Alright, this is Learning How to Learn. This is when you find the Brony fandom makes really
cool things. And you're really interested in how you might go about learning those things.
Because you'll see amazing things on Youtube, or you'll see amazing fanfics, and you only
see the end product, but you don't really know how they got there.
And there's kind of a process to it. Bronies make a lot of content. We have 1.6 billion
words of My Little Pony Fanfiction, there's just a lot. Staggering amounts of fanart,
and lots and lots of analysis videos. And there's even a subsection of YouTube for audio
fanfic readings. You have a lot of different people that read fan fiction out loud and
do a lot of audio recording stuff. That's not even saying PMVs where you have—Well,
you have simple PMVs you see on Equestria Daily which are just clips from the show.
And then you have the more detailed motion graphics art. Where people are moving things
around. And ponies are doing interesting things. That's also there.
And that's not to mention animation. Which is mostly the hardest one of all which really
does require a big group of people to work together for it.
So our big question: "How did they learn how to do that?" Because there's just so much
content and how did they figure that out? So this panel is for people that are non-creatives
or mildly creative that are interested in seeing kind of a glimpse of what other people
have done. And how they learned that process of how to do that.
And it's also to help you figure out what you don't know you don't know. Because until
you figure out what you don't know you don't know, you can't stop and Google it.
Also, for people that are just curious how some of this stuff is created.
So the biggest question is: "How do I Iearn how to do that?"
Because other people learned how to make it, and they're humans, and I'm also human so
I can also figure out how to do something. Because everything is learnable.
Let's kind of go through the agenda of the panel.
We're going to be going over Emotional Barriers to learning new skills. Because there's always
angst when learning how to draw for the first time and it looks terrible. And other skills
too. There's also writing, particularly writing
fan fiction. Though you'd be surprised by the amount of writing that happens in the
Brony fandom, even just comments on YouTube. And being able to praise other people for
the content they create. That's also something we'll be going over.
As well as drawing. And a subsection of drawing you may not have heard of called vectoring.
Which is another part of this fandom. As well as audio recording fanfic readings, as well
as video production, and kind of what goes in with that. And a little bit of animation.
I don't personally have experience with doing a full animation project. But I've watched
lots of tutorials enough to be like: "Wow! That's a lot of work."
I can at least point you in the right direction, and that's mostly what this panel is. It's
pointing you in the right direction for how to learn things if you would like to.
And tell me if I talk too fast. I always listen to things at doublespeed on YouTube and so
it affects my speech. So yeah... I can slow down if you want.
A thing to keep in mind. So a lot of you are probably used to going to school, and you'll
learn: "This is the War of 1812, this is what happened in the War of 1812." And I don't
know why I picked that example because I have no idea what happened in the War of 1812 besides
that it was a fight against the British... So school mostly focuses on Book knowledge,
but what we'll be delving into are skills. And skills are a little bit different. I think
the biggest difference you can see would probably be taking something like "wood shop" where
you'd have to learn something like carpentry. And focus, and hammer things together. That
is a skill. It is carpentry. But you need to separate those two different
categories. Because learning knowledge, you could learn it from a book. It's relatively
simple. But learning a skill, is something you do
have to get hands on and create things. Okay, I do have a caveat here: People are
different. Like, there's a big giant: "IT DEPENDS" over all of humanity. Because some
people may be better suited for certain things, and others may be better suited for other
things. Also, this panel focuses a lot on watching
and following along with YouTube tutorials. Perhaps that's not the best way for you to
learn, which I... well that's what I'll be showing because that's what helped me learn.
And being able to follow somebody else do something is a pretty good way to learn things.
So... overcoming emotional barriers. I had, like, the weirdest worldview in High School.
I had this thing where I thought people were born knowing how to draw.
Like, I'd see people that knew how to draw and I'd be like: "Wow, they are so good at
drawing! They're so good at what they do!" And I had no idea that: "Oh! That is because
they worked hard, they practiced, and they did it."
So among the emotional barriers to go over is to realize that: "Everything can be learned."
Everything you see around you was either designed or created by people. Like, take this room.
An architect designed it, and then you had groups of people working together to actually
build the materials and you have this whole global supply chain.
And you can learn all that if you really want to. And it's really cool that ALL of this
is learnable. I'm a big fan of learning random stuff.
And... realize that it's never "too late" to learn a skill. You can learn how to play
the piano at 70 if you want to. That's perfectly fine. Or you could learn how to draw something.
Sure there's some talent that might be innate, but that talent increases far more through
hard work. So, I think some of you may have heard of
this book: "Outliers." This is a really good book. It's all about the 10,000 hour rule—that
it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach world class performance.
This is said a lot. People talk about JanAnimations and I'm pretty sure he's put in his 10,000
hours of professional, amazing, fantastic work. And it shows.
