WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.580 --> 00:00:06.300 Alright, this is Learning How to Learn. This is when you find the Brony fandom makes really 00:00:06.300 --> 00:00:10.980 cool things. And you're really interested in how you might go about learning those things. 00:00:10.980 --> 00:00:14.500 Because you'll see amazing things on Youtube, or you'll see amazing fanfics, and you only 00:00:14.500 --> 00:00:18.210 see the end product, but you don't really know how they got there. 00:00:18.210 --> 00:00:26.160 And there's kind of a process to it. Bronies make a lot of content. We have 1.6 billion 00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:31.230 words of My Little Pony Fanfiction, there's just a lot. Staggering amounts of fanart, 00:00:31.230 --> 00:00:36.980 and lots and lots of analysis videos. And there's even a subsection of YouTube for audio 00:00:36.980 --> 00:00:40.870 fanfic readings. You have a lot of different people that read fan fiction out loud and 00:00:40.870 --> 00:00:45.830 do a lot of audio recording stuff. That's not even saying PMVs where you have—Well, 00:00:45.830 --> 00:00:49.840 you have simple PMVs you see on Equestria Daily which are just clips from the show. 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:54.090 And then you have the more detailed motion graphics art. Where people are moving things 00:00:54.090 --> 00:00:57.380 around. And ponies are doing interesting things. That's also there. 00:00:57.380 --> 00:01:00.941 And that's not to mention animation. Which is mostly the hardest one of all which really 00:01:00.941 --> 00:01:03.710 does require a big group of people to work together for it. 00:01:03.710 --> 00:01:11.920 So our big question: "How did they learn how to do that?" Because there's just so much 00:01:11.920 --> 00:01:19.420 content and how did they figure that out? So this panel is for people that are non-creatives 00:01:19.420 --> 00:01:24.001 or mildly creative that are interested in seeing kind of a glimpse of what other people 00:01:24.001 --> 00:01:27.080 have done. And how they learned that process of how to do that. 00:01:27.080 --> 00:01:32.390 And it's also to help you figure out what you don't know you don't know. Because until 00:01:32.390 --> 00:01:36.980 you figure out what you don't know you don't know, you can't stop and Google it. 00:01:36.980 --> 00:01:43.370 Also, for people that are just curious how some of this stuff is created. 00:01:43.370 --> 00:01:47.500 So the biggest question is: "How do I Iearn how to do that?" 00:01:47.500 --> 00:01:51.780 Because other people learned how to make it, and they're humans, and I'm also human so 00:01:51.780 --> 00:01:56.370 I can also figure out how to do something. Because everything is learnable. 00:01:56.370 --> 00:01:59.260 Let's kind of go through the agenda of the panel. 00:01:59.260 --> 00:02:04.350 We're going to be going over Emotional Barriers to learning new skills. Because there's always 00:02:04.350 --> 00:02:09.110 angst when learning how to draw for the first time and it looks terrible. And other skills 00:02:09.110 --> 00:02:11.880 too. There's also writing, particularly writing 00:02:11.880 --> 00:02:15.630 fan fiction. Though you'd be surprised by the amount of writing that happens in the 00:02:15.630 --> 00:02:20.090 Brony fandom, even just comments on YouTube. And being able to praise other people for 00:02:20.090 --> 00:02:22.680 the content they create. That's also something we'll be going over. 00:02:22.680 --> 00:02:26.750 As well as drawing. And a subsection of drawing you may not have heard of called vectoring. 00:02:26.750 --> 00:02:32.090 Which is another part of this fandom. As well as audio recording fanfic readings, as well 00:02:32.090 --> 00:02:38.370 as video production, and kind of what goes in with that. And a little bit of animation. 00:02:38.370 --> 00:02:43.870 I don't personally have experience with doing a full animation project. But I've watched 00:02:43.870 --> 00:02:47.770 lots of tutorials enough to be like: "Wow! That's a lot of work." 00:02:47.770 --> 00:02:51.130 I can at least point you in the right direction, and that's mostly what this panel is. It's 00:02:51.130 --> 00:02:55.050 pointing you in the right direction for how to learn things if you would like to. 00:02:55.050 --> 00:02:58.690 And tell me if I talk too fast. I always listen to things at doublespeed on YouTube and so 00:02:58.690 --> 00:03:01.890 it affects my speech. So yeah... I can slow down if you want. 00:03:01.890 --> 00:03:06.550 A thing to keep in mind. So a lot of you are probably used to going to school, and you'll 00:03:06.550 --> 00:03:11.170 learn: "This is the War of 1812, this is what happened in the War of 1812." And I don't 00:03:11.170 --> 00:03:13.740 know why I picked that example because I have no idea what happened in the War of 1812 besides 00:03:13.740 --> 00:03:17.690 that it was a fight against the British... So school mostly focuses on Book knowledge, 00:03:17.690 --> 00:03:23.200 but what we'll be delving into are skills. And skills are a little bit different. I think 00:03:23.200 --> 00:03:26.220 the biggest difference you can see would probably be taking something like "wood shop" where 00:03:26.220 --> 00:03:31.150 you'd have to learn something like carpentry. And focus, and hammer things together. That 00:03:31.150 --> 00:03:35.470 is a skill. It is carpentry. But you need to separate those two different 00:03:35.470 --> 00:03:39.200 categories. Because learning knowledge, you could learn it from a book. It's relatively 00:03:39.200 --> 00:03:40.940 simple. But learning a skill, is something you do 00:03:40.940 --> 00:03:47.520 have to get hands on and create things. Okay, I do have a caveat here: People are 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:52.290 different. Like, there's a big giant: "IT DEPENDS" over all of humanity. Because some 00:03:52.290 --> 00:03:55.840 people may be better suited for certain things, and others may be better suited for other 00:03:55.840 --> 00:04:00.730 things. Also, this panel focuses a lot on watching 00:04:00.730 --> 00:04:04.800 and following along with YouTube tutorials. Perhaps that's not the best way for you to 00:04:04.800 --> 00:04:09.280 learn, which I... well that's what I'll be showing because that's what helped me learn. 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:14.709 And being able to follow somebody else do something is a pretty good way to learn things. 00:04:14.709 --> 00:04:21.400 So... overcoming emotional barriers. I had, like, the weirdest worldview in High School. 00:04:21.400 --> 00:04:24.680 I had this thing where I thought people were born knowing how to draw. 00:04:24.680 --> 00:04:28.660 Like, I'd see people that knew how to draw and I'd be like: "Wow, they are so good at 00:04:28.660 --> 00:04:33.789 drawing! They're so good at what they do!" And I had no idea that: "Oh! That is because 00:04:33.789 --> 00:04:36.919 they worked hard, they practiced, and they did it." 00:04:36.919 --> 00:04:43.009 So among the emotional barriers to go over is to realize that: "Everything can be learned." 00:04:43.009 --> 00:04:50.349 Everything you see around you was either designed or created by people. Like, take this room. 00:04:50.349 --> 00:04:54.479 An architect designed it, and then you had groups of people working together to actually 00:04:54.479 --> 00:04:58.699 build the materials and you have this whole global supply chain. 00:04:58.699 --> 00:05:02.812 And you can learn all that if you really want to. And it's really cool that ALL of this 00:05:02.812 --> 00:05:06.469 is learnable. I'm a big fan of learning random stuff. 00:05:06.469 --> 00:05:11.080 And... realize that it's never "too late" to learn a skill. You can learn how to play 00:05:11.080 --> 00:05:17.860 the piano at 70 if you want to. That's perfectly fine. Or you could learn how to draw something. 00:05:17.860 --> 00:05:22.020 Sure there's some talent that might be innate, but that talent increases far more through 00:05:22.020 --> 00:05:25.990 hard work. So, I think some of you may have heard of 00:05:25.990 --> 00:05:31.930 this book: "Outliers." This is a really good book. It's all about the 10,000 hour rule—that 00:05:31.930 --> 00:05:38.849 it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach world class performance. 