Artistically Challenged

As the topic subject implies I am artistically challenged. A straight right-brainer who is all into science and math and scientific experimentation. xD

Anyways...I was wondering if someone could help me out a little bit. Not only do I wonder about some of the art lingo (like wth is a manip for example), but also if there is any information as to how to get into this kind of stuff. Learn the ropes so to speak. I would like to learn how to do a lot of the artwork I see on sites like this. I even have the time to spare and learn. xD

If you know of anyone or anything that could point me in the right direction I would be most obliged.

What all are you looking to know?

I can give you link examples to things I have examples of.

Character: click. A character is basically a design someone comes up with/creates, andddd gives a name to? I don't actually know what the difference would be considered between a character and a design. I would think maybe characters are considered characters because they have names/ages/stories/etc.

Tag: click. A tag is a piece of art that is 150x150 pixels (can be smaller, but no bigger than 150x150) that is used as an 'avatar' and can be displayed above your name on the forums, like mine you see above my name on this comment. Tags are usually recolors of your character (so for example, my tag is of the character I listed above, Blossom) and are created by other members, or sometimes yourself, and usually sold for 50k/1 EVC in the art forums. They're one of the most ordered/requested pieces of art on Equiverse.

Signature: click. A signature, or "sig", is a piece of art that is 150x500? (or is it 500x150, idk), the width is 500 pixels, while the height is 150 pixels, and again, can be displayed in your comments, but this time, they're directly UNDER your comment. You can also use the sig space to display another tag, which is what I currently have displayed. Like tags, sigs are usually recolors of your characters and are created by someone else or yourself. Sigs go for anywhere between 75-250k (that's what I've seen, anyway).

Manip: click. Manips are a whole different story, and TAKE A LOT OF TIME HFGSHJDVJSVJD. They are a combination of stock images, most commonly a background and a horse thrown together, but blended/tweaked so that they look like they were real photos taken by someone. A lot of the times you'll see horses have antlers (like the example I've provided), horns, wings, capes, etc. and those are all pieces people have cut out from other images, and placed onto the manip. Manips are commonly used on layouts, they're the big images you see above/under all the text on someone's 'profile page'. For example, Immortal's page shows a great example of a manip made. The entire pegasus and the background in the image is a manip, and the words/text boxes seen is the 'layout' piece.

Which brings me to...
Layouts: Not necessarily an art piece, but sometimes you need to create an entire background image for the type of coding you want done. Layouts are extremely difficult to understand because they take a great deal of (most commonly) HTML coding to create/use.

Lineart: click. Linearts are basically untouched coloring books. They are the lines you see bordering a character. People use linearts to create designs/characters by coloring them in. Linearts are...very hard to create lol.

Base/Greyscale: Bases are for lazy people like me. Bases are when people color in linearts and create separate layers (usually body, mane/tail, hoof, eye, background) for you to color on so that you don't have to go in yourself and color the lineart inside the lines. Greyscales are when people color in the lineart, but then shade/highlight the lineart so that when you color it in, it looks like a real horse depending on what kind of greyscaling job you do. base example, greyscale example.

I probably forgot some terms, so when I remember them, I'll edit this post lol

That actually pretty much covers it. Great description and examples Wey! I understood it at least. Except the base/grayscale thing, but the examples helped a lot. I feel like those just fall under non-detailed character to be honest.

Anyways.....if one were to want to learn how to make all this art how would I start? Obviously I'm gonna suck and it's going to take time. But normally how do people start learning how to do it?

XD There are different steps for each piece. Pick one you want to start with and I'll write you a book on how to do it lol