However, for the purposes of this panel, we're not going into 10,000 hours of stuff because
we just want to have fun! "I just want to learn enough about writing to write my first
fanfic. And maybe see if it'd be fun." Or: "I just want to draw a little bit, to
just draw my OC." So that! How long does that take?
So based off of this book, I'd say about 20 hours. This is one of my favorite books. This
is: "The First 20 hours: How to Learn Anything Fast" by Josh Kaufman. Basically, it takes
20 hours of deliberate practice. Like, plan it out: "I'm going to learn this at this time,
and do this at this time." And it takes about that long to learn a new skill.
And that's enough just to have fun with it. You're not going to be a world class master
at it. But you'll know enough to have fun with it. And get your feet wet and understand
the process and maybe see: "Do I like this?" "Maybe not?"
It's all about overcoming that barrier in the beginning of: "This is too hard."
Another emotional barrier is: "Knowing what you want to do."
Have a goal in mind. Like, if you wanna write a fanfic, a drawing. If you wanna make an
animated gif—those are really simple to make. If you Google "Gyazo Gif," it allows
you to make Gifs really easily. It's great. I'll have a link in these presentation show
notes. Basically, the more you understand what you
want to make, the better chance you have to succeed.
And my big problem with this was: "I saw all these Bronies making content, making these
animations and videos and all this other stuff. And I was like: 'What do I wanna do?' 'EVERYTHING!'"
Let's rephrase that question. Instead of: "What do you want to do," "What do you want
to do first." Because if you can answer that question you can do a lot more things with
your time. Rather than being trapped in a dazed state like: "What do I wanna do~?" But
if you can set what you want to do first, it can be really helpful.
And this is one of my favorite sayings for this kind of stuff: "A problem well stated,
is a problem half solved." So if you can figure out: "Here is my problem, I don't know how
to do THIS. I don't know the process for THIS." You can expand that out. Let's say you're
having a problem with... Well... when you understand the vocabulary
for motion graphics you can be like: "Okay, how do I make a clipping mask in After Effects
to achieve this effect?" Like, the more you can narrow down your problem, it can be really
helpful. Let's see, another emotional barrier is not
giving up immediately. The CMC are a really funny example of this. Because they try something
once and they're like: "Well! Not for me!" The cutie mark algorithm analysis thing didn't
work. So they didn't get their cutie marks, so: "Obviously this isn't for me."
But that isn't really how it works in the real world. It does take effort, because no
one is good at it immediately. So I would say to really understand if this is your thing
or not your thing, to give it at least 20 hours of consistent, deliberate, practice
before just shoving it away. And I know that drawing at first feels painful because it's
just like: "AAAH! This does NOT look good at all." But it's okay.
Just give yourself some time. Learn to forgive yourself enough to at least overcome that
frustration barrier. And remember: "If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun."
Another aspect of this is: "Breaking down the skill."
So you have these big giant skills like animation. That is actually made up of a ton of different
component skills. So earlier in the day we had M. A. Larson talking about the writing
aspect of animation. And that's it's own, like, writing skill.
And then you have the actual drawing skills that people have. Of sitting down and learning
how to draw and doing that a bunch of different ways.
And so, being able to break down these skills into their component parts, you can put them
into bite sized portions you can use to actually learn things.
So... other things I have a problem with. I have a problem figuring out time management.
Like, that is the bane of my existence. So if you want to read a big business book about
it. "Getting Things Done." I recommend it if you can handle business books. It could
be boring. I dunno, it depends. Basically, just write things down. And the
more you write it down, it gives your brain permission to let it go, flip to it later
and realize: "Oh! I wanted to learn this thing." As you write things down you'll notice: "Oh!
This is coming up more often. Perhaps I should do this thing because my brain is constantly
reminding me to do this task." And other things I've found useful. Putting
my phone in airplane mode, and turning off the Wi-Fi.
If I'm trying to write, let's turn off all the distractions and get into "Deep Work"
and work on something. That's not going to work at first for some
of this, because you'll be watching a YouTube tutorial while doing something else.
And remember to set apart time per day. And another really good book that I like...
this is one of my favorites! It's: "The War of Art"
It is a punch in the face. It is really, really painful because it outlines this enemy towards
creativity called: "The Resistance." And how hard it is to get things done. Because any
time you are trying to do a creative endeavor, everything is going to go against you. Whether
it be to learn it, or to do it in the first place.
Some drama will happen. Or you'll have six finals. Which... do your finals first. But...
it can be a problem. I highly recommend this book if you want a
punch in the face, but in book form. To tell you to do art.
Another aspect that I've had a problem with was: "focusing too much on the tool."
So... let's take the carpentry example. No one stops and says: "I'm going to learn how
to use a hammer." No, they're goal is: "I want to make a birdhouse." And the tool happens
to be a hammer. And I'm going to use a hammer and a nail to create this birdhouse.
