Watching Game Art or Coding Tutorials Won't help you

More unscripted content on: / nonsensical2d

[@Nonsensical2D]

So this is kind of a video I've been wanting to make for a while, even though it might be preaching to the choir. I don't think finding good "resources" for how to learn is necessarily bad, but I feel that I too often see people on reddit or similar that seem to overly rely on someone to teach them, and I don't believe art or programming are the types of skills where you learn by having someone tell you what to do, I fairly strongly believe that these are skills where you kind of have to struggle on your own. Generally this type of advice where you just say "just try and get going and see what happens" gets shut down because they are dismissive, but at the same time, I often feel that is the best strategy. With that said, I'll make more art videos soon, just had to get this off my chest :)

[@thanatos454]

Learning to program has this exact same problem. It is called Tutorial Hell.

[@HopperGameDevelopment-x4r]

I think developing skills is like a feedback loop of learning and experimentation. I can understand how gamedevs just want to get good so they can continue making progress with their game, but unfortunately with these sort of things, there are no shortcuts.

[@johnhauge2178]

This is so true, as a former skater I like to use the analogy between watching pro skaters in skate videos and actual reality, they might spend hundreds of attempts to get the perfect shot for the skate video, but in the skate video you only get the watch "THE" shot. This is similar to how many people get a false impression when watching tutorials for all kinds of things, because you don't see all the experience and hard work behind the video and then you don't get the real experience needed to understand how to do whatever it is you intend to do. And on top of that, tutorials are often presented in a way that makes it seem like the creator of the video is just making the solution up as they go along but usually they have planned the tutorial thoughtfully out before creating it and have gone through a lot of trial and error before landing on the solution they are presenting, similar to "THE" shot in the skate videos. I love your stuff, personally I just watch a tutorial or two a day when eating breakfast 👏

[@animatrix1490]

I've seen it argued before that art is inherently indescribable because by nature it is non-verbal. This is also why it's sometimes viewed as essentially magic; the person doing it can't "explain" it to someone. I don't know that that's fully true, but I like the way you're putting it; procedural vs declarative knowledge. Building your own "muscles" for art is so key, both mentally and physically.

[@mattrobb3566]

Excellent advice from you to a man who has watched endless art tutorials but has yet to create a single game viable drawing. I'm in the 'would like to draw' category, but I am alwasy too busy coding or designing levels so drawing gets pushed to the rear; especially as I suck at drawing. Thanks again.

[@veggiebr0th2]

this was a really interesting video to watch. it's a very important take that i dont think i've heard people talk about much! i've watched and read and seen so many tutorials for so many things, but the only real way i've ever managed to learn was by getting my hands dirty and trying things for myself over and over and over.

[@noxen1402]

Thank you for yet another excellent video! I've learn most of my game programming skills through practice and it's interesting to see the art angle on this. But I've to say I struggle to know "what to practice", "how to practice", "what to draw", "what/where to look for improvements in an asset". For game dev, game jams were really interesting to have a kind of "directed practice". As I knew what to deliver at the end, the theme and time constraints helped me focus on just doing the game, even if it wasn't finished or well coded, it was easier to practice (and I had a result at the end, which was even more motivating) Maybe having this kind of "directed practice", where you talk about one skill (for example, the contrast that you've talked about in another video) and ask us to do some drawings respecting constraints related to it, will give us a good way to "make the first line in the paper" and start our practices.

[@Nonsensical2D]

Interesting Idea! I'll have to think about how to approach it, but I do agree that learning to practice an individual skill can sometimes get tricky in terms of art.

[@soninhodev7851]

if you are still grappling with those questions, a great way to start, is by drawing elements from one game, in another games style so, for example, drawing a goomba in the pokemon style, or a charizard in marios.

[@awyeagames]

Tutorials are good for learning how to use tools, and getting a general idea of what they enable you to do. Everything else, is practice.

[@lexiferenczy9695]

It really comes down to enjoying or at least warming up to the process of doing things. I always had an interest in art and even when I sucked at the beginning it didn't bother me that much because I liked experimenting and thus gradually got better. It probably depends on your type, because while the process of art isn't a problem for me, the process of coding for example is way harder for me to get into, even though there are sparks of enjoyment here and there. Maybe I still need to get used to it more and then it becomes more pleasant but it's interesting that I'm struggling way harder with this. I imagine this is similar to more programming inclined folks who don't really like getting in the process of art and seem to struggle in their own way.

[@IraKane]

So true. You don't practice you don't grow. If it's hard for somebody to start practicing, just do something really easy and for a very short time the first day. 5 minutes is enough to start. If you like it, if you really enjoy it, you will find yourselve doing it more and more. You know what? With every video I realize more and more that what you say is NOT nonsensical at all. 😊

[@CreativeSteve69]

I truly highly enjoyed your spot on points you made in this video a lot. Like others have said Tutorials are a great foundation on getting the grasp of learning the basics of said skillset you want to accomplish. If you don't practice and have consistency at it you won't grow and expand as you learn which I find is very true. Always good to learn to expiremtn and learn on the go while having tutorials as references. Also just found your channel today and love the vibes.

[@maximumeffort1689]

The problem with programming tutorials is that most of them just give you the code to do something but never really explain why it works.

[@alexanderkulaev541]

Thank you, I so love and appreciate your unique take on this artistic and game dev topic. Great point in this video! I've been trying to find 'best practices' to do just about everything, from art to Unity stuff. I've been trying to learn what others do first, before my first attempt to dive into Unity or to color my own game assets. I should practice more, that's it. Btw, what is this 3D editing app on your iPad on 4:37? Perhaps I could use it too :) I'm modelling my voxel art in MagicaVoxel on my Mac M1, and then I export to Blender to arrange the modules, optimize the mesh and rig. I want to someday learn proper 3D modelling.

