Given that the results of our work is primarily visual, it's natural that we tend to seek out inspiration from similarly visual sources. Whether it's from our favourite movies, shows, or comics, looking at the work of artists we admire and whose footsteps we aspire to follow, or just finding things in the world around us that just… look neat.

While this is all wonderful, it does have one key weakness - it presupplies us with an idea of what our result should look like. It seeds us with the expectation of how the result should come out, and in so doing, shuts so many doors to what it could be.

We're going to take a step towards breaking away from that pattern, if only just for today. Pick a scene, a character, an environment, an object, or whatever else from something told in a non-visual format. Some common examples include books, songs/music, poems - but there's probably a lot more out there. Once you've settled on a choice (and don't spend too long doing so - you're not going to be making your magnum opus today, so what you choose doesn't really matter), design or depict it in whatever manner you can.

Here, I've chosen to depict 3 distinct scenes from Orconomics by J. Zachary Pike, which mark a turning point in the story. I highly recommend this book, and its now complete trilogy "The Dark Profit Saga" - it's one of the most cleverly crafted fantasy worlds I've ever seen from an indie author, and is by far my favourite. The audiobook is especially good, as Doug Tisdale brings each character to life with his exceptional narration and voice work.