DAW

So basically there's gonna be a few things you're gonna need. First and foremost is your DAW. I use and I highly recommend Ableton Live 8. It's powerful and versatile and works both in Mac and Windows. And once you learn the interface, it's pretty easy to get ideas down on the page. Plus it comes with a great set of built-in plugins.


SPEAKERS

The next thing you'll need is a good pair of studio monitor speakers. This is really important because you're gonna need to listen to the full audio frequency spectrum to get the mixdown of the parts of your track just right. You want studio speakers because they have a flat frequency response, unlike say most crappy desktop speakers. A good starting point is M-Audio. Check out their BX8a or BX5a Deluxe studio monitor lines.


SOUND CARD

To go along with that, you're probably gonna need a decent audio interface (sound card). I recommend getting a good external firewire or usb card. The company I like and card that I use is from FocusRite. Check out their Saffire 6 USB Audio Interface. You're gonna want a card that has outputs that will work with your studio monitor speakers. Most of them are balanced 1/4" or XLR connections. I recommend getting something with balanced outputs, as this will minimize any noise that might otherwise be created, and will assure you get the best sound out of your speakers.


SYNTHESIZERS

Next you're gonna want to invest in some decent synthesizers. As a starving college student, I don't have a lot of money to throw around myself, so I only have software synths, but there are some really excellent ones out there. These days, software synths are becoming more and more powerful and give hardware a real run for their money. Most of the soft synths made out there are in either the VST or AU format; these formats are pretty much the standard that basically all modern DAWs like Ableton will be fully compatible with. A couple of the ones I really like are:

Native Instruments Massive

Lennar Digital Sylenth1

U-He Zebra 2.5

U-He ACE

reFx Nexus

reFx Vanguard

FAW Circle

Spectrasonics Omnisphere

Spectrasonics Trilian

Arturia Minimoog V

GForce Software Minimonsta

FXpansion - DCAM: Synth Squad

Rob Papen's Virtual Instruments

One thing to realize is that most of these plugins won't run by themselves. You must run them in a host application, like Ableton to work. I find that this confuses beginners sometimes. You just have to make sure you setup whatever DAW you decide to go with, to look at a specific plugin directory, and then make sure you install all your plugins to that folder so your DAW can see them and they can be ready for you to use (not just your soft synths but other plugin units like fx for example).

As you can see, there's a lot of great synths out there, based on different types of synthesis. And for me this is a really fun aspect of trying to make music. I am still learning myself, as there is so much to learn, but I suggest you try some of those synths out, get to know them, and learn synthesis.

Synthesis is a whole monster onto itself, so I also suggest going online and searching for tutorials on youtube to help with that endeavor.

OTHER PLUGINS

As I briefly mentioned above, synths aren't the only types of plugins you will need in music production. There's other plugins that you will need to use like compressors, filters, equalizers, vocoders, distortion unit, gaters, chorus, and delays and reverb to name a few crucial ones.

There's a whole world out there of these type of plugins, with many great people/companies making some AWESOME plugins. In fact, there are WAY-TOO-MANY to mention here. But alas, to give you an idea of what I'm talking about, I will list a few, in no particular order, that you can check out:

Audio Damage

PSP Audioware

FabFilter

Togu Audio Line

u-he's Uhbik

2CAudio

Studio Devil

WAVES

Camel Audio

Sugar Bytes

SYNTHESIS

Most synths will come with presets. Again, the fun for me is trying to come up with my own patches and sounds, but at first, some of those synths will look like spaceship control consoles. But I promise, once you learn some of the basics of synthesis, most of those synths will have the same basic functions that you will immediately recognize. So when you first start out, go into those presets, and instead of just simply using them in the parts you write, go into the synth, pick some presets that you like, and try to figure out how those patches were made. Play around with the settings and knobs and see how the sound changes. This will help you translate sounds that you might come up in your head, and then translate them "to the page". I could go on forever about synthesis but I've just hit the tip of the iceberg.

MUSIC THEORY

So do you have to have a degree in music to make electronic music? While it certainly helps, you don't need to know music theory to start making electronic music. Honestly you just need to have a good ear. Also, you will need patience, and dedication, because it's not going to come overnight. There's a lot of established electronic music producers out there that started out with basically little background in music theory. You just have to stick to it, and learn on the way!

If indeed you know little music theory and you're just starting out, a great book that I suggest you pick up RIGHT NOW if you're at all serious about starting production is Music Theory for Computer Musicians. It's ~$20 on Amazon. FTW!

MIDI CONTROLLER

Now, the next thing that really helps to have around in your studio, is a good midi controller keyboard. Now with most DAW's you'll be able to write midi parts out just by the click of your mouse, but trust me, this isn't really fun. Having a midi keyboard makes your life, a whole lot easier, it's more fun, and you can get parts down faster onto your DAW. You won't need anything too fancy. I suggest looking at the M-Audio Axiom line of keyboard midi controllers. The 49 key ones are nice ;)

SAMPLES

Now, some people like to create their own percussion elements. Whether by recording their own sounds, or tweaking the shit out of existing samples they might already have. This can be time consuming, and when you're just starting out, you just want to get ideas down. Since you're starting out, and you said yourself you just wnat to start making the beats you hear in your head, I'd suggest looking into getting some solid percussion sample packs. You're not gonna be at the level of making your own, so you're gonna need a little help when you start out. And many established producers use percussion sample packs which will have many single shot drum samples of kicks, hats, snares, claps, fx. Some packs will have loops, but I generally stay away from them. I suggest using the single shot sounds, and try and create your own loops from scratch. The place I like to go to get some solid packs are

Loopmasters

Vengeance Sample Packs

OTHER RESOURCES

Another good resource is COMPUTER MUSIC Magazine. It comes out every month, from the UK, so go to your nearest chain bookstore, because they're bound to have it. CM has great articles and tips, and reviews on the latest software and hardware that's coming out. They also have great interviews, and it also comes with a CD that comes with a lot of good free and trial software that you'll find useful. There's also usually a video interview from a top DJ/Producer/Electronic Artist which are always really insightful and great resource as you can see the perspectives of music making straight from other artists themselves. For these interviews, they'll usually go explain and show you how they made one of their tracks; like I said, an awesome resource from which you'll get some great tips.


IN CONCLUSION

I hope that what I've written you will find useful, and will be a good starting point. If I think of something else, I might yet add it here. And of course like it's been said, you just gotta go in your DAW and FUCK AROUND; that's the only way to get better - through PRACTICE. And go to places like YouTube and search for production videos. You'll find some good tutorials from which you'll learn some good tips, synthesis, and production techniques.

If you stick to it, dedicate yourself, you'll get there in no time. You're gonna find yourself making those beats you hear at night in your head, and turning them into reality.

EDIT: Added Music Theory and Other Plugins section :)

Even if this is supposed to be a part of something larger, it should have its own arc. You know what's supposed to happen as the author, so maybe to you, it seems like its fine. But you need to look and craft these things from the perspective of the audience.

I'll use, say, Cowboy Bebop as an example. It's almost entirely a series of self-contained episodes, save for a few episodes that touch on this relationship between Spike and Vicious. But, the self-contained episodes are often iterating and riffing on some of the same overall themes that these connected episodes are built on. Or, when they aren't, they're carried on pure entertainment value. They feel good. They're flat out fun to watch. Or they revel in the absurd, which ties into the show thematically and also rides pure entertainment value.

Fallout: New Vegas does this as well. Side-quests seem self-contained, more or less, but they build on your understanding of the world and they often build on this theme of nostalgia for the Old World, or Old World Blues, as the game eventually puts it. All of the companion character side-quests riff on this theme of clinging to the past or moving forward, the factions all follow in this theme (whether its the major factions modeling their selves after Old World powers or the Brotherhood of Steel finding that they don't belong in the world anymore, so they either need to adapt or cling to the past and die). All of these side quests are self-contained, thus having their own arc and feel satisfying to complete, but also they build on the overarching theme of the game and give the player something to think about once everything is said and done.

You can do this with your own work. You can figure out what it is that you want it to be about and make build on those themes, even just from the start. If you have ideas and themes you want to explore, you can explore them from the start in whatever way you want, and tie it all into something more grand later if you're telling an overall story, or just keep riffing on them in different self-contained scenarios. The main, best thing to keep in mind though is that if this is intended for an audience, you need to write it with the audience experience in mind. Your ideas could be incredible, but the audience would never know it if you've written it to be impenetrable to them, or just so boring that it's unlikely they'll continue to read to get to the good parts.

As an example, I love the show Eureka Seven. Somewhere towards the middle of its run, it has a small arc with a couple of characters named Ray and Charles that culminates in some of the best TV I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. But, I can almost never recommend this show to anyone. The first ~10 to 15ish episodes are a chore. The show sort of acts like you should know who all the characters are already, or doesn't give you a whole lot to work with in terms of giving you something to come back for. For this reason, it took me from when it aired back in 2005 all the way until 2014 to finally finish the show from front to back. There was a ton of good there, but it was so, so difficult to get to it through the start of the show.

So, Entertainment value. Have you read Fiona Staples' and Brian K Vaughan's Saga? The very first panel of the very first page oozes entertainment value, while also giving some great banter to help establish the characters and introduce us to the world. This is a strong opening, and even if there is some lull to the comic afterwards (which there may or may not be depending on your tastes), its given you a taste of what it is and a promise of what its capable of delivering. This is a really great thing to have. If you're aware of Homestuck, it's the GameFAQs FAQ that serves as the end of the comic's first Act that suddenly shows you how the comic will format itself: Lots of nonsensical goofing around until hitting an emotional climax that re-contextualizes the events you had just seen. This isn't at the start of the comic, but entertainment value carries the comic until that point, assuming you're into programming jokes and goofball shenanigans. But, this scene comes so comparatively late that it's likely you've already dropped the comic before getting to the "good part" if these jokes didn't carry the comic for you.

