muckmouth

Most of the time you will not be trying to do your best to come up with the most fantastic creations ever.  No.  You will be trying to fulfill the dreams of someone in middle management who doesn’t know what he or she wants.  Someone who’s got bad taste and is irresponsible and got to where they are by failing up and kissing ass.  You will be told your work isn’t good enough- even though it’s better than what the product is supposed to look like.  You’ll have to make poor design choices that will cause the product to fail just because someone on the board likes Llamas and wants a Llama as part of the product.  Then they’ll wonder why the product failed- or worse they’ll throw you under the bus and say it’s your fault the llama is in there.  Or that the llama just isn’t cute enough.  Never mind that your product is supposed to have a sci-fi horror theme. 

If you go in thinking that you are going into a world of magic and awe with other creative people who are ready to make the best thing ever- you’re going to set yourself up for burn out.  Don’t get attached to what you’re doing.  Don’t take it personally.  Save all that passion for your own projects or for the one project you do when you finally find a team you can really trust.  Those places do exist- but even at those places there’s a lot of quarreling and ass kissing and penis measuring because everyone’s flopping their ego on the table and wanting it caressed.  It’s a give and take.  Choose your battles.  Don’t let it eat you alive.  And don’t let your naivety turn into bitterness. 

One time I literally threw thirty concepts for a character at my art director, until finally they pulled out a drawing that their 7 year old had done of that character and told me “make it more like this”.