00:05:38.849 --> 00:05:44.819 This is said a lot. People talk about JanAnimations and I'm pretty sure he's put in his 10,000 00:05:44.819 --> 00:05:50.460 hours of professional, amazing, fantastic work. And it shows. 00:05:50.460 --> 00:05:56.639 However, for the purposes of this panel, we're not going into 10,000 hours of stuff because 00:05:56.639 --> 00:06:00.969 we just want to have fun! "I just want to learn enough about writing to write my first 00:06:00.969 --> 00:06:05.210 fanfic. And maybe see if it'd be fun." Or: "I just want to draw a little bit, to 00:06:05.210 --> 00:06:08.419 just draw my OC." So that! How long does that take? 00:06:08.419 --> 00:06:13.990 So based off of this book, I'd say about 20 hours. This is one of my favorite books. This 00:06:13.990 --> 00:06:18.370 is: "The First 20 hours: How to Learn Anything Fast" by Josh Kaufman. Basically, it takes 00:06:18.370 --> 00:06:22.499 20 hours of deliberate practice. Like, plan it out: "I'm going to learn this at this time, 00:06:22.499 --> 00:06:28.189 and do this at this time." And it takes about that long to learn a new skill. 00:06:28.189 --> 00:06:32.620 And that's enough just to have fun with it. You're not going to be a world class master 00:06:32.620 --> 00:06:36.860 at it. But you'll know enough to have fun with it. And get your feet wet and understand 00:06:36.860 --> 00:06:40.539 the process and maybe see: "Do I like this?" "Maybe not?" 00:06:40.539 --> 00:06:46.349 It's all about overcoming that barrier in the beginning of: "This is too hard." 00:06:46.349 --> 00:06:50.139 Another emotional barrier is: "Knowing what you want to do." 00:06:50.139 --> 00:06:55.110 Have a goal in mind. Like, if you wanna write a fanfic, a drawing. If you wanna make an 00:06:55.110 --> 00:06:58.429 animated gif—those are really simple to make. If you Google "Gyazo Gif," it allows 00:06:58.429 --> 00:07:04.899 you to make Gifs really easily. It's great. I'll have a link in these presentation show 00:07:04.899 --> 00:07:09.240 notes. Basically, the more you understand what you 00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:10.860 want to make, the better chance you have to succeed. 00:07:10.860 --> 00:07:16.999 And my big problem with this was: "I saw all these Bronies making content, making these 00:07:16.999 --> 00:07:24.029 animations and videos and all this other stuff. And I was like: 'What do I wanna do?' 'EVERYTHING!'" 00:07:24.029 --> 00:07:27.759 Let's rephrase that question. Instead of: "What do you want to do," "What do you want 00:07:27.759 --> 00:07:32.679 to do first." Because if you can answer that question you can do a lot more things with 00:07:32.679 --> 00:07:39.369 your time. Rather than being trapped in a dazed state like: "What do I wanna do~?" But 00:07:39.369 --> 00:07:44.319 if you can set what you want to do first, it can be really helpful. 00:07:44.319 --> 00:07:50.220 And this is one of my favorite sayings for this kind of stuff: "A problem well stated, 00:07:50.220 --> 00:07:55.139 is a problem half solved." So if you can figure out: "Here is my problem, I don't know how 00:07:55.139 --> 00:08:01.479 to do THIS. I don't know the process for THIS." You can expand that out. Let's say you're 00:08:01.479 --> 00:08:04.990 having a problem with... Well... when you understand the vocabulary 00:08:04.990 --> 00:08:11.020 for motion graphics you can be like: "Okay, how do I make a clipping mask in After Effects 00:08:11.020 --> 00:08:17.529 to achieve this effect?" Like, the more you can narrow down your problem, it can be really 00:08:17.529 --> 00:08:21.689 helpful. Let's see, another emotional barrier is not 00:08:21.689 --> 00:08:27.800 giving up immediately. The CMC are a really funny example of this. Because they try something 00:08:27.800 --> 00:08:32.860 once and they're like: "Well! Not for me!" The cutie mark algorithm analysis thing didn't 00:08:32.860 --> 00:08:38.130 work. So they didn't get their cutie marks, so: "Obviously this isn't for me." 00:08:38.130 --> 00:08:44.250 But that isn't really how it works in the real world. It does take effort, because no 00:08:44.250 --> 00:08:50.990 one is good at it immediately. So I would say to really understand if this is your thing 00:08:50.990 --> 00:08:55.370 or not your thing, to give it at least 20 hours of consistent, deliberate, practice 00:08:55.370 --> 00:09:00.220 before just shoving it away. And I know that drawing at first feels painful because it's 00:09:00.220 --> 00:09:04.370 just like: "AAAH! This does NOT look good at all." But it's okay. 00:09:04.370 --> 00:09:09.020 Just give yourself some time. Learn to forgive yourself enough to at least overcome that 00:09:09.020 --> 00:09:17.820 frustration barrier. And remember: "If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun." 00:09:17.820 --> 00:09:21.750 Another aspect of this is: "Breaking down the skill." 00:09:21.750 --> 00:09:29.160 So you have these big giant skills like animation. That is actually made up of a ton of different 00:09:29.160 --> 00:09:32.500 component skills. So earlier in the day we had M. A. Larson talking about the writing 00:09:32.500 --> 00:09:35.980 aspect of animation. And that's it's own, like, writing skill. 00:09:35.980 --> 00:09:41.250 And then you have the actual drawing skills that people have. Of sitting down and learning 00:09:41.250 --> 00:09:44.340 how to draw and doing that a bunch of different ways. 00:09:44.340 --> 00:09:48.630 And so, being able to break down these skills into their component parts, you can put them 00:09:48.630 --> 00:09:52.300 into bite sized portions you can use to actually learn things. 00:09:52.300 --> 00:09:57.860 So... other things I have a problem with. I have a problem figuring out time management. 00:09:57.860 --> 00:10:03.420 Like, that is the bane of my existence. So if you want to read a big business book about 00:10:03.420 --> 00:10:09.540 it. "Getting Things Done." I recommend it if you can handle business books. It could 00:10:09.540 --> 00:10:14.880 be boring. I dunno, it depends. Basically, just write things down. And the 00:10:14.880 --> 00:10:19.480 more you write it down, it gives your brain permission to let it go, flip to it later 00:10:19.480 --> 00:10:25.730 and realize: "Oh! I wanted to learn this thing." As you write things down you'll notice: "Oh! 00:10:25.730 --> 00:10:30.560 This is coming up more often. Perhaps I should do this thing because my brain is constantly 00:10:30.560 --> 00:10:36.031 reminding me to do this task." And other things I've found useful. Putting 00:10:36.031 --> 00:10:38.580 my phone in airplane mode, and turning off the Wi-Fi. 00:10:38.580 --> 00:10:43.340 If I'm trying to write, let's turn off all the distractions and get into "Deep Work" 00:10:43.340 --> 00:10:47.630 and work on something. That's not going to work at first for some 00:10:47.630 --> 00:10:52.720 of this, because you'll be watching a YouTube tutorial while doing something else. 00:10:52.720 --> 00:10:57.730 And remember to set apart time per day. And another really good book that I like... 00:10:57.730 --> 00:11:00.170 this is one of my favorites! It's: "The War of Art" 00:11:00.170 --> 00:11:07.380 It is a punch in the face. It is really, really painful because it outlines this enemy towards 00:11:07.380 --> 00:11:12.210 creativity called: "The Resistance." And how hard it is to get things done. Because any 00:11:12.210 --> 00:11:16.611 time you are trying to do a creative endeavor, everything is going to go against you. Whether 00:11:16.611 --> 00:11:20.120 it be to learn it, or to do it in the first place. 00:11:20.120 --> 00:11:25.080 Some drama will happen. Or you'll have six finals. Which... do your finals first. But... 00:11:25.080 --> 00:11:30.200 it can be a problem. I highly recommend this book if you want a 00:11:30.200 --> 00:11:35.540 punch in the face, but in book form. To tell you to do art. 00:11:35.540 --> 00:11:41.440 Another aspect that I've had a problem with was: "focusing too much on the tool." 