Things you learned from your own creations.
 

This is a more serious take on the "things I learned" concept. What have you learned not from school, but from things you've done independently?

In my case:

- Being a video game player has no bearing on whether you can hack it as a video game maker.
- If you're making games, you'd better love spending years planning math and writing and drawing and making sounds and finally coding, or else you'll shoot yourself.
- The best software is neither friendly nor free in most cases.
- Layers are the best thing ever!
- Transparency comes in as a close second!
- 8x8 tiles are the standard for a reason. All resolutions are divisible by 8.
- Converting 14x14 to 16x16 to chop into 8x8 is a right pain in the ass.


What are things you've learned from your art, writing, music, dance, etc?

Nothing ever ends up as cool on paper as it did in your mind!

- No matter what, It's never too late to start
- No matter what you do, you'll never be as good as THAT guy.
- Unless you try.
- Would be so much easier to create greatness with a bit of help.
- You always get the most praise for the works you are the least proud of and those that were the easiest to make. This PowerPoint presentation isn't nearly as impressive as you think just because the concept of masters completely escapes you. It's alright I explained that to you now. But I'm also not the first one to not use silly transitions and sound effects, it's common fucking sense, asshole. And I took the logo for the background from your homepage, yeah, right, I had to screenshot it and recolor it, but it's not like any other half-decent user couldn't have done that. All I did was to design this lazy piece of shit, you provided the information. And now you're asking me if I can take pictures from your stupid flash site even though shitty businessman-mouthflap words fly in front of them. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE THOSE PICTURES! HOW THE HELL DO YOU THINK THEY GOT ON THE INTERNET. I assume you took them yourself for fucks sake. It worked for the logo because that appears before your shitty corporate bullshit vocab 101 pollutes one's eyes. You know what, you should let me run this company for one day, I just wanna know if you really don't have to have any idea of what you're doing. Okay?

And that's how I lost my job (may not be at all how it happened. Also, I never lost a job, they just ended.)

- The best advancements in artistic skill come through sheer accident, followed by hours of persistence in trying to repeat that accident.
- Just because you can make something look good once, doesn't mean it's an easy feat to repeat.
- No matter how proud you are of your work at a given point in time, you will be disgusted and ashamed by it five years down the line.
- White-out is not a "Band-aid" for errors in art. It's a topical cream of questionable quality that leaves permanent scarring.
- Just because it looks good on paper doesn't mean it'll look good on the scanner.

Also:
This. This this this this this this this. Leading to a corrolary:
- If you spent days doing something that you can be proud of, you can bet your ass there's a way to do it much faster and easier, and it'll probably be just as popular if not moreso with your audience and/or clients.

- No skill worth a penny to you is gained without blood
- there is always a faster way, but it doesn't necessarily mean it is the better way
- The artiest is his worst critic.
- You can never have enough help
- Opinions are NOT facts just because someone doesn't like one small thing about your art/game/whatever doesn't mean that it is the same for everyone..
- There is a time where you just have to cut your losses and pull out as staying in will just make things worse.
- get a Wide veritity of people to comment on your art. from fellow artiests to people that never even thought of drawing a stick figure. this will both boost your confidence as well as help you learn mistakes. after all the most balanced pillar is the one with the widest base.

- No matter how good a musician you are, if you don't play whats popular, no one will pay you

-Even if you're the best in your town at something, there will always be someone better

thats all I got

-If you want to do something, make sure you have the ability to follow through to the end before you show it to the rest of universe. They will not be pleased at the lack of updates.

-Everything good takes effort. That much is obvious. BUT! Rushing is not effort, and just makes the end result look like crap.

-People don't care about B&W drawings, especially if there's equally good stuff right next to you with pretty colors on it.

-Color is a wonderful thing and shying away from it doesn't make you better than the people who use it. Especially if you fail at greyscale.

-Flash hates you. Flash does not care if you dislike its random acts of petty spite. This is something you will just have to learn to work around.

-Your skill will never be enough for the stuff in your head.

-It's okay to feel pride about something you worked hard on. The world isn't going to end if you say you're proud of something that took months to make.

This. It's the art equivalent of the white lead used in ye olde time makeup.

- No matter how hard you work, there is no short cut to becoming a better artist in a day.

- Originality is over rated, that doesn't mean copy off of something else.

- Fuck the world, If your proud of your work then that's good enough.

- Working hard on something always pays off in the end, even a little.

And that's all I got for now.

If you want to write a story, choose your audience carefully.

V-bVI is a very cool sounding progression.