That is also how to treat the things we're learning. If you're learning drawing, you're
learning drawing, not Photoshop. Though that may be an aspect of it that may improve your
drawing because it's a tool you use. So... you want to learn novel writing, not
specifically the program: Scrivener. While that is a good program that helps you write
novels, it is just a tool in your toolbox. So separating the skill itself from the tool
can be helpful. And something that I needed to keep in mind
as I was trying out lots and lots of different software. I dunno, I started learning Adobe
Illustrator before I realized: "I have to learn how to draw to use this?" And it was
very funny experience to realize that and so I kind of learned all these tools in different
orders. Okay, so let's go to our first thing we're
learning about, which is: "Writing." I have a soft spot for this. One of the first
things I made for the Brony fandom was a fanfic. It was really exhilarating from start to finish.
And also really angsty. And all sorts of stuff. But it's fun. I recommend it.
"What are the barriers to entry for Fanfiction?" Luckily, the cost is free. If you have a pencil
and paper, you can write fanfic, you can write things.
And this is one of my favorite comics, I don't know if you've seen this before.
It's Derpy lying on the ground and Pinkie goes up and says: "PONY! PONY! PONY!"
And Derpy's like: "Yes but... WHY do we pony?" I think that's beautiful because I think that's
so much of writing fan fiction. The frustration barrier for that is just like: "What am I
doing!?" I'm writing stories about horses having fun... and yeah... it's a strange.
The frustration barrier is pretty high. And also that feeling of "What am I doing?"
But it's a lot of fun when you give it a chance. And yeah... I would recommend this for you
if you get story ideas you can't stop thinking about. Like, my first story I wrote. I didn't
intend to write it. But then... it was the middle of the night and I could not go to
sleep and so I decided to "just write down the idea" so I could go to sleep.
And I just kept writing and writing and yeah... and by the end of it I had a fanfic!
It's kind of fun how that works out. This is arguably the easiest to start because
putting words on pages is something you've kind of been taught at school. "Please! We
want you to write! We want you to write this essay." This is already using that same skill
you're getting at school, but in a different way. And a much funner way.
Because usually at school you have to worry about citing your sources. Do all this other
stuff. Writing is very free-form. It's one of the most free-form things you can do. It's
basically painting... words? I don't know how to describe it, but it's really fun.
So let's break down writing into it's constituent parts.
So we have two hugely different skills that everyone kind of lumps together. Keep in mind
that these are two different skills. One is writing, that is actually the process of getting
words onto paper. It's putting one word in front of the other. "I am writing this right
now." And then there's also editing, which is it's
own skill of taking those words, and refining them. Like, you have this long paragraph description
of something, but you could shorten it down to one sentence. Or "Oh, look, you didn't
really understand the grammar principle here." Or: "You forget to spell check a word." Or
worry about your: "There, they're, and theirs." Which is kind of like the law of it. So it's
the lawyer approach to writing, is editing. And trying to get it to fit these things.
And that is important. No one is going to read your stuff if it's not properly edited.
And it doesn't look right. And those are two skills that are pretty important.
And I highly recommend: "Don't publish your first fanfic without at least letting an editor
see it." Because they're going to know rules that you're not going to notice. It just helps
to have a second pair of eyes. Arguably writing can be difficult because
it's so useful to have a friend. And having that friend/editor look at it.
And also writing is pretty cool because it shows up everywhere. Like, you'll start writing
but it also has ties to animations, because you need to have a script. Their's writing
for pony analysis videos. Like, even Dr. Wolf, the hardest part of his
job is writing the script for the video. And that's what most people care about. They don't
realize that's what they care about the most. But the additional pictures and everything
else is really more of an afterthought to make it more effective.
So I have plenty of weird advice for writing fanfic. This is just stuff that I found useful.
Writing is so free-form that everyone has their own sets of advice. And so you really
have to try one pattern and go with it. So my strange advice, is when you're first
writing, just write. Just put your fingers on the page and just
go forward. Don't look at "how it's done" or style guides until after you've written
something, and gotten the words on the paper. And say to yourself: "I am writing right now.
And I will be editing later." Tell yourself that, to give yourself permission to just
write. So you find yourself and picture yourself in the story. How the story is coming about.
What do the characters say in this situation? And where they've gotten to.
At the beginning, write as if you and you alone will read it. And the most important
thing to do: "Have fun!" This is a hobby. You're not getting paid for
this, especially not for fanfiction. So write for fun.
Also realize that you may... well... this may help you. Because there's a lot of different
kinds of writers and different kinds of perspectives on it.
There's people called: "Pantsers." They're writing "by the seat of their pants." Because
they have no idea what's going to happen next. It's like: "I don't know what's gonna happen
next, but I'm going to keep writing and writing to find out as I go along."