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:45.480 So... let's take the carpentry example. No one stops and says: "I'm going to learn how 00:11:45.480 --> 00:11:50.420 to use a hammer." No, they're goal is: "I want to make a birdhouse." And the tool happens 00:11:50.420 --> 00:11:53.120 to be a hammer. And I'm going to use a hammer and a nail to create this birdhouse. 00:11:53.120 --> 00:12:01.020 That is also how to treat the things we're learning. If you're learning drawing, you're 00:12:01.020 --> 00:12:05.860 learning drawing, not Photoshop. Though that may be an aspect of it that may improve your 00:12:05.860 --> 00:12:11.110 drawing because it's a tool you use. So... you want to learn novel writing, not 00:12:11.110 --> 00:12:14.800 specifically the program: Scrivener. While that is a good program that helps you write 00:12:14.800 --> 00:12:20.180 novels, it is just a tool in your toolbox. So separating the skill itself from the tool 00:12:20.180 --> 00:12:23.430 can be helpful. And something that I needed to keep in mind 00:12:23.430 --> 00:12:29.080 as I was trying out lots and lots of different software. I dunno, I started learning Adobe 00:12:29.080 --> 00:12:32.920 Illustrator before I realized: "I have to learn how to draw to use this?" And it was 00:12:32.920 --> 00:12:37.570 very funny experience to realize that and so I kind of learned all these tools in different 00:12:37.570 --> 00:12:43.300 orders. Okay, so let's go to our first thing we're 00:12:43.300 --> 00:12:48.090 learning about, which is: "Writing." I have a soft spot for this. One of the first 00:12:48.090 --> 00:12:54.270 things I made for the Brony fandom was a fanfic. It was really exhilarating from start to finish. 00:12:54.270 --> 00:12:59.720 And also really angsty. And all sorts of stuff. But it's fun. I recommend it. 00:12:59.720 --> 00:13:04.520 "What are the barriers to entry for Fanfiction?" Luckily, the cost is free. If you have a pencil 00:13:04.520 --> 00:13:07.501 and paper, you can write fanfic, you can write things. 00:13:07.501 --> 00:13:11.690 And this is one of my favorite comics, I don't know if you've seen this before. 00:13:11.690 --> 00:13:19.550 It's Derpy lying on the ground and Pinkie goes up and says: "PONY! PONY! PONY!" 00:13:19.550 --> 00:13:21.610 And Derpy's like: "Yes but... WHY do we pony?" I think that's beautiful because I think that's 00:13:21.610 --> 00:13:25.830 so much of writing fan fiction. The frustration barrier for that is just like: "What am I 00:13:25.830 --> 00:13:33.010 doing!?" I'm writing stories about horses having fun... and yeah... it's a strange. 00:13:33.010 --> 00:13:36.730 The frustration barrier is pretty high. And also that feeling of "What am I doing?" 00:13:36.730 --> 00:13:42.220 But it's a lot of fun when you give it a chance. And yeah... I would recommend this for you 00:13:42.220 --> 00:13:46.940 if you get story ideas you can't stop thinking about. Like, my first story I wrote. I didn't 00:13:46.940 --> 00:13:50.170 intend to write it. But then... it was the middle of the night and I could not go to 00:13:50.170 --> 00:13:53.840 sleep and so I decided to "just write down the idea" so I could go to sleep. 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:59.060 And I just kept writing and writing and yeah... and by the end of it I had a fanfic! 00:13:59.060 --> 00:14:04.200 It's kind of fun how that works out. This is arguably the easiest to start because 00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:09.020 putting words on pages is something you've kind of been taught at school. "Please! We 00:14:09.020 --> 00:14:13.910 want you to write! We want you to write this essay." This is already using that same skill 00:14:13.910 --> 00:14:17.860 you're getting at school, but in a different way. And a much funner way. 00:14:17.860 --> 00:14:20.940 Because usually at school you have to worry about citing your sources. Do all this other 00:14:20.940 --> 00:14:26.050 stuff. Writing is very free-form. It's one of the most free-form things you can do. It's 00:14:26.050 --> 00:14:30.600 basically painting... words? I don't know how to describe it, but it's really fun. 00:14:30.600 --> 00:14:34.460 So let's break down writing into it's constituent parts. 00:14:34.460 --> 00:14:40.360 So we have two hugely different skills that everyone kind of lumps together. Keep in mind 00:14:40.360 --> 00:14:45.720 that these are two different skills. One is writing, that is actually the process of getting 00:14:45.720 --> 00:14:50.820 words onto paper. It's putting one word in front of the other. "I am writing this right 00:14:50.820 --> 00:14:55.279 now." And then there's also editing, which is it's 00:14:55.279 --> 00:15:02.650 own skill of taking those words, and refining them. Like, you have this long paragraph description 00:15:02.650 --> 00:15:06.680 of something, but you could shorten it down to one sentence. Or "Oh, look, you didn't 00:15:06.680 --> 00:15:11.880 really understand the grammar principle here." Or: "You forget to spell check a word." Or 00:15:11.880 --> 00:15:16.300 worry about your: "There, they're, and theirs." Which is kind of like the law of it. So it's 00:15:16.300 --> 00:15:20.260 the lawyer approach to writing, is editing. And trying to get it to fit these things. 00:15:20.260 --> 00:15:23.220 And that is important. No one is going to read your stuff if it's not properly edited. 00:15:23.220 --> 00:15:29.540 And it doesn't look right. And those are two skills that are pretty important. 00:15:29.540 --> 00:15:34.470 And I highly recommend: "Don't publish your first fanfic without at least letting an editor 00:15:34.470 --> 00:15:38.370 see it." Because they're going to know rules that you're not going to notice. It just helps 00:15:38.370 --> 00:15:42.390 to have a second pair of eyes. Arguably writing can be difficult because 00:15:42.390 --> 00:15:49.810 it's so useful to have a friend. And having that friend/editor look at it. 00:15:49.810 --> 00:15:55.880 And also writing is pretty cool because it shows up everywhere. Like, you'll start writing 00:15:55.880 --> 00:16:00.390 but it also has ties to animations, because you need to have a script. Their's writing 00:16:00.390 --> 00:16:03.940 for pony analysis videos. Like, even Dr. Wolf, the hardest part of his 00:16:03.940 --> 00:16:08.180 job is writing the script for the video. And that's what most people care about. They don't 00:16:08.180 --> 00:16:13.860 realize that's what they care about the most. But the additional pictures and everything 00:16:13.860 --> 00:16:19.220 else is really more of an afterthought to make it more effective. 00:16:19.220 --> 00:16:26.910 So I have plenty of weird advice for writing fanfic. This is just stuff that I found useful. 00:16:26.910 --> 00:16:29.840 Writing is so free-form that everyone has their own sets of advice. And so you really 00:16:29.840 --> 00:16:36.890 have to try one pattern and go with it. So my strange advice, is when you're first 00:16:36.890 --> 00:16:41.200 writing, just write. Just put your fingers on the page and just 00:16:41.200 --> 00:16:46.310 go forward. Don't look at "how it's done" or style guides until after you've written 00:16:46.310 --> 00:16:50.450 something, and gotten the words on the paper. And say to yourself: "I am writing right now. 00:16:50.450 --> 00:16:55.530 And I will be editing later." Tell yourself that, to give yourself permission to just 00:16:55.530 --> 00:16:59.860 write. So you find yourself and picture yourself in the story. How the story is coming about. 00:16:59.860 --> 00:17:05.929 What do the characters say in this situation? And where they've gotten to. 00:17:05.929 --> 00:17:09.709 At the beginning, write as if you and you alone will read it. And the most important 00:17:09.709 --> 00:17:13.360 thing to do: "Have fun!" This is a hobby. You're not getting paid for 00:17:13.360 --> 00:17:19.809 this, especially not for fanfiction. So write for fun. 00:17:19.809 --> 00:17:23.069 Also realize that you may... well... this may help you. Because there's a lot of different 00:17:23.069 --> 00:17:26.119 kinds of writers and different kinds of perspectives on it. 00:17:26.119 --> 00:17:30.700 There's people called: "Pantsers." They're writing "by the seat of their pants." Because 00:17:30.700 --> 00:17:34.879 they have no idea what's going to happen next. It's like: "I don't know what's gonna happen 00:17:34.879 --> 00:17:38.340 next, but I'm going to keep writing and writing to find out as I go along." 