Actual Advice and Critique

Comics are hard, because, unless you have a writer or have an artist to partner with, you're doing both jobs, and the quality of the thing depends both on being well-written and well drawn (or at least some balance between the two that makes it palatable to read). I think that if you think in an actual episodic way, you could improve your writing a ton. With this comic, the arc would be "how did Lasereye become Lasereye?" It's potentially a pretty good premise, right? You'll establish a character and have plenty of chances to create entertaining scenarios because... It's your story! Lasereye became Lasereye in whatever way you decide he did. Go crazy, tell us a story! How did some young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kid turn into some dude in a slum with one eye glowing brighter than ever and the other dim and jaded? Telling this in three pages would actually be a great exercise.

Your art is rough in that it looks like you could use learning some base fundamental things like human anatomy. Your palette and the food stand itself reminds me of Kill Six Billion Demons though, which is great. You've created a good atmosphere in panels 1, 2, and the last panel on the last page, despite the artwork itself being rough. That's great! You know how a thing should feel. That's a great thing to have down pat that will only continue to be a boon as your technical skill improves (and it will if you work at it!). I think that if you buckle down and grind through learning how to draw, you could make very great, visually appealing work.

There's a problem in page flow on Page 2. Here I've shown how your page directs the eye with red lines. The way the page is laid out, you end up reading the fifth panel before you read the fourth panel, which will cause a reader to have to double back to read things in order. You don't want that. You'll wanna keep an eye out for how your pages read in the future. Just give them a once-over and ask where the eye would naturally go following the lines on the page.

So, if you aren't currently, learning human anatomy would be a great place to start placing effort. If you have access, figure drawing classes and the such would be a great way to start working on that. It helps immensely to have others around who can help you if you aren't sure what you're doing at first. Books on comics in general would be a good place to go as well. Understanding Comics and Making Comics, both by by Scott McCloud, are good introductory texts. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner and Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist also by Will Eisner would be good as well.

For writing, Dan Harmon's Channel 101 guides will be great tutorials as he's one of the best working writers today in episodic TV. I'm aware this isn't directly comics, but the best writing advice is rarely going to come from a comics-focused book. Will Eisner will tell you how to use visuals to your advantage in telling a story, but the nitty-gritty of actually writing will have to come from somewhere else. The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Cambell may help you understand structure further. This is what Dan Harmon is riffing on and working off of with his Story Circles, but adapted slightly for the sake of episodic television. Film Crit Hulk, an online movie critic/ the Incredible Hulk has a screenwriting book called Screenwriting 101. It's invaluable. I highly recommend it, even if it isn't directly about comic writing. You'll be able to adapt the advice as you work in your own medium.

Glad I could be of help!

Watts Atelier is really amazing. It is beginner friendly - anatomy knowledge helps, but you wont be drawing the figure immediately. It will still be a good idea to learn anatomy while you continue through the program - I'll link you to some great anatomy resources.

To give you a rough breakdown of how the course works, you start by drawing simple shapes (spheres, cylinders, boxes, cones) focusing on form and value. Then you will start drawing other simple geometric forms applying the same principles. Then drawing fundamentals is finished with still life drawing. Next you move into portrait drawing fundamentals, then figure. If you are interested in painting, you can continue the course to portrait and figure painting, along with other specialized classes (landscape, drapery, composition, etc.)

On the issue of sizing, that is a problem that will solve itself naturally over time. It has to do with proportions and measuring, which is a skill that takes time and practice to get a handle on. Eventually you can visualize where everything goes and place it on the page in the right spot. But yeah, Watts Atelier will definitely help.

The difference between Watts and other free tutorials online is 1.) professionalism and structure: The course is taught by the founder of the atelier Jeff Watts, and it is structured like a true academic art class. Learning online gives you random bits of information which are helpful, but you can't contextualize them. The course is designed to take you from beginner to master. The tutorials online are fun, but don't have that structure.

2.) The teachers are world class artists. To give context, here is some of Jeff Watts work. You may not want to be a painter, but you can be confident that you are learning from a master. You can also google his drawings, they will blow you away. Also, the guy Stan Prokopenko who I recommended - and is often mentioned in this sub - was trained at the Watts Atelier by Jeff Watts.

You probably get the picture, its a great program. My experience with it has been an absolute joy. I wish I could go back in time two years when I started pursuing a career in art and taken these classes immediately. It would have saved me so much time and effort wasted trying to figure out how to grow as an artist on my own. What I do is pay for a month and watch all the videos and print out the handouts for the module (currently on portrait II), and then spend however long I need to get a good handle on it before I spend the 100$ for the next month. Also, if you have the cash to blow, you can spend extra money to get 1 on 1 coaching with teachers at the atelier.

I will note that it can get boring drawing spheres and still life all the time, so make sure you schedule time to draw stuff you love. Once you get into portrait and figure things get way more fun, but just be ready for that in the early stages.

Anyway, glad I could help at all! Feel free to PM me at any time, I have tons of resources I've hoarded over the years that can be helpful. Here are some links that might be helpful:

Here is a video of Jeff Watts drawing and answering questions, it will give you an idea of what his teaching style is like and who he is. Also the drawing is really good.

New Masters Academy is another great tool that has been huge for me. The anatomy and figure drawing courses are amazing. They aren't as structured as Watts, but can be very useful for when you have specific areas you want help for.

This book is superb for figure drawing. Also, this book is the equally amazing book on perspective. Also, a lot of books don't talk about drawing the clothed figure (which is pretty dumb considering most of the time, commercial art has to do with clothed people), which is why I also love this book. You are probably familiar with Bridgman's book, but if you don't have it - get it.

A lot of professional artists in many different industries (concept art, comics, film, animation, 3D, etc.) make gumroad tutorials for a decent price, here is a massive list of tons of these great tutorials.

If you want some inspiration while you work, I love listening to Creative Trek and Chris Oatley's Artcast. They both are mostly interviews with other professional artists and contain all sorts of wisdom and inspiration to help you out.

I have more, but I'll leave it there. I hope the best for you man! Keep up the hard work! Feel free to PM me for whatever reason.

Okay here's the list. I spend some time on this. If you have any specific questions, let me know:)


***

On Composition:

Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies - Dennis DeSantis
Amazon Link
This is a fantastic book. Each page has a general idea on boosting creativity, workflow, and designing sounds and tracks. I recommend you read and digest one of the tips per day and really think about applying them.

Music Theory for Computer Musicians - Michael Hewitt
Amazon Link
Really easy to digest book on music theory, as it applies to your DAW. Each DAW is used in the examples, so it is not limited to a specific program. Highly recommend this for someone starting out with theory to improve their productions.

Secrets of Dance Music Production - David Felton
Amazon Link
This book I recently picked up and so far it's been quite good. It goes over all the different elements of what make's dance music, and get's quite detailed. More geared towards the beginner, but it was engaging nonetheless. It is the best 'EDM specific' production book I have read.

Ocean of Sound - David Troop
Amazon Link
Very well written and interesting book on ambient music. Not only does David go over the technical side and history of ambiance and musical atmospheres, he speaks very poetically about creating these soundscapes and how they relate to our interpersonal emotions.


***

On Audio Engineering:

Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio - Mike Senior
Amazon Link
In my opinion, this is the best mixing reference book for both beginners and intermediate producers. Very in-depth book that covers everything from how to set-up for accurate listening to the purpose of each mixing and mastering plug-in. Highly recommended.

Zen and the Art of Mixing - Mixerman
Amazon Link
Very interesting read in that it deals with the why's more than the how's. Mixerman, a professional audio engineer, goes in detail to talk about the mix engineer's mindset, how to approach projects, and how to make critical mixing decisions. Really fun read.

The Mixing Engineer's Handbook - Bobby Owinski
Amazon Link
This is a fantastic companion book to keep around. Not only does Owinski go into great technical detail, he includes interviews from various audio engineers that I personally found very helpful and inspiring.


***

On the Industry:

All You Need to Know About the Music Business - Donald S. Passman
Amazon Link
This book is simply a must read for anyone hoping to make a professional career out of music, anyone wanting to start their own record label, or anyone interested in how the industry works. It's a very informative book for any level of producer, and is kept up-to-date with the frequent revisions. Buy it.

Rick Rubin: In the Studio - Jake Brown
Amazon Link
Very interesting read that is a semi-biographical book on Rick Rubin. It is not so personal as it is talking about his life, experiences, and processes. It does get quite technical when referring to the recording process, but there are better books for technical info. This is a fun read on one of the most successful producers in history.

Behind the Glass - Howard Massey
Amazon Link
A collection of interviews from a diverse range of musicians who speak about creativity, workflows, and experiences in the music industry. Really light, easy to digest book.


***

On Creativity:

The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
Amazon Link
This is a must-read, in my opinion, for any creative individual. It is a very philosophical book on dealing with our own mental battles as an artist, and how to overcome them. Definitely pick this one up, all of you.

This is Your Brain on Music - Daniel S. Levitin
Amazon Link
A book written by a neurologist on the psychology of music and what makes us attached to it. It's a fairly scientific book but it is a very rewarding read with some great ideas.


***

On Personal Growth and Development:

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Amazon Link
Although this seems like an odd book for a music producer, personally I think this is one of the most influential books I've ever read. Knowing how to be personable, effectively network, and form relationships is extremely important in our industry. Whether it be meeting and talking to labels, meeting other artists, or getting through to A&R, this book helps with all these areas and I suggest this book to all of you.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
Amazon Link
Similar to the recommendation above, although not directly linked to music, I assure you reading this book will change your views on life. It is a very engaging and practical book, and gets you in the right mindset to be successful in your life and music career. Trust me on this one and give it a read.

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Amazon Link
You know the feeling when you're really in the groove of jamming out and all worries tend to slip away for those moments? That is the 'Optimal Experience' according to the author. This book will teach you about that experience, and how to encourage and find it in your work. This is a very challenging, immersive, and enlightening read, which deals with the bigger picture and finding happiness in your work and life. Very inspiring book that puts you in a good mindset when you're doing creative work.

The Art of Work - Jeff Goins
Amazon Link
A very fascinating book that looks at taking your passion (music in our case) and making the most of it. It guides you on how to be successful and turn your passion into your career. Some very interesting sections touching on dealing with failure, disappointment, and criticism, yet listening to your intuition and following your passion. Inspiring and uplifting book to say the least.


***


Phew. That was a lot of work. Hopefully you guys get some usefulness out of this list. This is put together after years of reading dozens upon dozens of books on these topics.


Enjoy!

Here are some things I (and I know others) have struggled with. I think the web is exploding with resources and information, so I don’t necessarily think we need to explain what a prototype is. There’s better places elsewhere to learn things about UX, but I think we could provide some good resources for not just people new to UX but everyone else too. I’m coming at this from what I wished I would have access to when I was trying to get into the field. I know that /u/uirockstar has some good walls of text that probably should be included as well. Feel free to suggest any changes to what I have here.

I really want to begin a career in UX/UI. What do I do?

Well, first it’s important to know that UX and UI are not synonymous. While many job postings combine them, UI is a subset of UX, just as research and information architecture are. UI is still important and if you can do both, you do increase your value. While many see UX as a research field at its core, the UX/UI title implies that it’s only about creating pretty things.

The first step is learning more about the field, which brings us to…

What kind of education do I need?

If you are still in school, there are more places recently that are offering courses in human-computer interaction. You can even try to create your own internships. There are very few UX specific schools, though they are starting to pop up, like Center Centre and General Assembly.

Yeah, yeah, that’s great. But I already graduated, so where do I start?

Any focus on people or technology can act as a solid foundation for learning UX. Because there has never been a set entrance path into the field, UX roles are filled with people from many different backgrounds. The most common degrees for those in the field though are design, psychology, communications, English, and computer science. link

There are a number of people in the field who are self-taught. There are tons of books, blogs, and designers (here are some helpful resources) which provide enough UX stuff to keep us all busy. When I first started reading about it, I quickly got overwhelmed because there was so much information available and most of it was intended for those who already had a pretty good grasp on things. The Hipper Element’s crash courses in UX and user psychology are great places to get a fairly quick overview.

There are books like The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug that make for great first books.

UX Mastery has a great eBook for getting started, appropriately titled Getting Started in UX. Kevin Nichols’ UX for Dummies is both very readable, yet detailed. You can even buy the eBook if you don’t want people on the bus to think you’re a “dummy.”

Lastly, Fred Beecher has a very extensive Amazon list of recommended UX books, depending on what area you are looking to learn more about.

Great. I’ve read a whole bunch of stuff and have a pretty good idea how UX works. Now how do I get someone to hire me so I can gain experience?

Hey, easy there. While, yes, there are lots of UX jobs out there, very few are entry level and not many employers will hire someone who has only read about it and not actually done it. You can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. I know. Frustrating, right?

You have to prove that you can do it. One way to do this is site redesigns.

Go find a website that lacks in it’s user experience and figure out how to fix it. Maybe it’s a small business down the street from you or maybe it’s a feature on eBay you think could be better. Redesigning sites is a good way to practice a process and make mistakes on your own time. If you can involve the owner from that small business down the street, that’s even better because then you can get a sense of the customers (users) that you will be designing for.

Once you have done this, you have (some) experience! Start a portfolio and add to it!

But I have a resume. Why do I need a portfolio?

Resumes are great. But resumes won’t get you a job starting out. It’s a million times more effective to show potential employers what you have done, rather than showing them a resume showcasing that you are a team player and proficient in Microsoft Office. But you should still have a resume that outlines your UX skills.

But I’ve never worked in UX! What should I put on my resume?

You don’t need to put all of your old jobs on your resume if they are unrelated to the field. Most places still want to see some work history so they know you haven’t been living in a cave for the last four years, but they don’t care about how you sold vacuum cleaners or trained circus horses. Maybe you can relate some crossover UX skills to your previous work.

Back to portfolios. They are a lot like elementary math class in that you want to show your work. Potential employers are much more interested in how you made a design decision rather than the final result. If your portfolio just has a bunch of fancy wireframes, that doesn’t tell them how you took specific personas into account and you are simply showing them something that looks pretty. And just because it looks pretty doesn’t always mean it makes sense.

Okay. I have a portfolio with a few unsolicited site redesigns in it.

Congratulations! But I have some bad news. Are you sitting down?

No one wants to hire you yet. You haven’t worked on any “actual” projects that showed how your UX skillz helped a business. I know I suggested you do site redesigns to get practice and you should because that is work you can take to a nonprofit or another small business and say, “here are some trial runs that I’ve done that prove I know what I’m doing and now I can help you for free in exchange for adding it to my portfolio.”

They’ll probably be skeptical and say, “hmmm… I don’t think my website needs this newfangled user experience you speak of and—wait did you say free?”

You both get something out of it and you’re doing it pro bono, which relieves you the pressure of making one tiny mistake. (There is a great site called Catchafire that matches non-profits all over the country with people looking to donate their time and skills.)

Once you have a portfolio displaying your work and some experience, start applying! But there is one more aspect that goes into getting hired and that is the people who will hire you.

Ugh, but isn’t networking just using people for my own professional gain?

I had this same mindset and it probably delayed my entrance into the field. I wanted to rely only on the quality of my work and trusted the rest would follow. I avoided networking and meeting people in the field because I didn’t want it to seem like I was only mooching for a job.

But the fact is people are altruistic in nature and like helping others. Many people also enjoy talking about themselves, and those are the two main principles of an informational interview. You’ll also find that people are excited to help others get started since they remember how difficult it was (see: this blog post).

It wasn’t until I started getting those informational interviews and talking with people at UXPA and MeetUp groups that I learned another side of UX, but also got more familiar with more hiring managers or those that knew them. Whenever possible, people will hire those they know and like. Until you get out and start shaking hands and kissing babies, you will be just another faceless name in a stack of resumes.

Meeting with recruiters/staffing agencies is also a good route as they make money by finding you a job, so they have a vested interest in giving you constructive criticism.

I've heard that you have to live in a big city to get a job in UX.

Move. Just kidding. But while it’s true that larger cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle are full of opportunities, there are plenty of other places around the country that have jobs. Here are the top 20. If you live in a tiny city, expect a tougher time finding a position.

Okay, I got an interview. How do I not mess this up?

Some great advice is to go all UX on your preparation and treat the interviewer like a user.

.......to be continued.



Blogs:

• Boxes and Arrows
  
• The Hipper Element
  
• UX for the Masses
  
• UX Mag
  
• UX Mastery
  
• UX Matters
  
• UX Movement
  
  
  Other:
  
  
• uxdesign.cc: Methods and Deliverables
  
• CogLode.com: behavioral and consumer psychology
  
• Good UI: Best practices shown in a “don’t do this, do that” way
  
• UX Mastery’s HUGE list of resources
  
• UXarchive: iOS user flows
  
• iOS Human Interface Guidelines

Can’t comment on the Hanon, but I do have a recommendation you may be interested in. I’ve been playing classical for a while, but in the last year decided to take jazz improv on top of it. There are a few things that if you really work at then will show stellar results.

First thing is chord voicing, these are truly your bread and butter as a jazz pianist. If you ever play in a group, then these will give you a great sound with many many options to choose from.

It would take a very long time to write out a bunch of voicings, but here’s an example. For major chords there are two main interchangeable voicings which we’ll simply refer to as A and B voicings..
-A voicing is formed by starting at the root, then moving up a major third, then building a minor 7th chord. For example C root, then E minor 7. If you look at it, you’re really just playing the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th. You can drop the root once you learn minor and dominance chord voicings, but seeing not only the expanded C major chord, as well as the chord writhin a chord (E Minor 7 within the C major 9) is extremely helpful.

-B voicing is a major third up from the root, then a minor 7th chord, finally inverted twice. This will give you another voicing option so you don’t use the same chords over and over. Now for any major chord, you have three options (Root, Rootless A, Rootless B).

There are more chord voicing beyond that, but that brief example should give you an idea of what’s out there. There are A and B voicings for Major, Minor, and Dominant chords, with Dominant chords having many many options.

For now I would recommend learning you major 7th, dominant 7th, and minor 7th chords in all 12 keys. Play the root an octave lower, then with both hands play the given rootless voicing above it. This will give you an excellent foundation to build from.

Next most important thing is Modes and Scales. Each chord has a corresponding scale with notes that will sound great over a particular chord. Again due to the vast array of options, I’ll give you a starting place to go from.
-Major chords can be paired with major scales. Pretty cut and dry.

-Minor chords will be paired with the mode Dorian. Dorian is similar to a minor scale, but instead of being formed with a flating the 3rd, 6th, 7th Of any major scale, it’s formed by flating the 3rd and 7th of any major scale. So D Dorian would be all white keys.

-Dominant chords can be paired either the Mixolydian Mode. Mixolydian is formed by flating the 7th note in a major scale. So G Mixolydian would be all white keys.

Now there are many MANY options just like with chords, but this will give you a very firm place to begin improvising. As an exercise to get you playing the right scales with the right chords, play in your right hand a particular scale up two octaves and a third, while playing in your left hand the corresponding chord every 8 notes. You’ll see it line up perfectly. When you can do that reliably at 80 bpm with you major, minor, and dominant chords/scales, you’ll be in a great places.

Last but not least is basic Roman numerals theory. If you know what Roman numerals sound good going to each other, then you’ll be in a great place to not only improvise, but to even write and improvise your own songs on the fly. Again, there’s a whole lot we could cover, but to give you a taste, we’ll talk about probably the biggest progression in Jazz. The ii-V-I.

If you break it down a ii-V-I is the culmination of what we’ve talked about so far in this post. First, why this progression. Well the V-I is a common pull in music. The dominant is one of the first in the overtime series, and it’s pull to I is extremely strong. Almost if not more in some cases powerful than the pull of a vii-I. That’s cool, but what about the ii? The ii-V is actually a very strong pull in its own right. So ii now leads us into V, which then takes us home to I.

For great examples of this in action listen to Afternoon In Paris, and Take The A-Train.

