How do you work on a graphic

Hi,

35 year old motion picture assistant director looking for a new career.  I
have only made one image that I am proud of.

Enough of that...

As I read that "Who are you folks" thread I became fascinated at the many
different types of people on the list.  Thus I would be interested in how
people work through a small problem I constantly find my self in.

The question is, How do you guys organize yourselves, with respect to your
files, or versions, or drafts, you go through to complete an image?

I often find myself trying to arrive at a base image so I can move on to the
next set of changes I want to make.  Maybe I will start off with some vector
clipart, color it with something and export it to a bitmap.  A few hours
later I might decide that those colors stink, so back to the drawing board.
As I make changes, sometimes moving forward and sometimes moving back, I
look at my hard drive and find a million files.  Heaven forbid I was pulled
away from the effort for a day or so, when I return I have trouble making
sense of the path I was taking with the image.

So my question is directed at finding out how others save, and where they
save and what scheme people use throughout their development process.

Right now I tend to make folders that loosely equate to the "generation" of
an image.

What do you guys do?

Brian Boyd
kyron(at)zonesys.com

HWG: hwg-graphics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA