I often think that developing ideas is a little like doing a jigsaw: I find little single ideas and try to piece them together to build a bigger picture.

I drew this in my sketchbook a while back. I have a habit of re-visiting familiar themes regularly so I decided to simply doodle some of them in boxes and place them randomly on a single page. Like dominoes I added more and more boxes and got half way through with ‘familiar’ ideas. This left me with empty boxes that I then filled with doodles inspired by what I had already done.

This page looks like it means something but actually it doesn’t! Well, it didn’t when I first finished but it has since kick-started ideas that have developed into character and story possibilities.