Tip for Beginners--Learn From My Mistake

Today I put some (more) finishing touches on my first complete build. I had created custom textures representing carved marble for each of its elements but then I had to resize some of them for various reasons. Consequently the aspect ratios got screwed up. I jury-rigged the results but it just didn't look good at all. Today I finally sat down and took the dimensions of the ugly bits and created a couple more textures to replace the bad ones. It's not great, but I'm happier with it.

Lesson Learned: Next time I do something like this I'm going to get the massing and proportions all done to my satisfaction _before_ making the textures.

Like Bodhi said.

This is what I learned in my study of logo design: make it look good in black and white first. Color (and extend that to texturing) hides design flaws.