Now once you have those chords in place from earlier, you can fill in the minor 7th chords for the ii, the dominant 7th chords for the V, and the Major 7th chords for the I. So in the key of C this would look like d minor 7th for ii, g dominant 7 for V, and C major 7 for I. Once you can do a ii-V-I in every key, practice playing the corresponding scales while you ii-V-I. Or you could also add rootless voicings to the ii-V-I by doing ABA voicings (Minor A, Dominant B, Major A), or BAB voicings (Minor B, Dominant A, Major B).

I would highly recommend buying a copy of The Real Book. This is a set of over 150 standard lead sheets for famous and great jazz songs. Both songs I mentioned above are in the book. Take the book, find a song, and break it down using Roman numerals. After a while things will make sense as far as what chords go where, and things will really start to click.

If you’re interested in further reading, I would highly recommend The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine. This book covers many many topics, and will take you far. I like the book a good bit because by any topic, it will show a real excerpt from a jazz standard of a chord used so you can see how what you’re learning is utilized.

I know this is a lot to do, but just pace yourself. You can’t build a house in a day, but if you’re patient and diligent, the world of Jazz Improve is a fun and exciting one. Best of luck, and if you have any questions feel free to comment or shoot me a dm.

Here's my obligatory write up of people in your position.

Beyond that short treatise, I figure I should touch on another thing having to do specifically with something you mentioned.

>Additionally, I do have the discipline to do scales/arpeggios.

This is great, but be careful about the approach. It's easy to get extremely technically focused as you try to "catch up" technically on a secondary instrument, to the point that you become obsessive about the scales themselves rather than their application. These also can feel very comforting and eventually... comfortable.

All to often people make the mistake of focusing on one scale to the detriment of others, say focusing on getting C major from 110 to 120 while there are other keys that are barely at 60. I suspect you know better than that, but the pitfall you're more likely to run into is trying to get all of your scales to a point... and then push that tempo rather than focusing on music.

You really need to read... a lot. You need to work on actual songs even though they will be children's songs and silly crap. At the very outset you likely won't be doing any true sightreading, but you should push to be working on that ASAP.

I think for piano more than most instruments, there's more to be learned by progressive pieces of music than with pure technical work. For monophonic (and mostly monophonic; e.g. bowed strings) instruments, you're mostly covered if you have scales, arpeggios and maybe some advanced sequences. That literally is 95% of music... fragments of scales, arpeggios, and sequences.

With piano, that doesn't even scratch the surface. You'd need to add cadential patterns to that list and those are almost infinite in a way that the rest are not. And that's still not even tackling the real issue... composite rhythm and the coordination issues it causes, especially when complicated by all of the other technical barriers.

Experiencing very small, approachable hurdles like these by working through lots of childish books really helps deal with these issues that are relatively unique to harmonic instruments.



It's easy to get complacent and feel like you're making progress by plopping down to run your scales and arpeggios daily, but I'd recommend strictly limiting the amount of time you allow yourself to spend on these. It's easy to feel like you're making real progress when really you're just mindlessly repeating them. Drills are comfortable for some of us. It sounds like they are for you and they definitely are for me, but we have to be careful not to let them be a means unto themselves.

It's much harder to sit down and really mentally work on simple songs that have small coordination hurdles for you, particularly when they don't feel inherently musically rewarding, especially to those of us who previously had a lot of experience being very virtuostic and musically expressive on our primary instruments. But this is the true path forward.

Resources
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I like this book for scales. I'd strong encourage you to avoid doing all of the scale variations it has. Simple HT 2 octave in every key should be the goal long before you worry about some of the others and I'd argue that the real value isn't even in any of the variations. You'd get more out of doing single hand 3rds and 6ths than the separated versions which you'll very rarely run into in reality. They are nice coordination parlor trick, but I don't feel like they have a lot of value and like I said, you'll get more practical stuff from working on simple songs in method books than you will bashing your head against some of these. Save them for much later (like years) if at all.

Likewise, I wouldn't agonize over the dom7 arpeggios either. There are much more common and useful patterns found in all sorts of music. However, DO focus very intensely on the cadences and triad arpeggios.

I like this method book overall. I'm not even saying it's the best... it's just one and it works. I'd honestly recommend visiting a used book store and just buying a lot of beginner books of all different series. Focus less on pushing hard toward progression in on series and more on just consuming a huge volume of different music. Or, you might work through this series of Alfred books and then use other such books are sightreading practice once you start getting better.

Get this book for sightreading as a start. It's offensively easy, but it's really where most people should start and I wasted far too much time trying to poorly sightreading much harder stuff for too long because I just didn't realize the collection of small deficits that were tanking my ability to improve despite my fairly solid technical facility.

Read with a focus on keeping your eyes on the page and reading a bar ahead. You obviously know how this works from violin whether you think of it or not, but there's a lot more notes to drink in on piano. You've got to learn to know what your pace is for reading and accurately playing. Carry these concepts over to the children's books that will be more complicated than this particular book.

---

I will strongly caution you not to try to play hard music. It's such a waste of your time. Lots of people get very good at playing a handful of very hard pieces, but they are based on pure finger memory. These people have no functional skill at piano and can't prepare almost anything new with less than several weeks or months of brute forcing it into their hands.

When you let yourself jump from hard song to hard song, spending weeks or more on each, you'll eventually realize years in that you haven't actually gotten any faster at learning new material. It shouldn't be that way. I'm sure you can sightread (and would be expected to) for tons of gigs on violin. You could probably throw together some fairly advance solo rep in a week or two. Meanwhile, many pianists who've been playing for decades couldn't play an arrangement of some song they heard on the radio in less than a month. It's a sad state of affairs. It's just part of piano culture and many only end up learning maybe 5-10 pieces of new music every year.

Be mindful of the fact that much of your growth as a violinist is due largely to the ensemble experiences you've had... constantly reading tons of new music that's not at the bleeding edge of your ability. You've probably had times where you learned more music in a month that some pianists learn in an entire year, but it has made you a functional player... not someone who has to hide away and practice for 3 months to come back and have your part of the string quartet music learned.

Read! Read a ton and read easy. Your reading skill is the the specific skill that lets you be able to learn new music faster. The better you read the more music you can consume...the more you consume, the more you improve on lots of tiny thing that let you consume even more faster. Unlike almost anything else in music where improvement tapers off, with reading, you just get faster and better at it.

It's definitely a case I make for anyone wanting to make a living (or even side money) playing piano, but honestly, even just for people who want to really enjoy piano as a hobby, putting in the (fairly enormous and painful) upfront investment in good reading is what leads to a point where you can really just sit down and enjoy music.

Hey man, thanks a lot! It's been a few months and I've gotten pretty good fast which scares me because I'm afraid of hitting my first plateau. But to answer your question, I think it deserves a thorough explanation of my experience through the lens of a complete novice artist, so forgive this massive wall of text.

Most if not all of my drawings were flat and 2D and instead of drawing what I saw or imagined, I'd sort of just put marks down on the paper or tablet and course correct until I found something I thought looked good. So I just started practicing anything that could help and boiled it down to this process.

Drawing better figures (drawing anything, really) starts with four components: creativity, mechanical skill, analysis and community. And this isn't just about drawing theory, but also managing your headspace so that you can make it a habit to draw everyday, because nothing substitutes practice.

Creativity is 100% necessary to improving at art, and you need to draw for fun, regardless of your level of practice. Because if it stops being fun, you stop doing it. I've gone days, if not weeks without drawing anything because nothing was coming out how I wanted it to. So I'd stick to practicing fundamentals for weeks only to become frustrated at the marginal improvement I was making, but also bored of drawing because it became a chore. I think the hardest realization at least for me as a beginner is accepting that my art will never get "good enough." You have to swing for the fences with what you know, identify your mistakes afterward, and divide that up into key problem areas to focus on for when you step away from the creative process to practice fundamentals. This all being said, I think the exercise I find most useful for creativity is opening my vault of unfinished story scripts and doing character designs for them. If you for whatever reason don't have any unfinished stories collecting dust on your Google Drive, do what your default state is when you're doing creative work. You really gotta explore your mind and do what feels good. For me, there's nothing quite like the feeling of bringing a character from your own imagination to life. Don't be afraid to make mistakes for this process. That's the point.

Mechanical skill is line confidence. Mine still isn't the best, and I definitely chicken scratch lines loosely before finding the correct one. If you can see in the sketch, I used an orange layer for my messy sketch, and use a few light strokes in black on a second layer for the outline. Eventually those get smudged to create realistic skin tones, but that's a subject on its own. To practice more confident lines, I use drawabox. It's a free series of line exercises you should do. They're time consuming to do at first, but if you do it enough, you should be comfortable enough to use any of the exercises as a 15 minute warm-up every time you pick up a pencil. There’s also an active subreddit and YT community where you can post your exercises and receive criticism. More on community later. Drawing confident lines, in theory, should dramatically cut down the time it takes to sketch something. These exercises also incorporate drawing simple geometric shapes in 3D space. This is important because every visual object you could ever produce is composed of simple or complex shapes. When I get home from work I'll post a video of the timelapse for this drawing, and you can see all the mistakes I made because I couldn't confidently create lines.

Analysis is the act of seeing and interpreting, and in art I feel like it's neglected in the same way listening is in communication. Art is a means of communicating something, and if you're always producing and never observe, it stops holding meaning. It's kind of like when that hipster band sells out and people stop identifying with their music. In order to make genuine pieces of art in my opinion, you have to be constantly observing, or you'll produce the same stuff over and over again, or produce something that isn't you. So to practice analysis, the best exercise by a mile IMHO is drawing from life or photo reference. In art schools, they focus on building rich visual libraries, meaning the number things you can imagine at any angle and can draw from imagination. So say you're practicing architecture for a week. The instructor will have students draw buildings and interior spaces from a particular time period, whilst mixing in exercises that involve drawing from imagination in the style of what was observed. Then they move on to another time period. So if you want to improve your faces, draw all female/male/child/elderly faces doing different facial expressions at different angles both from reference and imagination, then switch when you get bored or exhausted. Then if you get bored of faces do hands, or another part of the body, or animals, or flowers, or buildings! After you finish drawing, compare them to your reference photo, analyze your mistakes, and try again until you're confident enough to draw something completely from imagination. Pretty soon you'll have a robust library of visual elements that you can combine to create complex and believable compositions.