The author is just as surprised when the characters do something as the characters are, and the
audience as well. And then you have: "Planners." They know every
aspect of the story. I know VikingZX on Fimfiction, he wrote a blog about how: "Oh! I had my characters
visiting the griffon kingdom, but I hadn't figured out a griffon monetary system that
they'll use when they're going to buy something." So he stopped and researched monetary systems
of the world for, like, four hours. And then he figured out this perfect system that the
griffons would use in the griffon lands for their monetary system.
Then he finally wrote this scene for how things should work.
So they're planners and world builders. Which, sometimes that works for people, sometimes
it doesn't. You just gotta figure out what you feel the most comfortable with.
And then there's what's called: "Flashlighters." This is me. This is: "They're in a dark room,
they're shining a flashlight thinking 'I THINK the story goes over here' but then they keep
looking around at the plot and trying to see it." And basically they know what's going
to happen in the next three chapters and they may have an ending they want to see happen.
But they're not really sure. And the characters may go off and do something they didn't expect.
So those are three types of writers you may turn into. This is pretty subjective, but
these are good to know about. So writing resources. Number 1: FimFiction.net.
This is THE place. If you don't know about it yet, this is where fan fiction gets published,
read about, and where you'll probably put stuff if you're writing My Little Pony fan
fiction. There's also a great, great website called
Writeoff.me. These people are harsh. If you want people
to read your writing and give you harsh feedback, or like, or sometimes good feedback. I dunno.
It's just full of critics. You go to writeoff.me, and they have these
contests every month with these anonymous writing competitions. Where people write a
story based off of a prompt. And it could be from 2000-8000 words. Or in mini-fic competitions
they're 750 words. And those are really fun, and you'll get lots
of anonymous people putting up fanfic. And people rate them, and write critiques about
it. And at the end it's revealed that: "Oh! This person wrote this." And it's a lot of
fun. And it can be really ego depleting. Especially when you don't do as well and people give
harsh feedback on something that you thought was amazing. I dunno, it's a process.
Also, this is not My Little Pony related. WritingExcuses.com is a really great podcast
if you wanna get used to writing and having writing on your mind. They're 15 minute writing
episodes from New York Times bestselling authors like Brandon Sanderson and other people. And
they're talking about how to write. Highly recommend that as well.
And I'll probably recommend this link several more time during these slides. Equestria Daily
has a tutorial index where you can look at all these tutorials about all sorts of stuff.
And they have a writing section in there as well. So those are things that can help.
Let's see... more strange advice. There's a website called "Written Kitten." I love
this site! You type words into a little box and every hundred words, a kitten pops up.
It just gives you a new picture of a kitten. It's great. And very silly. Maybe it won't
work for you. And also, if you like countdown timers. They
get me to do things. I'm just, like, setting a counter for thirty minutes and I have thirty
minutes to write so "Let's go!" It's pretty helpful.
I have also used a creativity Twitter account. Where I've gone and said: "I wrote 20 words
today." Hopefully not that low. "I wrote 1000 words today." And just kind of reporting my
status. I don't have very many followers, I don't bother that many people. But it's
a way for me to publicly say: "Hey, I did something today."
That can be helpful to you as well. My last piece of weird advice about writing is: "keep
a journal." I found this really helpful because... 1. You're writing from you're own experience.
And then you're writing it like, well... it depends on how you write your journal whether
typed or handwritten. I handwrite it. And it allows you to better learn how to explain
and articulate yourself using words.
And then since it's a private journal, you don't have to worry about editing or all that
other stuff. It's just words on a page. It doesn't really matter. It's pretty simple
and it gets you to write everyday. And will enable you to keep up a writing habit.
So that was the writing section. And now we're going to go into a much different
animal: Editing. Yes, you do have to edit. So once you are
done with your story. Or if it's beyond a certain number of words, like, 5000 or so.
You want to learn how to start self-editing. Which can be it's own process.
Because English is this ridiculous language with lots of rules that don't make any sense.
And like: They're, their, and there. And... oh gosh.
It is something you'll have to learn if you want to write. And remember, I'm just going
over this section but we'll be going over other skills later. But I'm just trying to
let you know what you're getting yourself into if you do decide to write.
Editing resources. I think the main resource you want is Ezn. She (or he) did a 20k word
long writing guide on FimFiction. It's literally right under "FAQ->Writing Guide" that you
can go into. That tutorial will probably get you 80% of the way there.