00:17:38.340 --> 00:17:43.139 The author is just as surprised when the characters do something as the characters are, and the 00:17:43.139 --> 00:17:47.929 audience as well. And then you have: "Planners." They know every 00:17:47.929 --> 00:17:53.831 aspect of the story. I know VikingZX on Fimfiction, he wrote a blog about how: "Oh! I had my characters 00:17:53.831 --> 00:17:57.779 visiting the griffon kingdom, but I hadn't figured out a griffon monetary system that 00:17:57.779 --> 00:18:01.679 they'll use when they're going to buy something." So he stopped and researched monetary systems 00:18:01.679 --> 00:18:06.159 of the world for, like, four hours. And then he figured out this perfect system that the 00:18:06.159 --> 00:18:09.159 griffons would use in the griffon lands for their monetary system. 00:18:09.159 --> 00:18:11.669 Then he finally wrote this scene for how things should work. 00:18:11.669 --> 00:18:16.320 So they're planners and world builders. Which, sometimes that works for people, sometimes 00:18:16.320 --> 00:18:20.850 it doesn't. You just gotta figure out what you feel the most comfortable with. 00:18:20.850 --> 00:18:25.480 And then there's what's called: "Flashlighters." This is me. This is: "They're in a dark room, 00:18:25.480 --> 00:18:29.190 they're shining a flashlight thinking 'I THINK the story goes over here' but then they keep 00:18:29.190 --> 00:18:35.419 looking around at the plot and trying to see it." And basically they know what's going 00:18:35.419 --> 00:18:39.679 to happen in the next three chapters and they may have an ending they want to see happen. 00:18:39.679 --> 00:18:44.850 But they're not really sure. And the characters may go off and do something they didn't expect. 00:18:44.850 --> 00:18:51.279 So those are three types of writers you may turn into. This is pretty subjective, but 00:18:51.279 --> 00:18:55.340 these are good to know about. So writing resources. Number 1: FimFiction.net. 00:18:55.340 --> 00:19:01.210 This is THE place. If you don't know about it yet, this is where fan fiction gets published, 00:19:01.210 --> 00:19:05.950 read about, and where you'll probably put stuff if you're writing My Little Pony fan 00:19:05.950 --> 00:19:09.200 fiction. There's also a great, great website called 00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:12.600 Writeoff.me. These people are harsh. If you want people 00:19:12.600 --> 00:19:18.700 to read your writing and give you harsh feedback, or like, or sometimes good feedback. I dunno. 00:19:18.700 --> 00:19:23.450 It's just full of critics. You go to writeoff.me, and they have these 00:19:23.450 --> 00:19:28.529 contests every month with these anonymous writing competitions. Where people write a 00:19:28.529 --> 00:19:33.950 story based off of a prompt. And it could be from 2000-8000 words. Or in mini-fic competitions 00:19:33.950 --> 00:19:39.169 they're 750 words. And those are really fun, and you'll get lots 00:19:39.169 --> 00:19:46.240 of anonymous people putting up fanfic. And people rate them, and write critiques about 00:19:46.240 --> 00:19:50.950 it. And at the end it's revealed that: "Oh! This person wrote this." And it's a lot of 00:19:50.950 --> 00:19:57.950 fun. And it can be really ego depleting. Especially when you don't do as well and people give 00:19:57.950 --> 00:20:03.150 harsh feedback on something that you thought was amazing. I dunno, it's a process. 00:20:03.150 --> 00:20:08.870 Also, this is not My Little Pony related. WritingExcuses.com is a really great podcast 00:20:08.870 --> 00:20:13.279 if you wanna get used to writing and having writing on your mind. They're 15 minute writing 00:20:13.279 --> 00:20:18.749 episodes from New York Times bestselling authors like Brandon Sanderson and other people. And 00:20:18.749 --> 00:20:22.399 they're talking about how to write. Highly recommend that as well. 00:20:22.399 --> 00:20:26.510 And I'll probably recommend this link several more time during these slides. Equestria Daily 00:20:26.510 --> 00:20:32.340 has a tutorial index where you can look at all these tutorials about all sorts of stuff. 00:20:32.340 --> 00:20:37.879 And they have a writing section in there as well. So those are things that can help. 00:20:37.879 --> 00:20:43.369 Let's see... more strange advice. There's a website called "Written Kitten." I love 00:20:43.369 --> 00:20:48.999 this site! You type words into a little box and every hundred words, a kitten pops up. 00:20:48.999 --> 00:20:56.210 It just gives you a new picture of a kitten. It's great. And very silly. Maybe it won't 00:20:56.210 --> 00:21:03.149 work for you. And also, if you like countdown timers. They 00:21:03.149 --> 00:21:06.200 get me to do things. I'm just, like, setting a counter for thirty minutes and I have thirty 00:21:06.200 --> 00:21:10.840 minutes to write so "Let's go!" It's pretty helpful. 00:21:10.840 --> 00:21:17.389 I have also used a creativity Twitter account. Where I've gone and said: "I wrote 20 words 00:21:17.389 --> 00:21:22.210 today." Hopefully not that low. "I wrote 1000 words today." And just kind of reporting my 00:21:22.210 --> 00:21:25.860 status. I don't have very many followers, I don't bother that many people. But it's 00:21:25.860 --> 00:21:28.659 a way for me to publicly say: "Hey, I did something today." 00:21:28.659 --> 00:21:34.070 That can be helpful to you as well. My last piece of weird advice about writing is: "keep 00:21:34.070 --> 00:21:39.799 a journal." I found this really helpful because... 1. You're writing from you're own experience. 00:21:39.799 --> 00:21:42.760 And then you're writing it like, well... it depends on how you write your journal whether 00:21:42.760 --> 00:21:48.669 typed or handwritten. I handwrite it. And it allows you to better learn how to explain 00:21:48.669 --> 00:21:51.399 and articulate yourself using words. 00:21:51.399 --> 00:21:55.450 And then since it's a private journal, you don't have to worry about editing or all that 00:21:55.450 --> 00:22:00.700 other stuff. It's just words on a page. It doesn't really matter. It's pretty simple 00:22:00.700 --> 00:22:06.539 and it gets you to write everyday. And will enable you to keep up a writing habit. 00:22:06.539 --> 00:22:10.490 So that was the writing section. And now we're going to go into a much different 00:22:10.490 --> 00:22:17.299 animal: Editing. Yes, you do have to edit. So once you are 00:22:17.299 --> 00:22:22.309 done with your story. Or if it's beyond a certain number of words, like, 5000 or so. 00:22:22.309 --> 00:22:27.899 You want to learn how to start self-editing. Which can be it's own process. 00:22:27.899 --> 00:22:32.549 Because English is this ridiculous language with lots of rules that don't make any sense. 00:22:32.549 --> 00:22:36.659 And like: They're, their, and there. And... oh gosh. 00:22:36.659 --> 00:22:41.669 It is something you'll have to learn if you want to write. And remember, I'm just going 00:22:41.669 --> 00:22:46.379 over this section but we'll be going over other skills later. But I'm just trying to 00:22:46.379 --> 00:22:51.639 let you know what you're getting yourself into if you do decide to write. 00:22:51.639 --> 00:22:59.820 Editing resources. I think the main resource you want is Ezn. She (or he) did a 20k word 00:22:59.820 --> 00:23:05.610 long writing guide on FimFiction. It's literally right under "FAQ->Writing Guide" that you 00:23:05.610 --> 00:23:10.690 can go into. That tutorial will probably get you 80% of the way there. 