what are the greatest pieces of advice ever

"Make it exist first, make it good later" is a piece of advice i try to follow a lot.

you cant achieve your dreams until you sit down and try. so sit down and try all of them! dont lock yourself out of little joys just because you arent perfect. nobody is. have fun forever!

never trust how you feel about your life past 9 pm. i've had to adjust it to "...about your life when the sun is down" but the spirit remains the same

My favorite applies to every skill: The time will pass anyway.

Every time you hesitate to do something, whether it's because you don't think you'll ever be good enough, or you feel like it's not going to work out, remember that the time passes anyway. It does not wait for you to make up your mind. It's common for people to say they wish they had started something earlier instead of hesitating, so why shouldn't you listen?

I think it's always better to try to make sure you know how to apologize, and practice it. You can never avoid messing up or hurting feelings, but being able to apologize and communicate is what steers those hard moments to a slightly better place. At least, that's what I've observed.

I was gonna write something silly but the advice was so good I don't wanna ruin it lol

another one i think is pretty universal:

enjoying the process of learning is gonna fuel you so much more than your potential end result. i think it can be very easy to feel you have to 'trudge' through the early stages of a hobby, notably art, before you can do any of the cool shit. finding that enjoyment in learning and improvement, either through "hey i did this cool shit today" or "woah this new thing i learnt about my program has changed my entire workflow" or anything else will do you SO much good rather than just "if i keep doing this for 2 years i'll finally get good enough to do whatever".

re: awesomeloser
also thanks for dat! i think it can be very easy to run a bit here (and i get why) but i think it'd be cool to have a fr fr thread for this kinda stuff esp because most of the people who'd be on this forum are of that creative type

When you're starting out, one thing really good for any medium is to make small, self-contained art that you can show someone all of in under an hour. It's way easier to get feedback on, way easier to take lessons from before the next thing, and also, personally, I think it feels really nice to finish something. I've heard a good timescale to aim for is to try and make something new and finished in a quarter-year.

You don't have to [REINVENT] the wheel, you just need to [RESEARCH] and learn to make the wheel. You're probably not the first person to try what you're doing! Look to see what others have learned when you are encroaching a large learning curve. Ask friends to see what they know!

Some stuff I've learned from working on long-term projects:

Short-term goals are basically essential to any long-term ambition. If you have a really big project you are dedicated to getting done, try treating a chunk of the work like its own individual week-long project with an explicit beginning and end point.

I also think that its never too late to cut back on scope. Abandoning ideas can be a hard choice, but scope creep is very real and its really easy to accidentally become overwhelmed by your own ideas. Cutting back on scope never means the idea is gone forever, it just means curating them to make your project more currently feasible- you can always revisit it later once the most important stuff is done.

admittedly i didn't come up with this advice (stole it from one of the bionicle books), but it stuck with me. that being: "I've taken the first step towards the future. No one ever said the trip would be an easy one". it's a pretty good thing to remember, i think. you're gonna face challenges and whatnot as you pursue life or a passion, but the fact you're moving towards the future is an important one. nothing comes easy in life, but you've just gotta keep moving.​