How do you cut out an inflated ego?
Read the section on Ignorance in the big post above, it about covers it.
If you are the "know it all" ego, ask yourself "Would I be willing to start a business in this field? Actually stop working and just pin my survival on my knowledge of this subject?" or something similar.
I know a decent bit about programming compared to what I knew a year or two ago. When I sit down and, in the course of a day, make something that a year ago I wouldn't consider possible it is easy to feel that I'm super talented in the field. I'm not, and I know this because the reason I could make that thing in the course of day is the knowledge gained over a year. If someone said "Hey, can you make a 3D platformer that reacts to vocal commands" I would have like 10% of the know-how in my head. My know-how now compared to a year ago is dwarfed by my know-how that I'll have a year from now.
What about things you actually somewhat talented at?
I started painting and after about 7 paintings on practice canvases, I thought "okay, I think I have this figured out" and I painted my eighth painting:
That's pretty ****ing good for painting #8.
This was my first:
That's a pretty big difference. I was pumped when I did that, because that eighth painting is actually on a large canvas while the first is on one of those smaller practice ones. I had more freedom, less restrictions, and managed to do painting #8 using Prussian Blue and Titanium White. Two colors!
That helped me know "how good" I was, it was a first step. I challenged myself by "upping the scale", so to speak, and I passed the test I set for myself with flying colors. It was the first painting I was actually proud of making, despite it not being perfect.
The next question is... can you do it again? Can you replicate those results?
Yes
I
Can
Wow, I'm the best!
Okay, okay, let's calm down. Maybe I can replicate these results, but can I, you know, teach someone else? Do I actually
understand what I'm doing? If so, I should be able to show someone else.
I gave a painting lesson. That was that guy's first painting ever -- he had never held a paintbrush. We made it up as we went along.
Okay, still the best.
But these are all landscapes. While they're mostly what I'm interested in, I'd also like to paint cool **** from video games. That'd be tight.
I messed up on the first go around, took a picture, brought it into photoshop to edit the painting down to what I wanted it to roughly look like, then I went back and painted over the original to make it closer to what I wanted. Wasn't as easy as I thought, but I did it. Cloud Strife's sword has been painted by me, Overswarm, and it was my first time doing detail work AND my first time not using the wet-on-wet style. I'm the GREATEST. Look at how awesome I did on my first attempt at this entirely new style of painting!
Okay, okay, you were able to paint a new style of painting. But can you replicate that? Can you create a landscape painting that isn't reliant on wet-on-wet techniques, or are you just deliberately painting things you KNOW you can paint and then assuming it is success?
First non-wet-on-wet landscape painting is pretty good. Some rough spots, but still better than most would do on their first attempt at a new style.
So it's been decided. My inflated ego isn't "inflated", it's just real talent! I'm the greatest, super talented, everyone should love me and buy my paintings for a zillion dollars and bow to my superior skill. I'm suuuuuuuuuuuper awesome and the best.
My paintings:
Can
clearly hang with professionals:
Wait a minute.
Oh.
Turns out looking
inward is a really, REALLY ****ty method to actually assessing yourself.
Look at results and look at others.
You guys might have seen my paintings as I'm posting this and thought "wow, he actually is pretty good" but I'm
not that great. I'm better than people who have never painted before, but
it's not that hard to get to where I'm at. The only reason people might think otherwise is they haven't tried.
How many paintings have I sold? Zero. I haven't tried to sell any, but if my paintings looked like any of the professional's last three paintings someone would have spoken up and said "I WOULD LIKE TO EXCHANGE CURRENCY FOR YOUR ARTWORK".
Are my paintings going to stand out like a sore thumb when I put them next to
actual professionals? Yes. Easily. It's not even close to a contest and is just a really, really easy way to say "lol you are a noob".
There is
always room to grow. Always. Your current self is overshadowed by your future self if effort is applied.
I mean look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuPHubDUOOg
That's mew2king and King, both considered top players at the time. M2K is still a top player, but in that clip? I could beat both of those players now, easily. They
suck because it's 2006 and no one knew wtf they were doing. The
bar has been raised.
At the time? Ego might have been big because they had no idea how much higher the mountaintop went.
Ego is ignorance.
That's all it is.
Remember that and it's easy to stay humble.
I have a quick question about Unity; how easy to use and efficient is Unity after you get aquainted with the engine? I've made a couple games and took a class in XNA, and find the transition from having to code everything and having complete control over my game to not being able to see all of the code executing a bit difficult. I feel restricted by the UI rather than helped by it, its systems seem to be fairly convoluted thus far, and they discourage using the backend so much that they don't even have examples of a lot of their API on their website. It feels like an engine made for an artist rather than a programmer, and it irks me to no end that they want to only give me partial control of my program.
Unity is amazing.
You don't want
control, you want
results. If you can get results, you're golden. It might be frustrating to fit into the confines of a system, but Unity makes it to where you can get the results you want fairly easily without too much effort. It's not what is necessarily under the hood that counts, it isn't even the process that counts. It's results.
