how to learn (almost) anything: a guide to learning things quickly as a creative technologist
ct's and media artists need to rapidly pickup skills in emerging domains, even when they are a)beginnners b)the domain is new c)the domain is complex.
doing so is naturally an uphill climb, but instead of being intimidated and losing hope, we can turn a vertical cliff to a fairly navigable slope, even
if it will never in practice become a flat plain.
- learn your glossary
without understanding your fundamental terms, like what the words actually
mean, picking up a new field will be infinitely more challenging than it
initially appears. a significant portion of the battle is won through
just building a personal dictionary.
for example, if you're picking up unreal engine, knowing what 'ticks'
are and what an actor actually means in worldspace saves you a lot of time.
- Always start from 30% and end at 80%
ct's who come from art and design will always be trapped by the demon
called perfectionism, where every little detail must be accounted for
and everything must be pure from scratch.
in the real world this is called wasting time. never ever start from scratch, even when you attain intermediate to pro stage.
always start from something: a sketch, a doodle, a tutorial, an example file.
if you don't have these things, make them. like carl sagan wisely said:
"if you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe"
secondly, never reach >90%. you are not a painter. there's a diminishing return on attention to detail past a point. tasteful placement covers enough ground. the creative technologist creates a demo that simply works, not the sistine chapel. you need to stop at works -> works well -> good enough and figure out if there's other things that can compensate.
- start from the examples patch
the examples of any given program will provide special tricks and functions that will rapidly boost your game. sometimes the program will explicitly state where to find program examples, others wont. look for them, open them and play around with them, break them even.
- swim in the shallow ends first
processes are useful when they yield something dependable that you can further build on, thats the point of prototyping. you don't go from 0-100 in a second.
when working domains with high error rates, its better to follow a process where the steps allow you to build something dependable.
this also applies to learning something. when you need to understand the fundamentals, pick the platform that makes the learning process easy, before letting the skills transfer to something harder.
design sounds on a cheap synth before you use supercollider
- diagnose obvious failures/errors fast
if you are learning something, try to figure out what the common errors are, and use the respective diagnostic tools. learn to read complex verbose error messages. ai is useful here.
- menu dive and press buttons
menu diving is underrated. 80% of your program is useless specifics, 20% is critical. you need to figure out which ones are critical and which ones arent. just go crazy with parameters to see what it will end up giving.
- skip the fun tutorials, find the boring ones
the long 1 hour dev lectures provide the fundamental knowledge that will take you far, the fun flashy tutorials usually keep you trapped in tutorial mode.
this doesn't apply if there's a good playlist of simple yet comprehensive tutorials released by a company specifically for upskilling. official content > everything else
- find a mentor or a reviewer
learning everything on your own will waste time. you can save a lot of energy and effort through someone who will teach you the ropes for free, or will at least critique your work.
- look up best rules and practices
do not be a rebel: these exists for a reason, they arise from the failure of generations who came before you. understand why they are implemented and follow them to a point of habit. composition, placement, basic processes, rookie mistakes etc.
- documentation is king
the source documentation is the best place to deepen your understanding. often very powerful features, very important notes and very underrated tips and hidden in plain sight in the documentation.
- learn math and code
yeah this sucks, but it's important. i recommend 'Think Python' and 'essential math for computational designers' for beginners.