Community is another overlooked subject in this field. I used to be a solitary artist. I mentioned earlier that I always believed I would just get "good enough" one day and only then will I show off my work. That was the single most damaging belief I held. There will always be someone better than you, but they should be a source of inspiration, not envy. Because if you get involved in local art galleries, you'll meet the artists and learn they're genuinely nice people. I do security work at this newer young company and they put commissioned art pieces in their buildings, so over the weekend I got to watch a few of them work. They had friends come from their community and help them scale and paint. They convinced me to start an Instagram for my work, because the fundamental purpose of social media is to give artists you meet irl something to look at after meeting you. The problem with the artiste hermit is that you'll never be confident to show people without worrying about the quality of your art. As they say, "an artist's work is never finished", so you'll always feel a bit of doubt when showing people your work, but that's natural and you learn to manage it better. Additionally, it just helps to be around other artists because we view the world differently. I asked one of the commission artists I met, "Is it a bad time to be an artist?" He replied, "It's always a bad time to be an artist." We shared a hearty laugh, and it was at that moment I realized community is also an important tool for life enrichment. Nothing is worse than being stranded in a sea of people who can't comprehend why you would want to be an artist in the 21st century.

I don't think any of these four components are more important than the other. The more you understand each one individually, the more you see how they all affect each other. If you draw a lot of cylinders in 3D space, foreshortening an arm will just make sense more because you've drawn a similar shape at that angle several times. If you go out to a gallery and observe art, you might see something that evokes a feeling that you'll need to recreate. If your lines get really confident, you'll spend less time fixing mistakes and more time putting more ideas on paper/canvas/tablet. They work in tandem, and I wouldn't give each component a structured dedication of time everyday, but I would switch off whenever the process gets stale or boring.

I hope I answered your questions and more. Sorry I went off on such a long post, but I would have liked a road map when I first started. Happy drawing, don't forget to have fun and take breaks.

Other resources:

YouTube is helpful, but most of them aren't for beginners despite being labeled as such. Shapes in 3D space will always be the most beneficial exercise for understanding space and perspective so do that more often than looking up "how to draw (a specific thing) tutorial)" on YT. There's this app called Magic Poser, and many others that let you put objects into 3D space and adjust for angles and lighting. Just play around with the light, observe how it behaves, trace it, draw it from imagination, add shapes, and so on.

Books are also a great resource and I'd start with Scott Roberson and Thomas Bertling's How To Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments From Your Imagination. It's a great jumping off point, because there are book recommendations at the start of most chapters for specific topics. Books are also extremely useful because there are detailed, hi-resolution photos for you to observe. It also makes you look sophisticated when you have a library.

Oh, another classic book is the Loomis guide on head and hands. It gives you a detailed guide on drawing any type of head and face, but it is a dry read. Great resource, but very dry and a little dated.

Lastly, never pay for anything unless it's absolutely necessary for self-study. If you have books you haven't read about perspective or anatomy yet, don't buy a $300 course from an online school. If you have paper and a pencil, don't go buy a tablet. I did, and though I don't necessarily regret it, I didn't need to get a tablet to get started.

If you can get away with a required book, I would insist you use Theory of Fun. It's not about boardgames specifically, but more about what is fun and why games are fun. It's quite easy to read (every other page is a drawing), but it's excellent and deep. It would definitely give you a good foundation to go on and talk about games from a more educated standpoint.

"Why do you like this game?" "Ok, do you remember where the book says that's a fun thing to do?"

Or look at some critically acclaimed games and see why they fall under good design, or some popular, yet poorly designed games and why some people don't like them (Monopoly for one).

Scott Nicholson had a great video series called Boardgames With Scott that might have some useful videos. He's currently at MIT on sabbatical doing game design/teaching research (looks like maybe he just finished).

If you're looking for a book for yourself,

• http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/ref=cm_lmf_tit_1
  
• http://www.amazon.com/A-Theory-Fun-Game-Design/dp/1932111972/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp/0262240459/ref=pd_sim_b_7
  
  You'll notice a lot of them aren't specifically games, but deal with fun and play. It's important to understand those before you can talk about games. That is also a good topic. What is a game? How do you define it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game#Definitions
  I personally like Chris Crawford's definition, but you get a lot of backlash from the general public for such a strict definition, as if forms of interactive entertainment are somehow inferior if they are not "games."
  
  I'm just sort of rambling and vomiting thoughts here, but to summarize some topics I would want to go over:
  
  
• History of games
  
• Definition of a game
  
• What is fun and play and how are those used to make good or bad games
  
• Genres of games and how that affects design choices.
  
• Pick a different game to teach and play each day/week? Perhaps at the beginning tell your students why a specific game is thought to be fun, and by the end ask them if they can recognize the major mechanics. You could start off a lesson this way and then revisit it at the end.
  
  Artificial intelligence could be an interesting side topic. Looking at search algorithms and how they are used to solve tic-tac-toe and how you use the EXACT same method to solve checkers or play chess and go (currently unsolved).
  
  If you do decide to talk about a variety of games, here are some I would suggest you look at:
  
  
• Go, for its simplicity in rules and depth of strategy. I would consider it one of the most pure games.
  
• Settlers of Catan for introducing euro-style boardgames to the USA and popularizing board games. Also involves heavy player to player trading.
  
• The Resistance as a short-form hidden treachery and secret agenda social game.
  
• Dominion as a game that introduced an entirely new genre that is now super successful. Also a good example of a multiplayer solitaire game.
  
• Tic-tac-toe as a game whose depth ceiling is too low and complexity space is too small for humans.
  
• Pandemic as a completely cooperative game (there might be a simpler game for this, not sure)
  
• Can't Stop - a look at chance and how it can be used as an interesting core mechanic and not just a way to make things random
  
  
  As you can tell, I love stuff like this. Let me know what you think about my ideas, or if you want to talk more or throw ideas back and forth, feel free.
  
  Other sources:
  
  
• http://boardgamegeek.com

Hello!

​

First of all let me state that I am an animator working at a 2D studio who is currently learning 3D animation and modeling on my own. This is gonna be a long answer. Finally: I am gonna push learning 2D first, but that does not mean, you can't do both at the same time, Also I am not saying you have to have 5-10 years of 2D experience before touching a 3D software, I am saying you should really just give it a good try for like a two to three months, before or alongside of learning 3D.

​

Ok, let's get started!

​

I want to reiterate what an instructor who does work as a 3D animator (but studied as a 2D animator) said. A person who is applying to a 3D animation job with 2D training and experience is much stronger than a 3D animator who has no 2D experience. I am willing to bet most 3D animators who work at Sony, Pixar, Disney BlueSky, and Dreamworks would agree. In fact most 3D animation curriculum at colleges and universities, including mine, first teach 2D animation. So do not underestimate how import learning and experiencing 2D animation is.

​

That is where you should start. With 2D, because it forces you to learn and calibrate not only your own style of drawing, but style of animation as well. By the way, you style, comes naturally from experience of drawing and recognizing patterns and being inspired by other artist and life, so don't worry about that too much. It means that you have to work through step by step learning how all the 12 principles of animation (the first technical thing you should learn by the way) work together and alone to create great character animation, to create something that is awesome. Weather or not you are gonna turn this into a career is doesn't matter as well. Starting with 2D will help you no matter what.

​

As far as materials and sources of knowledge;

​

As I stated before, you should first learn the 12 principles of animation. A good book to start with is The Animator's Survival Guide. A good video to watch for the 12 principles would be here. As far was weather or not knowing you how to draw goes; I agree with /u/arczclan. You should learn how to draw well enough to express your opinion and intent accurately. It really depends on what you want t animate and the purpose of your animation. You will find that animation that is more story oriented, may not have has high fidelity of drawings it just depends on how confident the animator is on weather or not their message got across. That being said, knowing how to draw can only help, for that, you should always draw from life. That is how you learn how to draw really well, really fast. Draw at cafe's, buss stops, still life, animal life, go to life drawing sessions. Picture are good to draw from, real life is better though. Focus on anatomy, form and movement. Here is a YouTube channel; for free life drawing sessions, i started by doing one every day:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAZZ8kXStsAD_SJS9LWNdEQ

Proko Panko is good for learning anatomy: Proko

​

Next is software/materials. Now you can go out and but animation desk, disk, pegs and paper, a bit expensive though. I would say you should invest in an electronic drawing tablet, by wacom (just cause they are industry leading). As far as software, there is Adobe Animate (requires subscription), Open Toonz (free), more can be found here

​

As far 3D software. Blender is free and amazing! However if you want to work in the industry, I would recommend Autodesk Maya, cause that is what every big studio uses. It does cost per month, but I think there is a free trial and TONS of tutorials.

​

Now after that you look up the 12 principles and learn how to use what ever software of you choosing, you should just... animate! The first assignment most students get is a bouncing ball (focusing on timing, volume, etc.) So you could start with that. Then go to animating a bean bag walking across the screen (focusing on using the 12 principles to give is more personality, to bring it to life) Then just think of other things you want to animate and just animate them, have fun with them. As well as keep up with your life drawings. I know you said you only have 4-5 hours per day to dedicate to this, but if you keep a sketch book with you (which I highly recommend for anyone just learning animation no matter what the medium) you can just pull it out when ever you are in public and have a free minute and do a quick life drawing, it all adds up! The point is just DO, try, fail, learn, try again, succeed.

​

I hope all of this talk of 2D doesn't scare you, in a nutshell you just need to be able to draw well enough to communicate your ideas and I really believe in the idea that one should animate in 2D first at least of a little bite before moving into 3D, there is a reason every school first teaches their 3D students 2D even for 2 months. Most importantly, once you learn the basic technical information and start with some easy assignments, such as bouncing ball, and swinging tail, then you just have to GO FOR IT! Have fun and welcome to the life of an animator man!