00:23:10.690 --> 00:23:14.399 Just follow the tutorial and look and see if you're making these writing mistakes. You're 00:23:14.399 --> 00:23:21.190 going to have to look through your story and edit it. You're not adding to the story like 00:23:21.190 --> 00:23:26.950 adding plot elements (though you could... Man, writing is so subjective). But this is 00:23:26.950 --> 00:23:31.179 the part where you are going to make it more concise and better and make sure it follows 00:23:31.179 --> 00:23:36.150 all the rules. And then, for the next 15% (because you got 00:23:36.150 --> 00:23:40.800 80% of the way there with the writing guide and knowing all the rules). The next 15% would 00:23:40.800 --> 00:23:47.080 be getting help. And this is when you maybe call a friend, and use collaborative tools 00:23:47.080 --> 00:23:50.159 like Google Docs. So what you can do in Google docs, what you 00:23:50.159 --> 00:23:56.750 can do is go highlight a phrase or word and click: "Comment." And then you can have these 00:23:56.750 --> 00:24:02.980 entire dialogue trees with your friend or editor. And be like: "Oh. Should I do it this 00:24:02.980 --> 00:24:06.309 way?" or "Oh! I just realized the concept of having a leather pouch in Equestria doesn't 00:24:06.309 --> 00:24:13.481 really work very well." Just stuff like that. So yeah... using collaborative tools. Google 00:24:13.481 --> 00:24:18.129 docs is probably the standard for this for fanfic authors. If you want to pay money, 00:24:18.129 --> 00:24:21.809 there's Microsoft Word which has it's own editing system. As well as Dropbox, which 00:24:21.809 --> 00:24:29.039 is free and you can share Dropbox links. Okay, so that is 95% of the way there. You're 00:24:29.039 --> 00:24:33.520 story has gotten there once... look at the writing guide, make sure [your writing] is 00:24:33.520 --> 00:24:36.700 following these patterns as well as getting help from a friend. 00:24:36.700 --> 00:24:42.440 The next part is basically knowing when to quit. I dunno, I had a weird experience where 00:24:42.440 --> 00:24:49.289 I wrote my first novel. It was 50,000 words. It was amazing! And then I sat on it for a 00:24:49.289 --> 00:24:54.230 year and a half. And I finally just published it, and it took me so long to get it out there. 00:24:54.230 --> 00:24:58.090 But at some point know that you actually have to publish the words you write. You don't 00:24:58.090 --> 00:25:01.700 have to, but it's recommended. That's where all the fun parts happen. You get comments 00:25:01.700 --> 00:25:06.399 and people that like it and people that hate it. But it's fun. 00:25:06.399 --> 00:25:10.550 Just understand that writing is a cycle of writing and editing and writing something 00:25:10.550 --> 00:25:16.049 new and editing that, and writing this and editing that. So it's a process. 00:25:16.049 --> 00:25:23.460 So that is the writing and editing portion. And next I'm going to go into a different 00:25:23.460 --> 00:25:28.600 topic and to address that topic I'm going to explain my strategy for watching YouTube 00:25:28.600 --> 00:25:30.539 videos. I know that sounds strange, but when you watch 00:25:30.539 --> 00:25:36.700 a lot of video tutorials this helps. There's this really, really useful Chrome extension 00:25:36.700 --> 00:25:41.379 called "Video Speed Controller." You can use this to increase the speed of YouTube. Because 00:25:41.379 --> 00:25:44.559 right now on YouTube, you can only go to Double-speed, but with this you can go beyond doublespeed. 00:25:44.559 --> 00:25:49.090 You can go to x4 speed and after that you don't really hear audio. 00:25:49.090 --> 00:25:53.070 Using this you can skim over a video and see, like, "Do I wanna watch this?" "If I watch 00:25:53.070 --> 00:25:56.769 this tutorial on how to do this dust effect in After Effects, will it actually teach me 00:25:56.769 --> 00:26:00.289 what I want to know?" And you can skim watch it, see if it covers 00:26:00.289 --> 00:26:03.679 what you wanted to know. And then: "Oh, it doesn't." OR: "Oh! It does!" 00:26:03.679 --> 00:26:07.980 And then you can go back and watch at single speed. And actually follow along. And by "follow 00:26:07.980 --> 00:26:11.980 along" I mean: "When the person on the screen does something, you mimic that person." This 00:26:11.980 --> 00:26:16.230 is useful if you have multiple monitors and on one screen you have the tutorial, and on 00:26:16.230 --> 00:26:21.200 the other screen your actually working at it and typing and moving the mouse. 00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:28.350 So those are my ways to do things. Watch it quickly to get a brief overview and then watch 00:26:28.350 --> 00:26:34.120 it again, but slower as you follow along. So next is: "Drawing." 00:26:34.120 --> 00:26:39.350 Aw man, this is a lot of fun! It's so weird... but... I dunno. 00:26:39.350 --> 00:26:44.259 These are some of my first sketches just Google image searching ponies because I wanted to 00:26:44.259 --> 00:26:50.379 draw my OC which was a pegasus. And "let's see if I can draw that." Just trying to carefully 00:26:50.379 --> 00:26:54.850 match what I saw on the screen. So this is pretty free if you're doing the 00:26:54.850 --> 00:27:00.009 pencil and paper variety. I recommend that you try to learn how to do this if you really 00:27:00.009 --> 00:27:06.759 wanna draw you're own OC. And work on that. You're initial tools will be paper and pencil. 00:27:06.759 --> 00:27:12.360 Maybe later on, beyond the scope of this panel, consider buying a tablet and drawing software 00:27:12.360 --> 00:27:19.100 like Photoshop, or Paint Tool Sai, or Manga Studio. For now, just focus on sketching and 00:27:19.100 --> 00:27:23.360 that kind of stuff. The initial hurdles for drawing is that it 00:27:23.360 --> 00:27:27.559 is genuinely difficult to get yourself to do things you aren't good at. Especially with 00:27:27.559 --> 00:27:32.559 drawing, because with writing you may be able to fool yourself and you don't know your writing 00:27:32.559 --> 00:27:36.940 is bad until much later on. But here, you can immediately see that "this 00:27:36.940 --> 00:27:41.600 doesn't look quite right." Some of the proportions on that are way off. I'm not sure what's going 00:27:41.600 --> 00:27:47.899 on. So the frustration barrier is really high. So if you can spend the first 20 hours just 00:27:47.899 --> 00:27:52.029 deliberately practicing it, you can overcome that frustration barrier. 00:27:52.029 --> 00:27:57.519 Another thing that helped me were these online tutorials. Where someone would describe how 00:27:57.519 --> 00:28:01.669 to draw something. I think this is the most famous one: "How to draw a My Little Pony" 00:28:01.669 --> 00:28:06.580 has lots of views. And kind of the key things to learn from there when you're first drawing 00:28:06.580 --> 00:28:12.679 is using the guidelines and circles. You're gonna see on these videos a lot, someone's 00:28:12.679 --> 00:28:17.100 gonna go up there and they're gonna show a picture of an actual pony and it looks great. 00:28:17.100 --> 00:28:21.600 And then they're gonna start drawing circles and saying: "This is how it all comes together." 00:28:21.600 --> 00:28:25.739 And you do not see how it all comes together. And it's really weird. 00:28:25.739 --> 00:28:29.269 But they're all into these circles for some reason. They know what they're doing. You 00:28:29.269 --> 00:28:32.739 don't know what they're doing but you'll kind of learn as you go along how to use these 00:28:32.739 --> 00:28:39.809 circles to guide how you're going to draw. And they're using guidelines to figure out 00:28:39.809 --> 00:28:45.119 that: "Oh! This is about where the eye should go." And it doesn't really make sense at first, 00:28:45.119 --> 00:28:51.960 but practice along with them. And it'll become more clearer as you draw 00:28:51.960 --> 00:28:57.950 what they're drawing. And you'll see that using guidelines helps them plan out the character's 00:28:57.950 --> 00:29:00.649 pose. Another thing to keep in mind is: "Drawing 00:29:00.649 --> 00:29:06.119 from reference." I know some painters, they have to go out, 00:29:06.119 --> 00:29:10.159 get a photographer, take a picture of what they want to draw in the right pose (or whatever 00:29:10.159 --> 00:29:14.150 pose they're doing). And they literally just draw that [photograph]. 