Not a day goes by where I visit the texture pack section, without thinking to myself "Why would you do that?!" I'm sure all of us have felt that way at least once. Hopefully reading this will help people make their texture packs the best they can be.

1: Originality is REALLY IMPORTANT!
So often we see texture packs (and just about everything else on PMC) that are just duplications of other packs, or some texture pack based off of a different game that has been done over 9000 times. Sure it's easier to copy someone else's idea, but easy work most often leads to shitty results. Sometimes making a game themed pack works, but only if you really go full out. Taking the time to find an original idea, and utilizing it to its full potential takes a lot of hard work, but all that hard work really does show when you submit a gorgeous, and unique texture pack. While we're on the subject of hard work...

2: Don't submit your pack when it's less than half done.
It seems like so often people think, "Gee whiz, This one block I designed looks good. I should submit this texture pack!" WRONG! Bad PMC artist! Bad! Here's the problem with that. When you submit an unfinished texture pack, that's exactly what the viewers see. A half finished piece of work never looks as good as the full thing, and seeing a pack halfway done significantly reduces the effect of the full thing. Submitting a pack is kind of like giving a present. It's not nearly as awesome if the suprise is ruined weeks in advance.

3: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
This advice applies to anything art related in the entire world. What this means is that while some parts of a texture pack can look nice, it's just not as cool unless all the pieces work together. Take Trippin' Craft for example. Trippin' Craft wouldn't be nearly as awesome if only half of it was trippy, some pieces were space themed, a few were wild west styled, and one block was made of cheese. Put all that together, and you wind up with a pile of garbage. No matter how delicious your cheese block is, it's only a cheese block until there's a whole cheese themed texture pack. (Not a bad idea, actually... If nobody's done that yet I shot it!)

4: Don't make a texture pack just to get popular.
Lets face it! Making a texture pack is NOT EASY! Some people design packs simply because they enjoy working on them, and some make a pack because they want to create a certain theme/appearance. Either way the fame and recognition is an added bonus, and shouldn't be the main motivation. If you're planning on making a texture pack because people who make texture packs are popular on PMC, you should save yourself a lot of time, and just download a good one to enjoy. Otherwise you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Now let's say you took all the time you needed to make a masterpiece, and want to get your work known. This is where you need to be your own worst critic.

5: Advertise your pack as if you didn't make it!
Take the time to look at your pack subjectively, as if someone else showed this to you. If you feel like it's not the best you've seen, make it better. Once it's at the point where you would tell your friends about it even if it wasn't yours, that's when you're ready to publicize. Don't force it on people though. Just make it known that you made something cool, and recommend it to people. Tell people about it just enough so that they know it exists. From there you have to let the user choose if they wanna see it or not. The more you try to force people to check out a texture pack, the less they'll want to see it because you're annoying. (Make sure you do this on every MineCraft site you possibly can, and link them all to one site.)

6: Updates, make them!
"Pykes, wait a minute! I thought at this point the texture pack making was done, and now is the part where I bask in the joy of my success." Nope! The more you work on your pack, the better it'll get, and everytime you add more to the pack, you'll get bumped up the recently updated list. A good idea is to wait until the visit rate slows down, so that people will have a reason to check it out again. They get a better texture pack, and you get extra fame for the same work. Besides, there's no way it's perfect, so keep trying!


tldr; If you're too lazy to read all this, making a texture pack is probably more work than you're willing to do.

Hopefully next time you try to make a texture pack, you'll keep my advice in mind. Do it right, and you'll be high leveled on PMC in no time!