Technically Masterful, Creatively Bankrupt

This is probably one of the more common things I’ve seen in my time.

I’ll start with an example.
Ages ago, I used to know a person who was (and to this day still is) one of the best artists I’ve ever met. They could draw up whatever you imagined, on the spot, within a matter of minutes if not seconds. This person would bash out dozens of pages worth of character poses, reference sheets, expressions, actions scenes, literally anything.
I would sit there in slack jawed awe at how fast and precise this person could create artwork that’d put 99% of professional artists to shame. The expressions were perfect, the emotions conveyed were impeccable, my God they even drew hands without breaking a sweat. As God is my witness, they actually enjoyed it.

That being said, they had an incredibly hard time coming up with anything original.
Everything they did, everything they made, was just copies of artwork done by someone else. They could create dozens of poses, but only with characters from an existing series.
They could sketch out entire storyboards, but only with existing media.

When it came to their own creations, it was nonexistent.

That isn’t a terrible thing honestly, some people are just like that. Often you’ll find an artist or writer who is without equal in terms of technical skill, but then after a few minutes of looking through their work, you find… nothing of note.
Can they paint or write a masterpiece of technique in the span of an afternoon? Absolutely.
Will you remember it by the time you go to bed that night? Not likely.

Yet sometimes, we need people like that.
If I take my car to a mechanic, I’d like to have the person working on it be the kind of person who can rebuild an engine before breakfast. They don’t need to be an engineer on top of that.
If I ask someone to proofread and edit my garbage, I’d like that person to understand grammar and English to an almost comically absurd degree. They don’t need to be a worryingly prolific author on top of that.
If I commission someone for artwork, I’d like that person to be able to nail it within a matter of minutes instead of months of struggle. I throw my half assed designs at them, they return gold.

Without those people, the rest of us would be up the shit creek without a paddle.

Though, wouldn’t it be great if that person strives to have both?
When it comes to writing, artwork, and music, you can be the most technically skilled person around yet still manage to produce nothing. You have the skills, you have the insight, you have the unwavering discipline to work at it, yet all you can make is derivatives or offshoots.
We’d all be better off if they would throw themselves into creating something original.

That may be one of the areas where I can look a body of work by someone, and I’ll honestly feel sad.
I see the skill and dedication present, but it’s just… uninteresting. I’ve seen sketches of mechs, firearms, and aircraft that’d make a Skunk Works engineer blush. Yet the detail and precision don’t make up for the fact it’s mostly uninteresting.

That’s all to say, if you are technically proficient, please ensure you’re likewise creative and inventive with how you apply it.

Do weird shit, create completely off the wall designs, look at the standards for how something is supposed to be and then do the exact opposite.

Will it perfectly accurate and technically correct? No.

Am I gonna look at it and say “What the hell, this is great.”?

Absolutely.