[@Nonsensical2D]

It's called Nomad, I'm not sure it quite clicked with me though, I prefer using blender. hadn't heard of MagicaVoxel before, seems cool!

[@alexanderkulaev541]

@@Nonsensical2D I love MagicaVoxel, you should try it :) Thank you for the info! Do you use Blender on an iPad? I didn't know it's available there.

[@Nonsensical2D]

Nah, I use it on PC :) I personally feel like 3D on ipad is slightly cumbersome, because the ”limited UI” and screen size kind of affects your flow. ( this is just my personal experience from the little I’ve tried though)

[@suicune2001]

Excellent!

[@lukaerd6258]

1:39 bro legit went. "ah damn, this is too good, better look for a tutorial on how to make bad art."

[@felix_xb]

To gain, one must pay a price. To gain guidance one must first gather enough questions and accumulate deep personal insight. If you try to just skip the price you'll get exactly what you payed for. Nothing.

[@gamheroes]

"The only source of knowledge is the experience" Einstein. Very clear...Read a pair of good books and after that start by practicing all that you have read

[@Curlyxtail]

This was a really good video. Thank you

[@wyale4773]

based

[@KryyssTV]

I have to completely disagree here because while art may subjective the technical aspects are not. Even more so an aesthetic or style may have a defined set of technical requirements which you may never realise from just practicing. For example you may want to capture the look of hand-drawn anime but to do that properly you need to recreate and work within the limitations of the cel animation process meaning that practice will never get the correct results without the technical understanding. Gameplay design, especially programming, requires technical understanding as practice will often lead to bad coding practices and/or games that just are not fun to play. I speak from experience here as my initial steps into game dev several years ago was largely driven by just learning from practice and it wasn't until I had released a few games that I realised what I needed was more technical knowledge which was going to require time being invested into studying and learning from more experienced devs.

[@Nonsensical2D]

While I agree that most skills require some technical requirements, I think most of these are often learned through practice. If we look at how programming is often taught at university (in sweden at least) you will have some lectures, but the biggest proportion of the course structure relies on the professor giving the students a problem to solve, and the students trying to solve that problem. This is then followed by guidance courses where you can get ”hints” by a supervisor, then followed by presenting your solution, defending your solution, and getting feedback on your solution (in this stage you will often get specific feedback on why your solution might run into problems or how to approach it better in the future). This type of structure does indicate that while universities do recognize that there is technical requirements that students need to learn, they also recognize that most of the skill of programming, is probably best learned through practice. That it by and large requires procedural knowledge. We can look at other skills like sports and crafts, these are skills that are generally learned through practice, where you have a coach or a master, and then an apprentice. The ”students” learn through practice, but are coached during the process, they still learn ”technical requirements”, but the technical requirements are usually learnt and processed trhough practice. Painting is also one of these skills that have usually followed a master/apprentice structure, rather than a lecture structure, and I would argue the reason for this is that most of these skills are procedural knowledge (which needs practice in order to be grasped). So strictly speaking guided practice might be the most optimal strategy, but I think reflective practice (with a lot of analysis thrown in, be it replay analysis if you do sports or games, or analyse other artists when you do your own art). But I think this type of analysis is in a sense also practice, and is not quite the same as watching a tutorial.

[@KryyssTV]

@@Nonsensical2D I wouldn't say that holding up academias methods as the golden stabdard is wise given at how their first priority as a buiness is to make money not to teach as effectively as possible. If a student could be taught everything needed to pass an exam in 1 year but the organisation makes more money by dragging the course out for 3 years then they'll purposely take the least effective path to training. So not a good basis for justifying an opinion. What I think you're confusing here isn't the value of teaching methods but rather how "sticky" that knowledge becomes. Well-made tutorials will advance a person's skills far faster and far further than practice alone but due to how our minds work that knowledge is forgotten more easily when it wasn't connected to personal experiences. It's very much like how smells and sensations trigger memories so when a new understanding is paired with a notable memory it is just easier to recall and that is more likely to happen if you practice a lot. This in inself has the benefit of allowing people to work faster and make fewer mistakes but that is why we have a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. Practice can make a person wise based upon what they know but has very limited scope for advancing their knowledge without training. As for drawing any similarities with physical skills like sports or crafts, that is like comparing apples with oranges because those require both cognitive training as well as knowledge. Someone can study archery for decades and know the technicalities inside and out but without practice they'll lack the strength, cordination and balance to make good use of what they know. But game design and digital arts do not require precise motor skills to get good results.

[@Nonsensical2D]

@@KryyssTV I think strictly speaking a Swedish university loses money the longer the students stay. Their interest is literally to push out students as well prepared and quickly as possible (given that the money comes from the government and not the students). I don't have knowledge of how other universities look though, since I'm a swede. I do think we can both agree that you probably get slightly further if you make use of tutorials to some extent, I don't think they are useless (my channel is dedicated to talking about and teaching art after all). But If I were to speculate on an optimal learning strategy in terms of hours spent, I would guess 10% tutorials, 20% analysis, 70% practice (roughly speaking). Though this breakdown is just my rough sense of it while sitting an writing this.

[@Dastan_Asimov]

Great vid as always 🎉

[@ric8248]

Are you releasing a game at some point?

[@Nonsensical2D]

Yes, I have started to get a bit further with it recently (but I don't showcase that progress here), I had a bit of a setback a while ago where the project I was working on with other people got sort of abandoned, so have had to start a new project alone :)

[@ric8248]

@@Nonsensical2D Awesome. Looking forward to it.

[@gedrgesfsdfwe4046]

Thanks for the opinion but they already did

[@evolgenius1150]

Fiiiirst! 🎉