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First, have a grasp of context, detail and the rationale which makes design and image-making worthwhile to yourself and commercially, to someone else. Try not to become a "linear" professional. Learn a variety of technique, of thinking methodology and most of all, don't become complacent. Honestly, I get scared shitless every time I start a new, big job. I read, I gather information and push the client to tell me what they want. (Sometimes they really don't know, and those jobs are usually nightmares!) Remember details, notice how people move, how sunlight cascades over moving objects, why foliage looks the way it does (it's nature's own fractal magic) and how come velvet has about the same range of value as metallic surfaces but one is soft and the other is brittle. And finally, don't assume that technique alone will save your ass. It still is the idea that wins...every time. Remember that elaborate technique and dumb story produces a demo reel, not a narrative.
--
A Visionary Ethic: The Life and Work of Syd Mead, p.3, OuterCircle 9, Fall 2006

 

Syd Mead

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No technique is possible when men are free. ... Technique requires predictability and, no less, exactness of prediction. It is necessary, then, that technique prevail over the human being. ... The individual must be fashioned by techniques ... in order to wipe out the blots his personal determination introduces into the perfect design of the organization.

 

Jacques Ellul

 

People who are just getting "seriously interested" in film always ask a critic, "Why don’t you talk about technique and 'the visuals' more?" The answer is that American movie technique is generally more like technology and it usually isn’t very interesting.

 

Pauline Kael

 

As your Bujutsu [Martial Technique] training approaches perfection you will be able to detect the suki [opening/weakness] [in your enemy's technique], even before he can, and as if to satisfy some deficiency in him, you can fill the suki with your technique.

 

Morihei Ueshiba

 

Carlo Mazzone: "Totti? Simply fantastic. I think he is the greatest Roma player of all-time." "He is playing well and I am delighted for him. His form is no miracle. He is a serious professional and a proud guy. He always trains with enthusiasm and has great technique. He is an example for everyone" "I am privileged because I had the luck of seeing Totti’s first goal in Serie A as well as the fantastic culmination of Baggio’s career. If I had been able to coach both of them together in the same team I would have won a lot and certainly wouldn’t have lost all my hair. I’d like it a lot if we could all have dinner together and remember their goals." "We should all acknowledge the qualities of Totti, an important player in the history of Roma and Italian football."

 

Francesco Totti

 

I had gone thoroughly through some of the all-fiction magazines and I made up my mind that if people were paid for writing such rot as I read I could write stories just as rotten. Although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.
I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, Tarzan and the Lost Empire, there are 31 books on my list. I had never met an editor, or an author or a publisher. l had no idea of how to submit a story or what I could expect in payment. Had I known anything about it at all I would never have thought of submitting half a novel; but that is what I did.
Thomas Newell Metcalf, who was then editor of The All-Story magazine, published by Munsey, wrote me that he liked the first half of a story I had sent him, and if the second half was as good he thought he might use it. Had he not given me this encouragement, I would never have finished the story, and my writing career would have been at an end, since l was not writing because of any urge to write, nor for any particular love of writing. l was writing because I had a wife and two babies, a combination which does not work well without money.

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs