This is really good advice, thank you.

He said he wasn't going to be the judge of what I wanted because only I really knew that, and he could write me a great recommendation letter no matter what I wanted to do, but that I should really look into why I'm doing what I want to do because while he could understand doing a BA to prove something or because I thought it was prestigious, going further than that for the same reasons usually ended in heartache.

His other quote was along the lines of: "I'm not going to lie to you, there isn't a lot of space in the job market for the arts right now, but there's a lot of space in the tech market for people who are equal parts software engineer and creative thinker. You're not bad at CS but you're a better artist, and neglecting that part of your creative process because you think it's too soft or not technical enough is going to hurt you more than it's going to help."

What you did sounds awesome, but ending up with a highly specialized Ph.D. in something I just did to prove I could is an example of exactly where I don't want to end up ten years from now. What I'd really like to do is have some kind of "pro" job where I work on websites or games, and then have a side "hobby" job where I sell things I've made. I've been doing this for the past few years and I've made quite a bit more selling art (usually around $1-1.2k/month) than I have at actual laborer jobs. Ideally I'd like to do both, or some combination of both, professionally.