incline cobra roll was nice, but i've always lacked the skill to pull it off properly.

I am all Inspiration.

my insriration is simple, take and unoriginal element and look to see where it can be improved. ive rencently come up with a very original element that will be implanted in my next ride. its an original cobra roll type thing

Hm. Well, personally, I spend my time in school with my head planted on my hand, pretending to listen. The thoughts that cross me are purely roller coaster idea after roller coaster idea. I have about 4 designs on paper right now that I'd like to make some day. Problem is, they all were though up with excellent 3Ds, so I'll have to work on those [;)]

The topic of thinking up originality, same thing with roller coaster ideas. For me they just land in my head without me even wanting them...I guess you could say my mind doesn't work like others', eh?

Some of my ideas stem from happy accidents that I thought about using on a previous ride but it just didn't pan out. Most of the rides I've made I built around a single thought and then just made a ride to go around it.

^It also works looking at phone-charger cords, or simply tossing up a rubber band!

[gouldy]

I do the same as Gazag, but I also work in an engineering company and there is a lot of wires around some of the machines and sometimes I sit and look at them while the machine is cutting my steel or I notice them as I walk past them and I drop everything and run to the nearest piece of paper and draw it! But yeah, I mostly do what gazag does [;)]

^princess g and gentlemen...the king of original elements.^

Well, for my latest track Riven, i just kinda started with a double down, hill, turn, and then made it up as i went along [:)] I've never written my ideas out on paper either, usually elements and layouts come to me when im about to fall asleep at home or school.

Well I only cam up with 2 unique inversions both can kind of be considered cheap knock offs, my first was an X roll which was just a glorfied dive loop, and Zero G put together, kmy other which i'm working on now is a Fly roll, which really came from a cutback where I placed the second half in the wrong place but it gave me a cool barrel roll Exit.

When I built my New River Gorge coaster I remembered the steel arch bridge in West Virginia over the New River. That bridge is awesome to look at towering about 900 feet above the river. I wish NL was that high because I would have made my coaster 900 feet high. So I thought, why not recreate that bridge and have a station on each side and have the trains cross the bridge then race each other through the river valley. On my Mountain View coaster I uploaded, I used my Kings Island Racer coaster with my Eiffel Tower and converted that racer into my Mountain View Coaster and kept the Eiffel Tower. Then I keep reworking the same coaster and make adjustments to it, like the roll I made. I didn't know exactly how to make a roll so I just twisted the track where I thought it would work and it came out pretty good. Frankly I get a lot of my ideas from looking at other peoples rides. When I first got NL I didn't realize you could make things with the free nodes until I saw someone's track with a custom station and a roof over the brake. I build mostly recreations so I haven't let my imagination run too wild, but I'm thinking of building a coaster with a sudden surprise that would really scare the rider. That's what I believe a great coaster does, it gives something unexpected, like a hidden turn or hidden drop they can't see until they are in it. Also a coaster needs a great finish instead of limping back to the station with every hill in view. But I'm still thinking, "What could that be, that something special?"

[Coasterkidmwm]

I just steal from foreign rides nobody ever really sees and then people think I came up with something original.

Ok i have not put on any of my designs because there on a different computer but what tends to give me ideas is just taking something you see or play back a memory and see how something is bent. Look deep into something and it may be there. Thats how i get alot of my ideas. Or just go to rollercoaster database and keep hitting the random coaster button and that may spark an idea. Im just telling you what works for me.

Well for my Ultimate Ride Disney coasters I get inspired by music. Sometimes I will build a coaster to a song and let the melody of the music guide where the coaster travels and the elements I create. Then with other coasters the inspiration just hits me i guess and I go with what I have.

[Dirk_Ermen]

boredom during school helps alot for me to think up original elements [:)]

[Coasterkidmwm]

Must be taking a ton of literature classes.

Or chemistry... ouch.