too bad that you had to "talk him out" of abadoning original graphic style. it makes no sense. it means that the guy made something good actually by accident. that doesnt put him in good light at all.
As i see it, there are 3 ways of creating stuff like arts:
1. People can use known methods for making something, simply imitating creativity. They're consistent at it, but the result is "soulless", as it's done by cognitive understanding of what and how you draw, not by any talent in it, simply by practicing.
2. People can use their creativity spontaneously. They don't understand themself, they don't understand how their mind works, why inspiration comes and goes, and their success heavily relies on how lucky they are with their mood and subconsciousness. Once they start thinking it creates a lot of problems in their mind, because that's not how they created their art. Their ideas easily range from garbage to masterpieces.
3. People can use their creativity by understanding how it works and mastering it. This takes A LOT of work, as it also requires mastery over your own personality, understanding your desires and so on. This ties with perfecting yourself a lot, which is why you don't see a lot of consistently talented artists who can control their inspiration.
Many people are stuck on 2, which makes me very sceptical when it comes to praising anyone for their art or story, because there's often a huge difference between the person and his creativity. They can create something by random stroke of talent for a while, but once they start thinking about it, due to success for example - it's over. Any change in their lifestyle that was randomly giving them what they needed can lead to them just going off the right road, or losing any desire to make more stuff. And since their mind isn't trained or perfected, they see no difference between the right or wrong roads in ideas.
Hard to explain, but that's how i see it by observing devs and artists. Big donations also kill them, since more donations -> change in lifestyle -> previous lifestyle was giving them the needed experience, new one doesn't -> that's it, the end of this dev.
PP
