Great read and thanks for the peek into your process. I still find myself breaking down interesting ideas like this when I find a really intriguing design that I want to add into my own bag of tricks. This is a good activity for all artists to stay fresh and accumulate resources and only allows for more adjacent possiblities. Theres a great book written by Jack Foster called “How to Get Ideas” where he goes through the beliefs of philosophers through the ages specifically around ideas and their creation. The essential aspects to an idea are, as you stated, the unique combination of unlikely sources. In other words, the more sources you can obtain and keep in your mind, the better your ability to find adjacent possiblities to combine with.
That is exactly why its so important to be curious as a creative. All those different interests will combine in unique ways to create new things.