00:29:14.150 --> 00:29:18.399 You also need to understand that it's perfectly okay to look at a picture of what you're drawing 00:29:18.399 --> 00:29:22.200 as you're drawing it. Because most of our experience looking at other people drawing 00:29:22.200 --> 00:29:26.669 is: "Oh, they're just doodling on the side and they're not using reference." But when 00:29:26.669 --> 00:29:31.309 you draw, go ahead and Google what you wanna draw. And the pose you'd like. And try to 00:29:31.309 --> 00:29:34.499 figure it out. One of the books that's helped me with this 00:29:34.499 --> 00:29:37.989 is: "Steal like an Artist." This is really short. Maybe get it from the library because 00:29:37.989 --> 00:29:47.700 you'll read it in, like, an hour. There's also a TED talk. 00:29:47.700 --> 00:29:49.029 Yes. YouTube it at doublespeed. So yeah. 00:29:49.029 --> 00:29:52.489 In your initial stages, you just wanna learn how to emulate the styles of others. Even 00:29:52.489 --> 00:29:57.520 in your later stages, still keep learning. Here's an example of something I did. Because 00:29:57.520 --> 00:30:02.869 I really liked this: "Spike the Butler." I love that art. It's really well done. So I 00:30:02.869 --> 00:30:07.340 tried to emulate on the right how he would look like if he was flying and it doesn't 00:30:07.340 --> 00:30:10.700 look... that... right. But I'm getting there. I'm practicing. It's fun. 00:30:10.700 --> 00:30:15.779 So kind of go back and forth between watching tutorials in specific poses as well as Googling 00:30:15.779 --> 00:30:19.810 "How would I draw this in this pose." The king this is to just deliberately practice 00:30:19.810 --> 00:30:26.700 what you want to do. And tweak other peoples drawings. Steal their style, but then kind 00:30:26.700 --> 00:30:30.450 of make it your own. There's a little bit of derivation involved. 00:30:30.450 --> 00:30:37.009 Because no creative work is done in isolation. There's a really good YouTube series called: 00:30:37.009 --> 00:30:41.549 "Everything's a Remix." It's true, because everyone is influenced by other people. Feel 00:30:41.549 --> 00:30:46.370 free to let yourself be influenced. So that's my recommendation for breaking down 00:30:46.370 --> 00:30:51.779 drawing. Find a good tutorial, watch it. Google other things you want to figure out. And kind 00:30:51.779 --> 00:30:57.350 of practice drawing for a while until you... well... until you continue or keep going or 00:30:57.350 --> 00:31:02.679 give up... or whatever makes you feel comfortable. Another aspect of drawing — I never did 00:31:02.679 --> 00:31:09.030 get the hang of this—but after you draw with paper and pencil, you can (with a pen) 00:31:09.030 --> 00:31:14.640 go over it with better lines. And then erase the pencil drawings later and you have this 00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:19.519 more pristine artwork. Though, I don't know too much about this but 00:31:19.519 --> 00:31:23.590 this is something recommended for a Google session. 00:31:23.590 --> 00:31:31.190 Or you can digitally ink using software. So I'm going to go into that a little bit now. 00:31:31.190 --> 00:31:37.929 Which is vectoring. This is how you get the show's style. Because the show is using all 00:31:37.929 --> 00:31:43.789 these mathematical methods of creating these characters. It's really funky the first time 00:31:43.789 --> 00:31:46.779 you do it. So it's the process of using these mathematical 00:31:46.779 --> 00:31:50.190 curved lines in order to create drawings. And so that's what the show uses. 00:31:50.190 --> 00:31:56.720 I'm going to give you a brief demonstration of how that works now. 00:31:56.720 --> 00:32:00.840 Let me give you a brief example of what a vectoring program would do. 00:32:00.840 --> 00:32:05.529 So this is Adobe Illustrator. So what you see right here, this is a sketch I made. It's 00:32:05.529 --> 00:32:11.299 a little derpy since I'm not the best artist, but I do enough art to have fun with it. 00:32:11.299 --> 00:32:16.840 So what I can do is scroll in real close and see all these pixels. And so what a vector 00:32:16.840 --> 00:32:24.659 program does is recreate it mathematically. So you can have pixel perfection no matter 00:32:24.659 --> 00:32:28.190 how much you move in or out. Let me give you an example of that. So I'm 00:32:28.190 --> 00:32:33.630 going to create a new layer here. And I can click a point right here. 00:32:33.630 --> 00:32:40.590 And drag it off over here. And make another point. I'm going to curve it a little bit 00:32:40.590 --> 00:32:48.049 right here. Add another point. Curve a little bit over here. And create another point like 00:32:48.049 --> 00:32:53.779 this. So I have this leg. I can even adjust the thickness as needed 00:32:53.779 --> 00:33:04.350 to make it look a little bit better. I can change the colors to something better. 00:33:04.350 --> 00:33:09.169 So that's kind of how it works. So what you would do is end up creating all these vector 00:33:09.169 --> 00:33:18.080 drawings for all parts of this guy. So I could vector over here, and kind of create his body. 00:33:18.080 --> 00:33:23.440 And adjust the layers as needed. So this leg goes on top. 00:33:23.440 --> 00:33:33.029 I could do this leg below. And that's kind of how this works. You kind of repeat that 00:33:33.029 --> 00:33:37.789 pattern, many times. Oh, wow that doesn't look good. Oh, that's why. 00:33:37.789 --> 00:33:42.359 Let me adjust my paths... It's helps if you label these. 00:33:42.359 --> 00:33:47.259 So "Left Foreleg." And... chest. 00:33:47.259 --> 00:33:58.729 Yeah, you get the idea. Just to make sure you got it look right. 00:33:58.729 --> 00:34:05.820 And so for the final product, let me turn on these layers on. 00:34:05.820 --> 00:34:11.490 As you can see, the neck was really long, so I adjusted it around to make it less long. 00:34:11.490 --> 00:34:17.990 And you can do that in Illustrator, just pick the parts you would like. And move it around 00:34:17.990 --> 00:34:24.659 as you see fit. Yeah, that looks really odd. But there's a lot of work involved in getting 00:34:24.659 --> 00:34:28.630 things to look just right. Especially, when you're vectoring things. 00:34:28.630 --> 00:34:34.160 And so you see all these little lines where things happen. And you can adjust these curves. 00:34:34.160 --> 00:34:39.800 You can see that on the show, they would extrapolate this out to entire scenes, where each and 00:34:39.800 --> 00:34:45.570 ever single frame is an adjusted version of this. And moving around all these various 00:34:45.570 --> 00:34:53.050 pieces. And making it look nice. So that is Adobe Illustrator, a brief, brief 00:34:53.050 --> 00:35:02.100 rundown. I recommend finding a good tutorial and just watching it and following along with 00:35:02.100 --> 00:35:10.470 the artist. And how he or she does it. Just so you know, the cost is free if you're 00:35:10.470 --> 00:35:16.050 using Inkscape. So I recommend that. Not free is the Adobe Illustrator and Flash. I'll talk 00:35:16.050 --> 00:35:18.730 about the Adobe Creative Cloud later because that's it's own different animal. 00:35:18.730 --> 00:35:22.850 Let's see, I recommend learning this, if you've learned enough about how to draw and want 00:35:22.850 --> 00:35:26.560 your drawings to look more like the show. This is what the show is using. It's using 00:35:26.560 --> 00:35:34.630 this vector program. Or if you hate drawing but tracing is fun. So you can trace it digitally 00:35:34.630 --> 00:35:43.140 and end up with these pristine drawings even if you don't have high drawing skills. 00:35:43.140 --> 00:35:48.540 For this, just follow good tutorials online. There's lots of tutorials out there for this. 00:35:48.540 --> 00:35:54.240 There's one on Inkscape I'm linking to from a user named Dashohalite. 00:35:54.240 --> 00:35:57.850 He did a very good series. I also watched this other one on Adobe Illustrator 00:35:57.850 --> 00:36:02.810 that was fantastic. It's super long. If you're comfortable sitting down and spending two 00:36:02.810 --> 00:36:07.420 hours watching a video on YouTube and just following along and trying to recreate it 00:36:07.420 --> 00:36:11.740 step by step. Because that is what it takes to learn this. 00:36:11.740 --> 00:36:14.820 Following along with someone's tutorial and working it from there. 