Every cartoon character you love started as a page of rejected sketches.

The version everybody knows is the survivor of a pile. Before a character looks inevitable, somebody drew dozens that were wrong in small ways, and the final design is less a flash of genius than the last one standing. Seeing only the finished result makes your own rejected pages feel like failure. They are the ordinary cost of arriving somewhere good.

When you design something, make twenty quick variations before committing to any of them. Keep the discards in a folder rather than the bin. Choose after you have exhausted the obvious, not before.