​

Hope that helps!

Steps out of the shadows super non-nonchalantly

So kid! Word on the tabletop is you want to get into making some sweet ass reloads. Come with me, I'm going to inject some valuable knowledge into that cranium of yours.

That didn't sound weird.

First - ANIMATION PRINCIPLES

All good animators at one point have looked for guidance by the keyframe gods for this one. Good animation follows principle, and there are twelve of them:

• Squash and Stretch: That sweet feel of weight flexibility
  
  
• Anticipation: Setting up an action for the audience
  
  
• Staging: While more applicable to traditional theater, directing the audience's attention to what is important in the scene
  
  
• Pose to Pose: Setting your key positions and filling in the extra interesting bits later on
  
  
• Follow Through: Keeping parts of the body moving through even though the initial action as been completed
  
  
• Slow In and Slow Out: Accelerating and decelerating at the beginning and the end of an action to give a bigger feel of realism
  
  
• Arc: Movement that follows an arched trajectory, hands that move in realistic natural arcs feel fluid, smooth and super nice
  
  
• Secondary Action: Literally the frosting on the cake, secondary action does not distract you from anything, its polish, clear and simple
  
  
• Timing: Obeying them laws of physics
  
  
• Exaggeration: This one is pretty self explanatory
  
  
• Solid drawing: DON'T LOOK AT ME I'M REALLY ONLY APPLICABLE TO TRADITIONAL ANIMATION GOSH
  
  
• Appeal: Give it charisma, make it interesting, go for something experimental. Maybe something that hasn't been done.
  
  The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams is very helpful, and it includes everything here.
  PDF amazon
  
  Second - SOFTWARE
  
  Now its time to choose a 3D suite. Here are some of the goodies:
  
  
• Maya Subscription based, but has a free trial. If you are a student you'll get it free for 3 years
  
  
• 3ds Max Subscription based, but has a free trial. If you are a student you'll get it free for 3 years
  
  
• Blender FREE
  
  
• Cinema 4d Subscription based, but has a free trial.
  
  You can buy Maya, Max, and Cinema 4d without a subscription but Im pretty sure the cost is in the thousands.
  
  Personally I use 3ds Max. Its a great program made by Autodesk, and they make some great stuff. They also make Maya, which has some great animation tools. I would recommend you start with Blender, or get the Maya/Max free student licences.
  
  Third - MODELS AND RIGS
  
  If you known how to model and rig, great. If you don't there are plenty of gun models and arm rigs you can find that are free for personal use.
  
  I would look on either gamebanana or sketchfab
  
  Once you become proficient with your 3D suite I would try out modeling, its a great skill to have. Rigging is a bit more technical but a skilled rigger is always sought after.
  
  Fourth - REFERENCE
  
  Use reference when you animate. Just do it. No animator will ever tell you not to.
  
  There are a couple of ways to obtain reference. You can film yourself with props, or real guns. Granted you are a safe, responsible gun owner.
  
  You can use other videogames as inspiration. Find an fps you enjoy, and look for a reload that you really like. Try to replicate it. If you like it, try to replicate it and make it your own this time. Add something original.
  
  Lastly see what other animators do. Get inspired. Become familiar with other first person animators and their style. See what you like. See what you don't like. And PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. It can be a very time consuming process, but very worth while. And who knows you could turn it into a career for yourself.
  
  Slowly steps back into the shadows. Slips, falls, but gets up super cool-like
  
  Good luck friend.
  
  

When I was younger, the concept of improvisation in music gave me a reason to live. I was 17, I didn't want kids and there was no point to middle-class suburban life. But if I could come home from whatever my job was, even if I hated it, I could sit at my piano and play how I felt... if I could express myself through music, in a way I could never do so in words - then I would be happy.

I wrote about that idea in a college entry essay, and it has never left me, 13 years later I still feel the same way. Granted, I feel a bit more responsible about many things in life, but at the end of the day I still hold on to that belief.

Initially, jazz was the vehicle through which I learned improvisation, so I feel very close to the music, even if I really don't play in a traditional jazz style. Improvisation was the outwards expression of my feelings; before I learned about jazz, I could only read notes on a page to play music, and I was way too shy to talk or even write about how I was truly feeling, let alone share that with other people.

My "life" has essentially revolved around music ever since high school. I've played gigs, gone on tour, recorded/put together an album (doing the artwork, manually putting together the CD jewel cases), taught music theory/composition/performance, organized shows/event calendars, funded bands/projects, ran venues/music spaces, produced music for video games... I work a regular day job nowadays, but my #1 passion is and will always be music, whether I'm performing it or enabling others the opportunity to perform.

***

I took classical piano lessons as a young kid for ~6 years, then I quit. I had a little bit of technical knowledge and form but I never really "enjoyed" the music I was playing.

I played drums in grade school. While in drumline (marching band), another drummer asked me to play some keyboard parts for his band. Like 3-4 chords during a Pink Floyd song ("Wish You Were Here" actually, you can hear the synth towards the latter part of the song), and some bird chirping sounds. For other songs, I would swing a hockey stick around while wearing a hooded coat (kinda like a grim reaper) while the band played some Black Sabbath covers.

Well it turns out that we won a Battle of the Bands in front of a few hundred high schoolers, got some money, and I had my young ego blown up then, going from unknown nerd to "piano player with the hockey stick" - but at least people knew who I was. I even bought a keyboard so we could gig around town (I still have it, this ridiculous thing, even though the screen doesn't work anymore)

As I practiced with the band, I was introduced to the idea of "soloing" - other classically trained musicians might understand the helpless feeling I had when I was told "just jam over this blues" - I had no idea what I was doing. One of the guitarists in my band told me about the blues scale, a set of 6 notes that I could riff endlessly over and somehow they all sounded great to me.

A year later (and another battle of the bands won), I was invited by the same guitarist to hear one of his friend's dad's jazz trio. I was told his dad, a drummer, had once opened a concert for Parliament. I get to hear this trio, and they are playing Miles Davis' "So What" according to my friend. I'm ask my friend, "How are they playing all that, improvising?" And he says "Yeah"

At this point I'm like, "Well let me jump in there, I know the blues scale!" And my friend is like "Nah dude, you can't do that!"

Later that night he plays me this recording of Thelonious Monk "Epistrophy" and is like "this is jazz, man, you can't just play blues scale over it"

My classical ears heard this song and I thought to myself, "This is some bullshit music. Sounds terrible. This guy sold records? I can do this!"

I went home and realized quickly that I had no idea how to actually play "randomly" - my fingers would not allow me to. I needed some sort of direction, short of just riffing up and down the blues scale.

The internet was starting to become a thing at this point, so I jumped online and looked up how to improvise jazz on a hip new search engine called "Google" (lol). With a little digging and the help of Napster, I ended up finding an mp3 of Keith Jarrett "The Koln Concert Part IIc"

I listened to that shit so many times. How could someone just sit down and PLAY that?

The summer after my senior year, I used two websites (Jazz Improvisation Primer and LearnJazzPiano.com) and Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book to learn about jazz and how to improvise. I spent 4-5 hours a day going through the book, listening to music from the websites, reading about music theory, and practicing on my parents' upright.

When I went to undergrad, I sold my drum set and brought the keyboard along. Really glad I chose that path.

On campus, I found other jazz musicians and tried to hang out with them whenever I could; even though I wasn't a music student, I lived in a dorm really close to the music department, and my classes were also relatively close. I ended up going to my first jam sessions my freshman year, and while I struggled to keep up (I was literally pushed off a piano bench once), I found a few kind souls who were willing to be patient with me and let me play with them. Many of them are doing great musically/career-wise now, and my heart warms up SO much whenever I think about them

Anyways, I transcribed solos, played off lead sheets, and listened to jazz all the time that year, trying to practice an hour or two every day or at least every other day. The first tune I ever completely transcribed was Cannonball Adderley "Autumn Leaves" and it took at least half a year, I probably spent a month alone on the first 4 bars of Cannonball's solo

I don't know exactly when it happened, but my girlfriend at the time was really into Prince/Michael Jackson and the summer of my junior year, during an internship in California, I somehow found myself watching the Britney Spears' "Toxic" music video and figuring out how to play it on piano. Sure it was "pop crap" but something about the little string riff caught my attention. That summer I started learning a ton of radio songs and I realized that I could use my jazz transcribing skills to learn almost any rock/pop tune, since the basic harmonies/melodies were generally much simpler than dealing with something like the changes to Coltrane's "Moment's Notice".

I filled up ~200 notebook pages of chord changes and reharmonziations of pop/rock/musical/video game songs I had grown up with, thinking to myself, "Isn't this what all those bebop heads did in the 40s? Take their favorite childhood tunes and turn them inside out?" Around this time, I started playing solo piano gigs, quoting these familiar tunes occasionally, enough to grab an audience, but keeping the whole "cool jazz" feel to them.

When I came back to school I started playing around town a lot, and by the end of undergrad, I finally felt like I could sit down and just play how I felt. I can't pinpoint exactly when this happened, but it was a big turning point in my musical life. I had a friend record me at the on-campus music studios, which became my first album. I decided that I would go "on tour" around the country, playing at venues in college towns/big cities, partly to prove to myself that I could make it as a musician, partly because road trips!!!!!

I could write a book about those 4 months but basically at the end of it all, I had played in ~50 cities, smoked a ton of weed, realized I could "keep up" w/some of the best jazz musicians (playing in New Orleans, LA, and NYC for a week each), and was broke as shit. The money thing scared me. I grew up what I considered to be middle class, but I couldn't stomach having $20 in my bank account with no paycheck in sight. As a musician, playing jazz, I realized how difficult it would be to live comfortably.

At the same time, I knew where I wanted to settle down. I moved 2000 miles, took a corporate day job near San Francisco, and was incredibly lucky to find relatively affordable housing out here (prices were high a decade ago but not as bad as they are now, I think).