Just follow the tutorial and look and see if you're making these writing mistakes. You're
going to have to look through your story and edit it. You're not adding to the story like
adding plot elements (though you could... Man, writing is so subjective). But this is
the part where you are going to make it more concise and better and make sure it follows
all the rules. And then, for the next 15% (because you got
80% of the way there with the writing guide and knowing all the rules). The next 15% would
be getting help. And this is when you maybe call a friend, and use collaborative tools
like Google Docs. So what you can do in Google docs, what you
can do is go highlight a phrase or word and click: "Comment." And then you can have these
entire dialogue trees with your friend or editor. And be like: "Oh. Should I do it this
way?" or "Oh! I just realized the concept of having a leather pouch in Equestria doesn't
really work very well." Just stuff like that. So yeah... using collaborative tools. Google
docs is probably the standard for this for fanfic authors. If you want to pay money,
there's Microsoft Word which has it's own editing system. As well as Dropbox, which
is free and you can share Dropbox links. Okay, so that is 95% of the way there. You're
story has gotten there once... look at the writing guide, make sure [your writing] is
following these patterns as well as getting help from a friend.
The next part is basically knowing when to quit. I dunno, I had a weird experience where
I wrote my first novel. It was 50,000 words. It was amazing! And then I sat on it for a
year and a half. And I finally just published it, and it took me so long to get it out there.
But at some point know that you actually have to publish the words you write. You don't
have to, but it's recommended. That's where all the fun parts happen. You get comments
and people that like it and people that hate it. But it's fun.
Just understand that writing is a cycle of writing and editing and writing something
new and editing that, and writing this and editing that. So it's a process.
So that is the writing and editing portion. And next I'm going to go into a different
topic and to address that topic I'm going to explain my strategy for watching YouTube
videos. I know that sounds strange, but when you watch
a lot of video tutorials this helps. There's this really, really useful Chrome extension
called "Video Speed Controller." You can use this to increase the speed of YouTube. Because
right now on YouTube, you can only go to Double-speed, but with this you can go beyond doublespeed.
You can go to x4 speed and after that you don't really hear audio.
Using this you can skim over a video and see, like, "Do I wanna watch this?" "If I watch
this tutorial on how to do this dust effect in After Effects, will it actually teach me
what I want to know?" And you can skim watch it, see if it covers
what you wanted to know. And then: "Oh, it doesn't." OR: "Oh! It does!"
And then you can go back and watch at single speed. And actually follow along. And by "follow
along" I mean: "When the person on the screen does something, you mimic that person." This
is useful if you have multiple monitors and on one screen you have the tutorial, and on
the other screen your actually working at it and typing and moving the mouse.
So those are my ways to do things. Watch it quickly to get a brief overview and then watch
it again, but slower as you follow along. So next is: "Drawing."
Aw man, this is a lot of fun! It's so weird... but... I dunno.
These are some of my first sketches just Google image searching ponies because I wanted to
draw my OC which was a pegasus. And "let's see if I can draw that." Just trying to carefully
match what I saw on the screen. So this is pretty free if you're doing the
pencil and paper variety. I recommend that you try to learn how to do this if you really
wanna draw you're own OC. And work on that. You're initial tools will be paper and pencil.
Maybe later on, beyond the scope of this panel, consider buying a tablet and drawing software
like Photoshop, or Paint Tool Sai, or Manga Studio. For now, just focus on sketching and
that kind of stuff. The initial hurdles for drawing is that it
is genuinely difficult to get yourself to do things you aren't good at. Especially with
drawing, because with writing you may be able to fool yourself and you don't know your writing
is bad until much later on. But here, you can immediately see that "this
doesn't look quite right." Some of the proportions on that are way off. I'm not sure what's going
on. So the frustration barrier is really high. So if you can spend the first 20 hours just
deliberately practicing it, you can overcome that frustration barrier.
Another thing that helped me were these online tutorials. Where someone would describe how
to draw something. I think this is the most famous one: "How to draw a My Little Pony"
has lots of views. And kind of the key things to learn from there when you're first drawing
is using the guidelines and circles. You're gonna see on these videos a lot, someone's
gonna go up there and they're gonna show a picture of an actual pony and it looks great.
And then they're gonna start drawing circles and saying: "This is how it all comes together."
And you do not see how it all comes together. And it's really weird.
But they're all into these circles for some reason. They know what they're doing. You
don't know what they're doing but you'll kind of learn as you go along how to use these
circles to guide how you're going to draw. And they're using guidelines to figure out
that: "Oh! This is about where the eye should go." And it doesn't really make sense at first,
but practice along with them. And it'll become more clearer as you draw
what they're drawing. And you'll see that using guidelines helps them plan out the character's
pose. Another thing to keep in mind is: "Drawing
from reference." I know some painters, they have to go out,
get a photographer, take a picture of what they want to draw in the right pose (or whatever
pose they're doing). And they literally just draw that [photograph].
