It's true that there is no substitute for creative ability,
but we all have it in different degrees and in different ways. There are two approaches to the creative process - a gut reaction and going on impressions, or working out a solid understanding of how and why certain things tend to please and others don't. The first is far easier to jump right in and do, as the other often requires a good bit of study, possibly in the fields of mathematics, physics, human anatomy, and so on.
Understood. So if you don't have all that, you want to be able to open your inner eye and find out what works for you. Now computers are the most unique creative tool ever made - they allow you to "borrow" skills and abilities that others have already put into code for you. And they allow people to co-develop on new projects, even if they never become directly involved. You don't have to waste your time by relearing or redoing work that has already been done well by someone else. Wouldn't it make more sence to "borrow" a random number generator, use a "shuffling" routine for a deck of 52 cards, even use the nifty card images provided in a library, rather than redo all that work from scratch? So the point is, determine what it is that you want to do, decide what part of it you intend to do on your own, then look for stuff to fill in the blanks.
One final small hint: If you want to learn to draw, for instance, you first have to break the bad habits you first learned as a kid. Everybody tries to draw from an early age, where the "right" way to draw people was with stick figures and round heads with some curly ringlets or straight hair sticking straight out. Two dots for eyes and a mouth that was a curve that angled up or down.
Even later, you learned stylized ways of presenting people's faces in profile or straight on, maybe learning a little about creating cartoon faces. To break with the pass, try drawing something familiar in an unfamiliar way - for instance, draw a human face from a photo turned upside down. You may be surprised at the results. Try to teach your eye to recognize proportions and relationships, such as how close the top of an ear matches up to the eyes, or how far down the face the nose comes, and where the ends of the mouth stop. But like others have said, learning to draw on a computer is a lot harder than learning to do it freehand on a piece of paper. Consider drawing out your ideas that way, then scanning them into your computer where you can tweak them or complete them once you have something solid worked out.
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