Most "new" stuff in my life from that point on (in terms of music) didn't really specifically deal with jazz, although I did play a lot of jazz gigs both solo and with a quartet (clarinet+rhythm section) over the next few years. Got into lots of other kinds of music, started DJing a bit, saved up money from my day job to find other musicians gigs/avenues to play, eventually got into electronic dance music, raves, music production, but anyways. There's a somewhat related post about that here

I stream improvisational piano on Twitch occasionally, and there are definitely touches of jazz, although I would never compare myself favorably to anyone who practices and studies jazz consistently. Over the last 5-6 years, not playing with other jazz musicians has kind of dulled my chops, plus I don't really practice that way anymore anyways... but I'm quite OK with that. I still love sitting down and just playing how I feel, and it's kind of cool in this modern age that people all around the world can listen and enjoy it if they want - good for the ego heh ; )

Music is fucking great. Keep listening, keep playing : )

As my art teacher says: "If you know how to use a pencil, you know how to draw." I'm still a beginner but I've realized that all you have to do to draw well, is just...draw.

Nobody can teach you how to do it but yourself, sure there are people out there that teach you how to draw little things, but ultimately, YOU have to practice as hard as you can!

Just learn the basics (perspective, shading, figure drawing, materials etc.) first, and from there on out, you can learn tips, but the main way to get better after learning the basics is just to practice, which is something I've learned partly from experience and from dozens of tutorials I've used.

ONE HUGE, HUGE, TIP: REMEMBER: YOU DON'T ALWAYS HAVE TO CHALLENGE YOURSELF. It is really, really good to challenge yourself, and try to do it a majority of the time you spend drawing. HOWEVER, every now and then, revisit your comfort zone and draw something that'll look nice but is still easy to draw. If you're always out of your comfort zone when drawing, you will realize that drawing will quickly get frustratingly boring.

^ I've learned this because for a lot of time when I drew, I felt it was too hard and so I stopped every now and then because I felt I couldn't do anything. That was because I barely ever brought myself back to drawing what I KNEW how to draw and instead only focused on what I didn't. CHALLENGE MAKES YOU BETTER, BUT COMFORT LETS YOU HAVE FUN. Have a little fun sometimes and revisit your comfort zone! :)

Remember that you don't have to be the best drawer in the world, I'm sure there are some artists today that can't draw, but are skilled at digitally remastering their drawings to look better than they could make them, and if you're into this digital work more than traditional drawing, then do what they do and learn to make your drawings better using a computer! This is ultimately your decision.

Draw your favorite characters of shows, draw real life objects, draw people you know or just see on the street. Don't be afraid to whip out your sketchpad and draw like shit in front of people, because EVERYBODY draws like shit when they're starting and if you're quickly sketching, you WILL draw like shit, but it doesn't matter because most people sketch just to practice, just to recognize the contours of objects, the details of some things, etc.

A FEW RESOURCES I USED

How to draw comics the Marvel Way This book doesn't teach much but it's good for the bare essentials of figure drawing and perspective (and comics if you're into that sort of thing).

http://www.drawspace.com/ Some essentials and tips for drawing.

You can use STUMBLEUPON to stumble under drawing or art for tutorials and tips!

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-For-Dummies-Sports-Hobbies/dp/0470618426 Never read the entire thing, but hey, give it a shot if you want to.

*Pretty much ANYTHING you type on Google will be given to you. Ex. Just type in how to draw hands and you'll get a link of 35 tutorials. You can easily find resources if you Google "how to draw __".

WHEW! THAT was a mouthful. (That's what she said.)

Anyway, I've given you as much advice as I can give you. Trust me, I've just begun to master the basics of drawing, but these are the things I've learned so far, and trust me, whatever tutorial you look up will tell you the P word: PRACTICE. That's it. The whole big scheme.

PRACTICE.

There is no way to learn than to

PRACTICE.

Do not try to master it unless you are willing to

PRACTICE.

PRACTICE
PRACTICE
PRACTICE

Dam, that word looks funny now.

Anyway, get out there and learn how to draw and shit! But remember to have fun along the way, don't push yourself to the point of frustration, take breaks and reward yourself a little from time to time with easier drawing projects!

ONE MORE THING: Keep all of your drawings ever since from when you started, and when you're feeling low on motivation, scan through them and compare them to your new drawings, and trust me, if you've been working, you will see a difference, even the slightest one and that'll definitely help you believe that your practicing has been working.

Sorry about the length of this. I seem unable to express myself with a short post.
Maybe this will sound boring. I'm only an amateur, but I will tell you what I think will help based on what my own struggles have been and how I have seen results. As someone who drew a lot earlier in life but never got anywhere and who finally improved over just a few years by putting in real work. And I don't even do this full time. I have a job on the side and I just try my best.

You will need understanding of basic forms. Look to www.drawabox.com for a quick introduction. You will need to understand how to turn forms in your head and understand the perspective of the basic forms of the cube, the sphere and the cylinder. This sound boring. I know. But please understand that to become a great footballer, you first have to at least know how to kick a ball, or dribble, or even tie your shoes.

You don't have to ONLY draw this. But I'd recommend you get lots of practice in. Please view it as lifting weights. It may not be GREAT fun to do the actual heavy lifting, but you're looking for results. You're working toward a very specific goal. If you want results in a given time frame you must focus your efforts, even if you're not having the time of your life doing it. When you DO see results however, you will feel better about it.

You're looking to get better at figure drawing primarily, which means eventually you'll have to do gestures. A lot. So just start now. Do ones that are horrible and ignore the fact that they are horrible. I have sketchbook upon sketchbook with gesture drawings. And in the beginning it felt like I was wasting paper cause I was so bad. But you still have to do it. Try to adopt an attitude about gesture drawing that it's basically the blueprint of your drawing. You have all these "materials". Construction of simplified forms. Light and shadow shapes. All fit together like concrete and metal plates and rivets. But without the blueprint you wouldn't even know where they fit. So for the gesture and beginning figure drawing I recommend Michael Hampton's book : Figure drawing design and invention. https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-Invention-Michael-Hampton/dp/0615272819
Also look at videos on youtube of Steve Huston, Karl Gnass and Glenn Vilppu. They have different approaches, but share the same fundamentals. Gnass' gestures are simple and pragmatic. Huston's are effective and good looking. And Vilppu's are intuitive and experienced. (In my own personal opinion ;D)

I know you want to draw cool looking figures in a certain style, but I put it to you that you don't have to go crazy about style right away. I feel like you can save that for last. Your art preferences will always be guiding your "style" anyway, so try to use reality for as much as you can. Realism in this sense does not mean photo-realism. It means using reality as the grounds for your practice. We have to do this because art is a science. People think it's not. They think art is some kind of opposition to science or that we need "both sides of the coin" or something. But art is a science. And only in recent years when we've finally developed both tools and understanding of the nature around us are we able to create truly stunning works of art.

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Part two will have to be getting figure drawing training in, which by following along with Hampton's book will hopefully give you an idea of what you're going to have to scale. It's going to be first the simplification of the body into simpler forms (this is where your initial practice will be useful) and later refining those forms by a study of reality. There are so called "rythms" in organic figures and particularly in the human body that should be known and practiced. I believe you'll find much of this information in Hampton's book. It's one of the better compendiums of basic figure drawing I have read.

Of course, drawing from life is the best thing you can do. But being of "parents are forcing me to do something" age means you're probably young enough to be a partially "cybernetic organism". Youtube has decent resources for many things. Look around this sub and other art sites and you'll find links to a lot of figure drawing resources online. I like the New Masters Academy youtube videos and Croquis café on youtube. What would we do without youtube I wonder.

"Ignore" anatomy as some kind of knowledge of muscles and skeletons and bla bla. I've never found that particularily useful. We're not doctors. I don't mean that knowing anatomy doesn't help. Of course it does, but starting out it is the LAST of your priorities. Instead try to understand anatomy as simplified forms. And start from the big picture. What is the largest shapes and forms you can identify on a figure. Then work your way down. Example: You want to draw the head. First the head can be simplified as a tube or a box or a sphere. Later we can add smaller forms on this larger form to identify features like ears and nose and eyes. Again Hampton's book does well in explaining these things.

People repeat this mantra as if it's religious. Draw from life as much as you can. It might not be obvious right away, but you HAVE TO be able to understand the 3D form of what your drawing. And some times it's a BIG help to be able to just be able to walk around something to understand its form. Doing sculpture would even help your drawing skills because it will familiarize you with forms. This is the ultimate and imperative knowledge of all good drawing.

Lastly, you need that mileage man. You need to calm your ego and just say to yourself that "my work is gonna be trash for a while , but that's ok". Don't expect anything until months have gone by. You won't be able to lift that 200lbs weight yet. You have to keep working your way there.

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This is actually enough to get you started. You don't need a million books and a million youtube videos or tutorials on anything. You need a direction and some dedicated time. Time that's spend lifting the right weights. Not trying to lift 200lbs before you're ready. You'll just end up hurting your back and feeling bad for your inability to lift the weights.

I'm sorry that I don't have a recipe for you on how to get good. It's down to the bare bone basics and a lot of work. Chances are that after 6 months you might see some improvement.
Just have faith in the fact that there are a few things which WILL improve your figure drawing.

• Basic form knowledge and understanding of putting it in perspective
  
  
• A constructive method of drawing (which will mean you draw everything the same way whether you imagine it, remember it or see it in front of you.)
  
  
• Figure drawing from life or good reference (and LOTS of it) to train your memory, to train your intuition and everything else.
  
  
  
  

Well drawing for me started out as a coping mechanism when I was a kid and still is for me today (especially these days). I had a lot of problems with depression and anxiety as a child coupled with a fairly ignorant father that didn't recognize these things as mental problems. I was forced to try to find a way to deal with hordes of feelings and emotions that as a mere child I was incapable of understanding and drawing helped me do that. Around the time I was about 13 or so some close friends of mine started drawing and where WAAAAY better than I was, so that pushed me to start working on things like technique and different styles. I really liked Dragonball Z at that age so I started drawing pictures I printed out from the internet regularly and started drawing in an anime style and eventually began coming up with my own characters, my friends were really good at drawing in anime styles so they taught me a lot about it.