You also need to understand that it's perfectly okay to look at a picture of what you're drawing
as you're drawing it. Because most of our experience looking at other people drawing
is: "Oh, they're just doodling on the side and they're not using reference." But when
you draw, go ahead and Google what you wanna draw. And the pose you'd like. And try to
figure it out. One of the books that's helped me with this
is: "Steal like an Artist." This is really short. Maybe get it from the library because
you'll read it in, like, an hour. There's also a TED talk.
Yes. YouTube it at doublespeed. So yeah.
In your initial stages, you just wanna learn how to emulate the styles of others. Even
in your later stages, still keep learning. Here's an example of something I did. Because
I really liked this: "Spike the Butler." I love that art. It's really well done. So I
tried to emulate on the right how he would look like if he was flying and it doesn't
look... that... right. But I'm getting there. I'm practicing. It's fun.
So kind of go back and forth between watching tutorials in specific poses as well as Googling
"How would I draw this in this pose." The king this is to just deliberately practice
what you want to do. And tweak other peoples drawings. Steal their style, but then kind
of make it your own. There's a little bit of derivation involved.
Because no creative work is done in isolation. There's a really good YouTube series called:
"Everything's a Remix." It's true, because everyone is influenced by other people. Feel
free to let yourself be influenced. So that's my recommendation for breaking down
drawing. Find a good tutorial, watch it. Google other things you want to figure out. And kind
of practice drawing for a while until you... well... until you continue or keep going or
give up... or whatever makes you feel comfortable. Another aspect of drawing — I never did
get the hang of this—but after you draw with paper and pencil, you can (with a pen)
go over it with better lines. And then erase the pencil drawings later and you have this
more pristine artwork. Though, I don't know too much about this but
this is something recommended for a Google session.
Or you can digitally ink using software. So I'm going to go into that a little bit now.
Which is vectoring. This is how you get the show's style. Because the show is using all
these mathematical methods of creating these characters. It's really funky the first time
you do it. So it's the process of using these mathematical
curved lines in order to create drawings. And so that's what the show uses.
I'm going to give you a brief demonstration of how that works now.
Let me give you a brief example of what a vectoring program would do.
So this is Adobe Illustrator. So what you see right here, this is a sketch I made. It's
a little derpy since I'm not the best artist, but I do enough art to have fun with it.
So what I can do is scroll in real close and see all these pixels. And so what a vector
program does is recreate it mathematically. So you can have pixel perfection no matter
how much you move in or out. Let me give you an example of that. So I'm
going to create a new layer here. And I can click a point right here.
And drag it off over here. And make another point. I'm going to curve it a little bit
right here. Add another point. Curve a little bit over here. And create another point like
this. So I have this leg. I can even adjust the thickness as needed
to make it look a little bit better. I can change the colors to something better.
So that's kind of how it works. So what you would do is end up creating all these vector
drawings for all parts of this guy. So I could vector over here, and kind of create his body.
And adjust the layers as needed. So this leg goes on top.
I could do this leg below. And that's kind of how this works. You kind of repeat that
pattern, many times. Oh, wow that doesn't look good. Oh, that's why.
Let me adjust my paths... It's helps if you label these.
So "Left Foreleg." And... chest.
Yeah, you get the idea. Just to make sure you got it look right.
And so for the final product, let me turn on these layers on.
As you can see, the neck was really long, so I adjusted it around to make it less long.
And you can do that in Illustrator, just pick the parts you would like. And move it around
as you see fit. Yeah, that looks really odd. But there's a lot of work involved in getting
things to look just right. Especially, when you're vectoring things.
And so you see all these little lines where things happen. And you can adjust these curves.
You can see that on the show, they would extrapolate this out to entire scenes, where each and
ever single frame is an adjusted version of this. And moving around all these various
pieces. And making it look nice. So that is Adobe Illustrator, a brief, brief
rundown. I recommend finding a good tutorial and just watching it and following along with
the artist. And how he or she does it. Just so you know, the cost is free if you're
using Inkscape. So I recommend that. Not free is the Adobe Illustrator and Flash. I'll talk
about the Adobe Creative Cloud later because that's it's own different animal.
Let's see, I recommend learning this, if you've learned enough about how to draw and want
your drawings to look more like the show. This is what the show is using. It's using
this vector program. Or if you hate drawing but tracing is fun. So you can trace it digitally
and end up with these pristine drawings even if you don't have high drawing skills.
For this, just follow good tutorials online. There's lots of tutorials out there for this.
There's one on Inkscape I'm linking to from a user named Dashohalite.
He did a very good series. I also watched this other one on Adobe Illustrator
that was fantastic. It's super long. If you're comfortable sitting down and spending two
hours watching a video on YouTube and just following along and trying to recreate it
step by step. Because that is what it takes to learn this.
Following along with someone's tutorial and working it from there.
And once you have that skill you can apply it to lot's of different things.