00:36:14.820 --> 00:36:19.760 And once you have that skill you can apply it to lot's of different things. 00:36:19.760 --> 00:36:24.440 Other good resources: "The MLP vector club." These guys are really strict. Like, it's hard 00:36:24.440 --> 00:36:29.520 to submit things to them. Like you have to submit show-quality vectors to even be in 00:36:29.520 --> 00:36:35.690 their club. But they do have lots of resources available. And you can look at that. As well 00:36:35.690 --> 00:36:41.710 as the tutorial Codex is pretty good. Another thing that I've dabbled in is Audio 00:36:41.710 --> 00:36:43.980 recording. This is a lot of fun! 00:36:43.980 --> 00:36:49.330 I've done fanfic readings before and some of my best stuff on YouTube is just fanfic 00:36:49.330 --> 00:36:52.600 readings. It's a subset of two different skills: "Voice Acting." 00:36:52.600 --> 00:36:57.920 Which is actually getting a mic and talking in front of it and emoting and being, well, 00:36:57.920 --> 00:37:00.370 an actor. And that's interesting. There's all sorts 00:37:00.370 --> 00:37:04.220 of tutorials for that. As well as stopping and emulating other voices 00:37:04.220 --> 00:37:09.090 to try to talk like them. And also trying to work on your own voice. 00:37:09.090 --> 00:37:14.010 And then there's a completely other different skill that's almost unrelated. But it's a 00:37:14.010 --> 00:37:23.040 package deal if you want to do this all yourself. And record the audio, and edit the audio later. 00:37:23.040 --> 00:37:27.460 Editing the audio involves using a Digital Audio Workstation (some kind of software) 00:37:27.460 --> 00:37:36.430 to go in and move aspects of the audio and change them around. And change where you did 00:37:36.430 --> 00:37:39.640 the flubbed lines. When I do audio readings, I pretty much do 00:37:39.640 --> 00:37:43.860 each line about three times. Because I say it the first time and I'm like: "That didn't 00:37:43.860 --> 00:37:47.210 sound right." And then I say it again. "Oh that sounds better." And then I say it again. 00:37:47.210 --> 00:37:51.080 "Oh, that worked better that time." And I end up flubbing lines all the time. 00:37:51.080 --> 00:37:56.360 And so what's needed for that is going back and doing Audio Editing on that. 00:37:56.360 --> 00:38:02.670 Let's see, so stuff needed to get started... Software cost: Free (if using Audacity) 00:38:02.670 --> 00:38:08.110 And then hardware cost... if you're doing fanfic readings. At first, for your first 00:38:08.110 --> 00:38:12.891 20 hours of just dabbling. Go ahead and just use your laptop microphone. But if you want 00:38:12.891 --> 00:38:16.950 it to actually sound good, you will someday want to consider buying a microphone. 00:38:16.950 --> 00:38:22.880 Sorry, some of these hobbies do cost money. That's kind of what happens with certain things. 00:38:22.880 --> 00:38:26.330 I highly recommend the Blue Yeti microphone. This is the kind of microphone you see right 00:38:26.330 --> 00:38:32.790 here. You can look at later if you'd like to experiment with it. It's a very good microphone. 00:38:32.790 --> 00:38:39.560 I recommend doing fanfic readings if you have listened to a lot of audio. Like, if you like 00:38:39.560 --> 00:38:43.560 listening to Podcasts and you like listening to audiobooks from Audible or anywhere else. 00:38:43.560 --> 00:38:48.470 And you think it's super cool. Or, if you listen to all these YouTube fanfic 00:38:48.470 --> 00:38:54.221 reading communities, like Scribbler or Neighrator pony. And you think they're interesting and 00:38:54.221 --> 00:38:57.090 you want to listen to them. Those are options. 00:38:57.090 --> 00:39:00.270 And if you like fanfic. Because if you're going to be recording fanfic readings, then 00:39:00.270 --> 00:39:07.450 you'll be reading fanfic out loud. So it kind of comes with the job. 00:39:07.450 --> 00:39:13.530 There's this seventeen part tutorial on YouTube. It's really good. This guy does a fantastic 00:39:13.530 --> 00:39:20.090 job. But it is kind of long. Because going start to finish he explains voice acting principles, 00:39:20.090 --> 00:39:25.470 as well as editing audio in Audacity and moving the waveforms around. 00:39:25.470 --> 00:39:28.290 It's a little tough. A thing to keep in mind—actually for pretty 00:39:28.290 --> 00:39:34.080 much this whole pane—a good lifetime good skill to have is using keyboard shortcuts 00:39:34.080 --> 00:39:35.080 like: Ctrl-C (Copy) 00:39:35.080 --> 00:39:36.080 Ctrl-V (Paste) Ctrl-X (Cut) 00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:40.860 Like being able to manipulate the audio, highlight it, then Ctrl-X, and then move this over here... 00:39:40.860 --> 00:39:43.900 Like, that is very useful. It's good for text editing as well. 00:39:43.900 --> 00:39:49.030 So... just learn your keyboard shortcuts. They're handy. 00:39:49.030 --> 00:39:54.290 I did this entire tutorial on how to find and use sound effects for fanfic readings. 00:39:54.290 --> 00:40:01.640 It is a mess to try to figure out how to add sound effects to fanfic readings sometimes. 00:40:01.640 --> 00:40:05.810 Because it's a very time consuming process. And then you look at the show and they have, 00:40:05.810 --> 00:40:09.980 like, ten people working on the sound effects department for 22 minutes. And you're trying 00:40:09.980 --> 00:40:14.370 to record a three hour audiobook and you're like: "Uh... this may beyond the scope of 00:40:14.370 --> 00:40:17.840 what I can do." Sound effects are really cool. I have several 00:40:17.840 --> 00:40:24.370 resources in there. Mostly Freesound.org is the place to go to look for royalty free sound 00:40:24.370 --> 00:40:29.260 effects. That's stuff I've used for sound effects. 00:40:29.260 --> 00:40:36.880 So, now I'm going to go into Video Production, which is a giant: "It depends." Because there's 00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:43.480 a lot of aspects to this. So let my break it down into different aspects. 00:40:43.480 --> 00:40:52.680 Because it depends on the software you're going to be using. Because this requires a 00:40:52.680 --> 00:40:59.470 good computer that can handle this kind of stuff. Because the higher quality of computer 00:40:59.470 --> 00:41:02.520 you have, the more you can move these big files. 00:41:02.520 --> 00:41:05.230 And there's always this arms race where as soon as computers get good enough to handle 00:41:05.230 --> 00:41:07.930 the current video... well BAM, let's have 4k. 00:41:07.930 --> 00:41:13.270 And as soon as we have computers that can handle 4k real well, we'll have 8k. It's always 00:41:13.270 --> 00:41:16.530 this busy thing that requires a nice, good computer. 00:41:16.530 --> 00:41:22.750 That is a very high barrier to entry. It is free if you're using Windows Movie Maker, 00:41:22.750 --> 00:41:28.480 which is really good. Or Apple iMovie. Those are both really good programs to look up tutorials 00:41:28.480 --> 00:41:31.420 on. They're simple, but they get the job done. And you can do a lot of cool things. 00:41:31.420 --> 00:41:36.350 Dr. Wolf does his entire everything all in iMovie. He's done that for years. And he makes 00:41:36.350 --> 00:41:41.920 tons of videos every week using that software and it works great for him. And can work well 00:41:41.920 --> 00:41:45.390 for you. I recommend video production if you absolutely 00:41:45.390 --> 00:41:48.550 have to get something on YouTube. You're going to need to know a little about video and how 00:41:48.550 --> 00:41:54.060 to create things even to put Fanfic readings on YouTube. You can't just upload an .mp3 00:41:54.060 --> 00:41:59.980 file to YouTube. It has to be a (.mp4) video file to have it on YouTube. 00:41:59.980 --> 00:42:07.520 You'll wanna watch some tutorials to figure that out. 00:42:07.520 --> 00:42:15.290 So if you wanna do a simple PMV, where it's just clips of the show set to music. That 00:42:15.290 --> 00:42:19.110 would be something you use Windows Movie Maker/iMovie for. 00:42:19.110 --> 00:42:25.040 And it's pretty simple. And Dr. Wolf, like I mentioned, uses iMovie. 