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[holland]

This thread is an open discussion about the forum itself, especially the educational side of it. It's where I'll lay out some of my plans and logic, and it's where any members can share their thoughts and debate about the direction we're going in.

Maybe you have strong opinions on how lighting is taught and want to make sure we do it right. This is the place to talk shop about how things might be best taught in a forum setting given our particular goals.

More general discussions of art teaching and learning go in the Study Group forum.

[holland]

On that note, I'll get into my philosophies and teaching style and goals surrounding this little side quest:

1. I realize that no single course or resource is capable of being all-encompassing when it comes to the arts, as every student will ultimately be pursuing slightly different things.

My goal instead is to work towards creating a structure with "jumping off points" or "exit points" where someone interested in a particular pursuit we don't fully cover can still find something useful and meaningful in earlier lessons.

While students whose pursuits clearly align with the perspective I'm teaching from (pursuing complex solo narrative projects that involve doing everything from rudimentary design and visual development to full-blown tech art, audio engineering, etc) can stick around through the full ride.

For example, by starting with mindset and composition, any student would be able to take something useful away. While for more complex topics, it partly depends on how we interleave them to ensure no one is learning too far ahead in topics that don't yet interest them etc.

There is also a clear bias towards visual art at the moment. I'd like to expand and adapt things to be phrased more inclusively in the future, but I do feel pretty strongly that illustration is a helpful baseline skill regardless of what other artforms someone pursues. Like a mind palace, it provides a conceptual structure other interests can be attached and recalled through.

2. I am trying to lay out the subtler aspects of art in more explicit terms for students they do not come naturally to.

Art classes and books generally expect a lot of self-teaching and "reading between the lines." There can even be a lot of shaming involved in putting down students who "just don't have it" -- that "it" being some very simple concept the teacher is either gatekeeping to "keep the arts pure" or simply unable to describe in words.

When explicit explanation is given, I often see artists getting aggressive towards the teacher in comment sections, reviews, or social media, complaining that they're "overcomplicating" for daring to put into words something that had come naturally without thought to them. (More likely, their own study difficulties and frustrations were simply forgotten in the interim.)

I don't want to be that person who shames others for not making the same assumptions as me or not coming to the same conclusions naturally through practice. It just scares off students with a lot of potential.

So even with topics I did learn through osmosis or forgot my early studies of -- such as storytelling and writing -- I've put a great deal of effort into reverse-engineering them and trying put them into words. There is serious benefit to taking the abstract and giving it a structure that can be acknowledged, reflected on, and adjusted, regardless.

And while there is no one objective truth to art, it can help to have some consistent perspective to lean on while you're figuring out your own understanding of things, including the concepts you might not have noticed or bothered putting into words on your own.

3. Vocabulary is the root of all learning, and I am trying to maintain and codify a consistent vocabulary system surrounding these concepts across the forum.

With every art tradition using the same words in different ways or different words altogether, we often end up talking around each other when we get together online, only to end up arguing about things we agree on, or agreeing on things we're actually arguing about.

Not only is this frustrating in the moment, but it means that from one resource to the next, students are getting conflicting and confusing information. So it's important to acknowledge these other uses but also clearly define what WE mean by our particular use of any term.

That's why I am starting with the glossary and concepts area. Establishing the language we're using also helps to expose prerequisites and dependencies between topics, so as we develop lessons and courses, they'll have a more logical order.

Right now, however, it's a bit difficult to understand most of the entries I'm working on without context. The vocabulary could be better controlled and cross-referenced, and we could use proper graphics to demonstrate things that may be too overwhelming in text etc.

It's something that will improve over time. If I'm too much of a perfectionist with the initial posts, they'll never get made. It's already too slow as I'm worried about the order I post them in lol But it's better to post roughly in any order just to get the baseline information down, I suppose.

4. I am primarily a text-based educator at this time.

I get that we live in the time of shortened attention spans, and a lot of younger folks are struggling to read at their level. But making decent videos is a massive time, money, and space sink that I'm not in a great place for right now.

Text-based formats are also much easier to backup, share, load, see at a glance, redline, quote... I'm sure we'll end up with some streams and videos, but opting for text with images is a very sensible place to start.

Still, I'm working on my presentation abilities and how to tutor things better live. I hope to gradually open up more options there.

[holland]

I added the first exercise to test what the post format might look like (and because I had a lot of fun doing it the other day and wanted to make sure it got shared here).

I've been reading more about the importance of modeling activities for students. It lets them actually see the process with added context, and it gives them the confidence to try it themselves in a way that unproven instructions don't. The human brain not only likes to mimic what it sees but is actively fearful of being the first one to try something new.

That's been one of my weak points with online tutoring over the years, as there's a lot of friction in recording the process or scanning it step-by-step. But I do need to incorporate a demonstration with each exercise when I have the opportunity to do so.

[holland]

This design post is really testing me. It will need a substantial rewrite or restructuring in the future.

I just wanted to do a quick post on using degrees of variance in design since I noticed it playing a big role in making models for the comic I'm working on, but when I tried to write it out, I realized design is whole 'nother rabbithole of Things I Learned Too Young To Remember How Complicated They Are To Explain To Beginners.

If you were to go through all the topics in the context of a specific project -- like making character sheets for a short story or something -- I think it'd be fairly comprehensible. But trying to explain it in the abstract without the reader losing sight of the purpose and how everything ties together is hard.

[holland]

Oh god, the deeper I go, the worse it gets.

This is like when I finally got around to deconstructing storytelling and realized everything is storytelling. Like it's one of those existential fundamentals of life related to how the human brain processes the world around it that we just have to grapple with.

But why is everything design too?? I'm offended by how deeply rooted this is into every system we try to teach in art.

There are so many times where I've been confused by students who are themselves confused about where to go from one step of construction to the next. It seems so logical that you'd work from simple umbrella features at low levels of complexity down to more specific features following that framework to develop a more detailed design.

Except it's not if you never got around to learning creative design skills at a fundamental level. It must feel like we're speaking in riddles.