Other good resources: "The MLP vector club." These guys are really strict. Like, it's hard
to submit things to them. Like you have to submit show-quality vectors to even be in
their club. But they do have lots of resources available. And you can look at that. As well
as the tutorial Codex is pretty good. Another thing that I've dabbled in is Audio
recording. This is a lot of fun!
I've done fanfic readings before and some of my best stuff on YouTube is just fanfic
readings. It's a subset of two different skills: "Voice Acting."
Which is actually getting a mic and talking in front of it and emoting and being, well,
an actor. And that's interesting. There's all sorts
of tutorials for that. As well as stopping and emulating other voices
to try to talk like them. And also trying to work on your own voice.
And then there's a completely other different skill that's almost unrelated. But it's a
package deal if you want to do this all yourself. And record the audio, and edit the audio later.
Editing the audio involves using a Digital Audio Workstation (some kind of software)
to go in and move aspects of the audio and change them around. And change where you did
the flubbed lines. When I do audio readings, I pretty much do
each line about three times. Because I say it the first time and I'm like: "That didn't
sound right." And then I say it again. "Oh that sounds better." And then I say it again.
"Oh, that worked better that time." And I end up flubbing lines all the time.
And so what's needed for that is going back and doing Audio Editing on that.
Let's see, so stuff needed to get started... Software cost: Free (if using Audacity)
And then hardware cost... if you're doing fanfic readings. At first, for your first
20 hours of just dabbling. Go ahead and just use your laptop microphone. But if you want
it to actually sound good, you will someday want to consider buying a microphone.
Sorry, some of these hobbies do cost money. That's kind of what happens with certain things.
I highly recommend the Blue Yeti microphone. This is the kind of microphone you see right
here. You can look at later if you'd like to experiment with it. It's a very good microphone.
I recommend doing fanfic readings if you have listened to a lot of audio. Like, if you like
listening to Podcasts and you like listening to audiobooks from Audible or anywhere else.
And you think it's super cool. Or, if you listen to all these YouTube fanfic
reading communities, like Scribbler or Neighrator pony. And you think they're interesting and
you want to listen to them. Those are options.
And if you like fanfic. Because if you're going to be recording fanfic readings, then
you'll be reading fanfic out loud. So it kind of comes with the job.
There's this seventeen part tutorial on YouTube. It's really good. This guy does a fantastic
job. But it is kind of long. Because going start to finish he explains voice acting principles,
as well as editing audio in Audacity and moving the waveforms around.
It's a little tough. A thing to keep in mind—actually for pretty
much this whole pane—a good lifetime good skill to have is using keyboard shortcuts
like: Ctrl-C (Copy)
Ctrl-V (Paste) Ctrl-X (Cut)
Like being able to manipulate the audio, highlight it, then Ctrl-X, and then move this over here...
Like, that is very useful. It's good for text editing as well.
So... just learn your keyboard shortcuts. They're handy.
I did this entire tutorial on how to find and use sound effects for fanfic readings.
It is a mess to try to figure out how to add sound effects to fanfic readings sometimes.
Because it's a very time consuming process. And then you look at the show and they have,
like, ten people working on the sound effects department for 22 minutes. And you're trying
to record a three hour audiobook and you're like: "Uh... this may beyond the scope of
what I can do." Sound effects are really cool. I have several
resources in there. Mostly Freesound.org is the place to go to look for royalty free sound
effects. That's stuff I've used for sound effects.
So, now I'm going to go into Video Production, which is a giant: "It depends." Because there's
a lot of aspects to this. So let my break it down into different aspects.
Because it depends on the software you're going to be using. Because this requires a
good computer that can handle this kind of stuff. Because the higher quality of computer
you have, the more you can move these big files.
And there's always this arms race where as soon as computers get good enough to handle
the current video... well BAM, let's have 4k.
And as soon as we have computers that can handle 4k real well, we'll have 8k. It's always
this busy thing that requires a nice, good computer.
That is a very high barrier to entry. It is free if you're using Windows Movie Maker,
which is really good. Or Apple iMovie. Those are both really good programs to look up tutorials
on. They're simple, but they get the job done. And you can do a lot of cool things.
Dr. Wolf does his entire everything all in iMovie. He's done that for years. And he makes
tons of videos every week using that software and it works great for him. And can work well
for you. I recommend video production if you absolutely
have to get something on YouTube. You're going to need to know a little about video and how
to create things even to put Fanfic readings on YouTube. You can't just upload an .mp3
file to YouTube. It has to be a (.mp4) video file to have it on YouTube.
You'll wanna watch some tutorials to figure that out.
So if you wanna do a simple PMV, where it's just clips of the show set to music. That
would be something you use Windows Movie Maker/iMovie for.
And it's pretty simple. And Dr. Wolf, like I mentioned, uses iMovie.
But keep in mind—just talking about analysis videos here—if you really wanna get into
analysis, recognize that you have a lot— a lot— of different subskills to work on.