00:42:25.040 --> 00:42:30.240 But keep in mind—just talking about analysis videos here—if you really wanna get into 00:42:30.240 --> 00:42:35.380 analysis, recognize that you have a lot— a lot— of different subskills to work on. 00:42:35.380 --> 00:42:39.040 One is writing. Because the script of what you are saying 00:42:39.040 --> 00:42:42.980 is probably the most important part of your video. Because that is what you are talking 00:42:42.980 --> 00:42:48.230 about and what people are interested in. Another aspect of it is drawing which you 00:42:48.230 --> 00:42:51.360 can get away with if you commission someone or something else. 00:42:51.360 --> 00:42:54.720 You end up with these YouTube channels where lots of people are collaborating on them because 00:42:54.720 --> 00:42:58.460 it's just such a big massive thing to do, to even create a video. 00:42:58.460 --> 00:43:03.481 But if you're going to do this all by yourself. You'd have to be good at writing, drawing 00:43:03.481 --> 00:43:07.950 (or having something on the screen), audio editing which I mentioned earlier—Have a 00:43:07.950 --> 00:43:11.730 good microphone for that. And also video editing, which is just moving 00:43:11.730 --> 00:43:18.120 pieces of video around. And then, okay before I go into this next 00:43:18.120 --> 00:43:24.850 topic of more advance video, recognize that things get expensive. Like when you're dealing 00:43:24.850 --> 00:43:28.540 with expensive software like the Adobe Creative Suite. 00:43:28.540 --> 00:43:33.970 This can cost, like, 20$ a month if you're a student. To up to 50$ a month. Which is 00:43:33.970 --> 00:43:38.880 super expensive. And I don't really recommend it unless you just have to AND you have a 00:43:38.880 --> 00:43:42.591 lot of disposable income. But this is REALLY good software though. This 00:43:42.591 --> 00:43:46.210 is professional software. It looks really good on a resumé. 00:43:46.210 --> 00:43:50.750 Like I can say: "I know the whole Adobe Creative Suite because I've watched all these tutorials 00:43:50.750 --> 00:43:53.660 and I've done all this stuff. Here's a portfolio of some of the stuff I've made (that's not 00:43:53.660 --> 00:44:00.510 ponies since I don't really share pony stuff)" But it looks really good and you get a lot 00:44:00.510 --> 00:44:05.310 of different software in there. You got Audition for Audio Editing. Premiere—which is whole 00:44:05.310 --> 00:44:11.180 movies you see at a movie theatre can be edited with this software called Adobe Premiere Pro. 00:44:11.180 --> 00:44:16.340 Adobe Illustrator. Even the show itself: Adobe Flash. That is 00:44:16.340 --> 00:44:21.180 a product. It's good, but it's very expensive. Research 00:44:21.180 --> 00:44:23.120 stuff. What I found really helpful was... for some 00:44:23.120 --> 00:44:28.200 reason my local library had computers with Adobe Creative cloud on there. And so I got 00:44:28.200 --> 00:44:29.560 to learn all this software, just at the Library. Libraries are awesome. 00:44:29.560 --> 00:44:33.850 (You can also get a free trial for 30 days if you're trying to learn a new software or 00:44:33.850 --> 00:44:37.930 decide if you want to buy it) The free trial is also really good. 00:44:37.930 --> 00:44:43.440 Other things to keep in mind: "Lynda.com." This is Netflix for online tutorials. They 00:44:43.440 --> 00:44:51.680 do classes. I've sat down and watched 12 hour Adobe Audition tutorials. And been like: "Woah." 00:44:51.680 --> 00:44:56.470 It's good, but it's really expensive. It's 20$ a month for these video tutorials. But 00:44:56.470 --> 00:45:02.060 it is really useful. (And it's cheaper than college) 00:45:02.060 --> 00:45:05.540 And they have a lot of skills. If you wanna learn business analysis and a bunch of other— 00:45:05.540 --> 00:45:10.250 They just have a ton of stuff there—learning everything from Python programming to the 00:45:10.250 --> 00:45:16.310 in depth processes of 3D animating in Maya. Check your local library. Because I know a 00:45:16.310 --> 00:45:23.300 friend of mine, his library in his home town in New Mexico for some reason gave him access 00:45:23.300 --> 00:45:26.880 to Lynda.com. So just try to figure out what resources you have available to you. 00:45:26.880 --> 00:45:32.280 And that can really help. They also have a free trial. But I dunno, 00:45:32.280 --> 00:45:36.920 I think YouTube tutorials can suffice at the beginning. 00:45:36.920 --> 00:45:41.390 And so now that you know some of those more advanced stuff, you can get into these other 00:45:41.390 --> 00:45:47.370 aspects like "Advanced PMVs." Like stuff from The Acleps. Where he's doing all these motion 00:45:47.370 --> 00:45:51.900 graphics and moving things around. The word to Google there is: "Motion Graphics." Like 00:45:51.900 --> 00:45:57.870 "Motion Graphics Artist." The subskills here are vectoring, Video Editing, Motion Graphics, 00:45:57.870 --> 00:46:02.090 Graphic Design and Typography (if you're going to do cool text animations). 00:46:02.090 --> 00:46:08.700 So that's how that's done. It's pretty expensive, and exhausting to learn it all. But it's really 00:46:08.700 --> 00:46:15.130 fun! I took an After Effects course a while ago and it was really entertaining. 00:46:15.130 --> 00:46:21.380 It also shows up in some Analysis videos. Like, I know "ILoveKimPossibleALot" she does 00:46:21.380 --> 00:46:27.530 stuff in After Effects. At least from what I can tell. And yeah... this is a video I 00:46:27.530 --> 00:46:32.510 made about describing how many words of My Little Pony fan fiction are on FimFiction. 00:46:32.510 --> 00:46:37.840 It was pretty fun. And I'm running out of time really quickly. 00:46:37.840 --> 00:46:43.630 So Animation... so this is... you have to get really good at drawing. 00:46:43.630 --> 00:46:48.930 Spend hundreds of hours on drawing and, like, work on it for a while. And then kind of work 00:46:48.930 --> 00:46:56.130 on Animation after that because those skills are very next to each other. 00:46:56.130 --> 00:47:00.560 But for producing full on animations, keep in mind the various subskills of writing, 00:47:00.560 --> 00:47:06.180 audio production, video production, it kind of is a team effort when dealing with animation. 00:47:06.180 --> 00:47:11.490 As well as sound effects! Don't forget those! And keep in mind that Flash, for some reason 00:47:11.490 --> 00:47:15.210 the name has changed to Adobe Animate CC... because "Adobe." 00:47:15.210 --> 00:47:20.831 But yeah. And then there's also animation traditionalish. Where you have ToonBoom, which 00:47:20.831 --> 00:47:28.370 is expensive. But—this is so cool guys— Open Toons, the software that Futurama has 00:47:28.370 --> 00:47:32.900 used and several of the Ghibli movies, they used this software to make these animations 00:47:32.900 --> 00:47:36.110 and make these movies. And it is now open source and free for anyone 00:47:36.110 --> 00:47:41.320 to use. So if you wanted to, go on YouTube and watch a whole bunch of Open Toons tutorials. 00:47:41.320 --> 00:47:47.920 Because it's free! There's actual good software open and available which hasn't happened ever 00:47:47.920 --> 00:47:52.970 before. So be excited. And so that's an option. At that point you're 00:47:52.970 --> 00:48:00.450 going to want to buy a pen tablet. So you can figure that out. Those are just subsections. 00:48:00.450 --> 00:48:06.940 In closing, go to Equestria Daily's resource for all these tutorials and a bunch of access 00:48:06.940 --> 00:48:09.790 to different places. Like, they have a very good codex. 00:48:09.790 --> 00:48:15.060 Remember, today I pointed you to a lot of different resources. It's up to you to kind 00:48:15.060 --> 00:48:20.440 of: "Ok! That was an overview of things I could learn, now what do I want to learn?" 00:48:20.440 --> 00:48:26.580 And actually go through and say: "I'm going to do 20 hours on this thing, and focus on 00:48:26.580 --> 00:48:32.720 this." And select that skill. And then set aside that time and do it. And you can really 00:48:32.720 --> 00:48:36.220 learn new things and it can be really enjoyable and you can have a lot of fun with it. 00:48:36.220 --> 00:48:37.869 And that's the panel. Thank you. Thank you for coming.