Comparing learning new skills to experiences learning art

@TheLemmaLlama any pronouns
Fri, 10 Feb 2023 01:24:54 +0000

@TheLemmaLlama wrote:

darthmongoose:

If the person only cares about indulging their own desire to experiment for their own pleasure, why even ask for advice?

Idk, a lot of people learning for fun still seek out tutorials and existing knowledge on the craft they're learning for fun. 'Learning for fun' doesn't mean you can't feel frustrated when you get stuck, and have to enjoy the process of figuring out the entire darn thing yourself instead of just saying screw it and asking for advice It's like playing a video game; you're certainly not doing to to master the art of playing this particular game, but if you get stuck you're still gonna go look for a walkthrough.

darthmongoose:

Also a little low-key insulted that you think I don't care about clever themes or technique

Apologies if my comment came across as implying that!

I think what's going on here is I interpreted your mention of trying to be 'clever and artsy' as trying to do 'high level metaphors, deep themes or artistic experimentation', whereas you meant 'throw around artsy visuals and deep-sounding vague words or quotations in a comic to give the shallow illusion of depth'.

For example:

darthmongoose:

A little baffled that you think visual storytelling is an "easier" skill.

You yourself later referred to 'high level metaphors, deep themes or artistic experimentation' as 'higher level parts of your craft', so I think my thought process when referring to visual storytelling as an "easier" skill was similar to the thought process that drove you to write 'higher level part of my craft'.

Maybe we're both wrong about this skill being 'higher' in any way, but when I was referring to visual storytelling as an "easier" skill, I was comparing it to trying to do 'high level metaphors, deep themes or artistic experimentation' properly. (And imo, sometimes you end up doing things improperly in the process of learning to do it properly. Something you might see as a cheap attempt to seem deep might just be a botched attempt at actually trying to be deep :P)

darthmongoose:

I just think that basic accessibility and having appreciation for the core principles of sequential art as a form is absolutely vital as a foundation to stand on when experimenting with how far the form can be pushed.

I think this is the actual core of our disagreement; you believe the core principles need to be mastered first before you can experiment, whereas I don't; I think someone can experiment with fancy things and learn the core principles later (e.g. they start seeing a pattern of what does or doesn't work, and through that the core principles become apparent to them).

I may not have communicated this very well, but that's all I'm really trying to say; bottom-up learning might be slower, but it's fun, and it works.

igneriss:

I wonder if getting good theoretical knowledge first wouldn't be more efficient, probably it would be, but this chaotic way works for me very well so I guess I'll keep learning like that

Yeah, the foundations/theory of many fields (including the principles of sequential storytelling) are amazing and beautiful, and I love that moment when it just 'clicks' and you realise everything is actually simple and can be traced back to this small set of principles, BUT it tends to feel totally obtuse and meaningless when you first encounter it with no context.

That's the drawback of top-down learning; maaaaaybe it's more efficient, but it also feels very alienating (or at least boring); it feels like you're pointlessly moving rocks from one side of a field to another and back again and somehow that's supposed to make you better at comics

(I bounce back and forth between theory and practice; when I get stuck with experimenting, I go look see if there's any theory tying it all together, and when I bump into theory that's too obtuse to wrap my head around, I go back to experimenting to see if I bump into the concept they're trying to describe to me :D)