One is writing. Because the script of what you are saying
is probably the most important part of your video. Because that is what you are talking
about and what people are interested in. Another aspect of it is drawing which you
can get away with if you commission someone or something else.
You end up with these YouTube channels where lots of people are collaborating on them because
it's just such a big massive thing to do, to even create a video.
But if you're going to do this all by yourself. You'd have to be good at writing, drawing
(or having something on the screen), audio editing which I mentioned earlier—Have a
good microphone for that. And also video editing, which is just moving
pieces of video around. And then, okay before I go into this next
topic of more advance video, recognize that things get expensive. Like when you're dealing
with expensive software like the Adobe Creative Suite.
This can cost, like, 20$ a month if you're a student. To up to 50$ a month. Which is
super expensive. And I don't really recommend it unless you just have to AND you have a
lot of disposable income. But this is REALLY good software though. This
is professional software. It looks really good on a resumé.
Like I can say: "I know the whole Adobe Creative Suite because I've watched all these tutorials
and I've done all this stuff. Here's a portfolio of some of the stuff I've made (that's not
ponies since I don't really share pony stuff)" But it looks really good and you get a lot
of different software in there. You got Audition for Audio Editing. Premiere—which is whole
movies you see at a movie theatre can be edited with this software called Adobe Premiere Pro.
Adobe Illustrator. Even the show itself: Adobe Flash. That is
a product. It's good, but it's very expensive. Research
stuff. What I found really helpful was... for some
reason my local library had computers with Adobe Creative cloud on there. And so I got
to learn all this software, just at the Library. Libraries are awesome.
(You can also get a free trial for 30 days if you're trying to learn a new software or
decide if you want to buy it) The free trial is also really good.
Other things to keep in mind: "Lynda.com." This is Netflix for online tutorials. They
do classes. I've sat down and watched 12 hour Adobe Audition tutorials. And been like: "Woah."
It's good, but it's really expensive. It's 20$ a month for these video tutorials. But
it is really useful. (And it's cheaper than college)
And they have a lot of skills. If you wanna learn business analysis and a bunch of other—
They just have a ton of stuff there—learning everything from Python programming to the
in depth processes of 3D animating in Maya. Check your local library. Because I know a
friend of mine, his library in his home town in New Mexico for some reason gave him access
to Lynda.com. So just try to figure out what resources you have available to you.
And that can really help. They also have a free trial. But I dunno,
I think YouTube tutorials can suffice at the beginning.
And so now that you know some of those more advanced stuff, you can get into these other
aspects like "Advanced PMVs." Like stuff from The Acleps. Where he's doing all these motion
graphics and moving things around. The word to Google there is: "Motion Graphics." Like
"Motion Graphics Artist." The subskills here are vectoring, Video Editing, Motion Graphics,
Graphic Design and Typography (if you're going to do cool text animations).
So that's how that's done. It's pretty expensive, and exhausting to learn it all. But it's really
fun! I took an After Effects course a while ago and it was really entertaining.
It also shows up in some Analysis videos. Like, I know "ILoveKimPossibleALot" she does
stuff in After Effects. At least from what I can tell. And yeah... this is a video I
made about describing how many words of My Little Pony fan fiction are on FimFiction.
It was pretty fun. And I'm running out of time really quickly.
So Animation... so this is... you have to get really good at drawing.
Spend hundreds of hours on drawing and, like, work on it for a while. And then kind of work
on Animation after that because those skills are very next to each other.
But for producing full on animations, keep in mind the various subskills of writing,
audio production, video production, it kind of is a team effort when dealing with animation.
As well as sound effects! Don't forget those! And keep in mind that Flash, for some reason
the name has changed to Adobe Animate CC... because "Adobe."
But yeah. And then there's also animation traditionalish. Where you have ToonBoom, which
is expensive. But—this is so cool guys— Open Toons, the software that Futurama has
used and several of the Ghibli movies, they used this software to make these animations
and make these movies. And it is now open source and free for anyone
to use. So if you wanted to, go on YouTube and watch a whole bunch of Open Toons tutorials.
Because it's free! There's actual good software open and available which hasn't happened ever
before. So be excited. And so that's an option. At that point you're
going to want to buy a pen tablet. So you can figure that out. Those are just subsections.
In closing, go to Equestria Daily's resource for all these tutorials and a bunch of access
to different places. Like, they have a very good codex.
Remember, today I pointed you to a lot of different resources. It's up to you to kind
of: "Ok! That was an overview of things I could learn, now what do I want to learn?"
And actually go through and say: "I'm going to do 20 hours on this thing, and focus on
this." And select that skill. And then set aside that time and do it. And you can really
learn new things and it can be really enjoyable and you can have a lot of fun with it.
And that's the panel. Thank you. Thank you for coming.