Quote Originally Posted by Hammerstrider Manaphy View Post
Oooooh believe me. I felt the EXACT same way. Over on GT when I was getting use to that forum. I originally had only an avatar that I’d just pull from off google somewhere. It was blurry most of the time and odd. Then I saw all these awesome looking images below a users every post and wanted one myself. I felt jealous not having something awesome looking. Blogs were the same. They had additional banners to show off. I wanted part in each of these. One day I found a friend that offered to make me some. I still remember his username (HolyRoxas) xD. He was AWESOME! He made some avatars and blog banners for me from time to time. Over the years I made a few more friends that would often do it. Since I didn’t know how.

A friend then hooked me up with CS3. I tried it out. Over and over and over again. To no avail. I mean I improved very slightly, but it’s never been how I wanted to. Plus not having a “real” Photoshop kinda hurt more than anything...and GIMP was a detriment more than anything. Maybe one day I’ll have a real “working” Photoshop and be able to make a real attempt.
Ooh, that's cool! Do you still have some of these on your hard drive or have they kind of been lost to the sands of time? I never tried GIMP (never needed to), but I have that funny feeling there would be a cold chill of disappointment if I did. As for improving, these things take time and very often I need to decide if I have the time and energy to try new things, or if I'm kind of short on time and if I should just stick to using what I know works as it always has.

My objective now is to get better at doing my own art and images, though this adds loads of extra time and there are always those days when I just can't crank out the art the way I want it to.