When high school rolled around (I'll say sophomore year or so) I took basic art 1&2 but I never really did too much because the course material was SO rigid that it didn't interest me. Ms. Huelett (the art teacher) felt like I had a lot of talent and took me under her wing in a big way. She knew A LOT about art and helped me learn and meld multiple styles together in order for me to create my own. She taught me a lot about anatomy and how to draw people/characters in different poses, how to properly shadow characters and apply light sources to my pieces, creating expressions and applying drama through a characters poses, she poured as much knowledge into me as she could and I couldn't be more grateful for all she taught me.

I know it isn't much (you've also been given some great advice already I see, which is fantastic) but I'll give you a few links to some books that really helped me learn more about various styles and techniques (I still have most of these books and refer to them fairly often, even now)

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954561&sr=8-9&keywords=how+to+draw

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Urban-Sketching-Location/dp/1592537251/ref=sr_1_19?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954800&sr=8-19&keywords=how+to+draw+graffiti

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Art-Doodle-Book-Outside/dp/1856696820/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954800&sr=8-28&keywords=how+to+draw+graffiti

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Head-Figure-Perigee-Jack/dp/0399507914/ref=sr_1_28?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954902&sr=8-28&keywords=how+to+draw+books

http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Manga-Mark-Crilley-drawing-ebook/dp/B006WUD10S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954990&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+draw+manga

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Manga-Bodies-Anatomy/dp/4766112385/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1404954990&sr=8-6&keywords=how+to+draw+manga

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Cutting-Edge-Anatomy-Reference-ebook/dp/B00G8ELT2K/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1404955084&sr=8-10&keywords=how+to+draw+comics

http://www.amazon.com/Draw-Comic-Book-Action-Garbett/dp/1440308136/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1404955084&sr=8-14&keywords=how+to+draw+comics

I think that's most of the books I've got, at the very least it'll give you some ideas to practice with and all of those books together isn't too bad of a price and it's a good way to get experience in the things you want to learn (I think) if you're not able to afford the classes you were suggested.

Good god this post is long as hell and I apologize for that, I'm just trying to be as helpful as I possibly can with what I know (call it a flaw)

I'll leave you with a few pieces of advice that help me out regularly and that I feel have gotten me to the level I'm at now (though I think I'm just ok at best truthfully)

1. Sketch whatever idea you have in your mind for something as fast as you can and just let your ideas flow through you. Don't give yourself time to say this part sucks I have to redo it, just go for it and you'll be surprised at what can come out of it.
   
   
2. Try to take inspiration from artists you admire but don't try to copy their style. What worked for me was incorporating my inspiration with various artists and merging them with my own ideas which eventually lead to me developing my own style(s)
   
   
3. Do your best to not look at your art as inferior to another persons artwork. Absolutely, have those people you look up to want to be like artistically and draw inspiration from, but do your best not to doubt yourself. It's YOUR artwork and YOUR ideas, the only person's opinions that matter are your own. If you're truly happy with what you've created and feel you've done the best you can then I promise SOMEONE out there WILL like your work as well, at least in my opinion.
   
   Sorry again for the book, I just hope I was at least a little bit helpful with the advice I was able to give and didn't come off as arrogant sounding or anything
   
   Best of luck and I can't wait to see what you do in the future :)
   
   

I was in the same boat as you a few years ago, I played classical my entire life then started to pick up some jazz when I entered college. This is super useful, as it has really helped my playing overall and now I can make a decent amount of money playing around town because i have diversified my skillset. As a classical player I can understand where you are coming from when you say you want to learn scales. I was definitely the same way when I started, very obsessive with the theory and involved in jazz, and I think that if you have been training your brain to approach the piano a certain way your whole life, you shouldn't try to change it now. I agree with OnaZ on his book choices, and you should start picking up your modes, but don't worry about them a whole lot, they are not the end-all-be-all of jazz music. Modes are just a tool you can use to achieve a desired sound or color. If you understand the way you find modes (different configurations of a major scale) then you don't need to spend hours and hours drilling them into your head. I think you'll find that once you start playing jazz and picking up tunes, etc, the modes and bebop scales will kind of fall into place.

More than anything, I suggest you find a teacher! And a good one! One that plays jazz primarily. I would suggest contacting a university nearby and see if you can get connected with some people in your area for lessons.

So! If I had to go back in time and give myself some advice to how to really pick up jazz it would probably go something like this:

1. Listen to Jazz:
   
   Only recently has jazz become something that you can learn in a school/university. Throughout the majority of jazz history, jazz was learned by people listening to jazz musicians. It is, more than anything, aural tradition. Find jazz that you enjoy, not just stuff that people say you should like (although you are going to have to listen and learn to appreciate some albums you may not care for). Definitely check out An Introduction to Jazz Piano (Although it leaves out my main man Red Garland:( )
   
   
2. Transcribe:
   
   Start picking up licks and riffs from your favorite players. Just steal them. The first step to becoming a good jazz musician is emulation. You don't have to transcribe whole solos (although this is ideal) you can just grab parts of them and learn some riffs here and there. Blatantly rip off the greats and start building up a bag of tricks. If you are already a little comfortable with some blues scales, I would highly suggest maybe doing a few transcriptions of Horace Silver. He is a great guy to start on and his timing/feel is impeccable. He plays a lot of blues that you check out on youtube or grooveshark.
   
   Listening and transcribing are going to probably be the most helpful, I find that a lot of players (especially guys coming out of classical into jazz) have more trouble with the rhythm and timing of jazz, and not the scales or notes. Honestly, I like to make the argument that rhythm is superior to harmony/melody in jazz (but that's just my opinion). The Jazz Theory Book is a great place to start. I would definitely recommend picking that up, although it is cheaper than a teacher, it definitely will not replace a good one!
   
   Wow, that is a pretty intimidating wall of text (sorry about that)! I tried to edit it down as much as possible, I could talk about this stuff all day. Although jazz can seem very intimidating at times, don't get frustrated! Your classical chops will really help you out. I really hope you find this music to your liking, I think it is the best stuff around. Good luck!!
   

There are several things going on here!

One, I think "being high" from pot is actually a learned response, like any other skill, it takes time and practice. It takes several exposures to actually really understand the experience and get a full effect. No doubt, there's something biological to this. Over time, the effects get more noticeable. I've never really met anyone who had it completely work the first time. Everyone I know said the effect got initially bigger the more they did it (and then, past that point, you build up tolerance).

A second thing is that the effects are really profoundly different for each person. A friend of mine was heavily into chronic dope, and he would often smoke with (what he termed) people who were 'beginners'. Like, he'd share a joint, and the person he'd smoke with would be really knocked around, for example they would barf or become so intoxicated that they would be incoherent or non-functional. It didn't affect him nearly to the same extent. He could smoke 10X that amount and not get nearly as high. I've known at least three people who are really weird people unless they smoke dope, and with the dope they seem to become just like normal. Bottom line, some of this depends on how much you smoke, how often, how strongly it affects you and what your baseline state is like. The range of responses is huge.

Then, there's at least one other thing. I've met several people who have a specific drug that simply doesn't work at all on them. A friend of mine could take heroic, death-defying batches of psilocybin and they simply were inert. He would feel cheated or ripped off and it was very obvious he was 100% sober. He once accused me of faking the effects! If I took a tiny amount from that same batch, it was a mystical experience, so it wasn't that the drugs were counterfeit -- he just couldn't get high from mushrooms. That happens to me too, but only during the refractory period...mushrooms (taken all alone) don't work again for a few days duration right after you take them once (but you can ordinarily tweak that by adding some extra substances). I've known some people that get an effect from pot that outwardly seems like it's so incredibly mild it's almost non-existent. I actually think the pot that is available is getting a lot stronger, which makes me think that most people are less sensitive to it than I am, because it's almost unpleasantly strong to me now.

What's funny and interesting is that once you have experienced a drug, you can easily recall the experience/feeling of it, and what's more, you can be in a dream of being actually high while you sleep, which is basically the same as saying that you can repeat actually being high without the drug. In other words, your brain learns to get in the state once it discovers it.

My partner is a lot less experienced with drugs than I am, but I notice when she is high more than she notices. She's all forgetful and not making sense, while at the same time she feels she's not feeling it. I feel that there's a certain amount of inward observation about being high that's different from normal reality. Part of what you learn (with a first drug) is to have a kind of duality that you experience towards your introspection. Here's the sober part of my mind noticing the high part of my mind. This is different from actually just feeling or thinking one thing.

The absolute best drug experience from a first time use is from LSD. It actually works insanely well the first time you take it, it's an unavoidable and very potent experience. The problem with LSD is not the thing that everyone is scared of: bad trips. The problem is permanent insanity -- I really think it's a bit of a dangerous substance. Out of a small handful of people that I know who have done it, I personally know at least 4 or 5 people who became acid casualties and had actual damaging permanent brain changes, and none of those people were doing anything truly weird, just using it the way anyone else would. I don't really recommend it unless you are willing to take that risk. One or two normal trips don't guarantee that something won't eventually happen. To me I don't think the problems/risks are connected to what other people talk about...I don't think you have to be pre-disposed to anything to have a potential problem with it. Perfectly normal people still run risks.

It seems like the psychedelics (like Psilocybin, LSD, Ecstacy etc. and extremely strong pot) are substances that inhibit the thalamus in various ways. Basically, this is the part of your brain that is like a traffic light, which makes you only think one thought at a time versus multiple thoughts. If you soak your brain in enough of the right juices, you can definitely allow a lot more traffic. What actually ends up happening depends on the person. I knew one guy who became a really fluid skateboarder with the same drug that allowed someone else to talk about philosophy.

Drugs have been a really interesting thing for me. I've experienced synaesthesia, visual-, corporal- and auditory-hallucinations, many, many powerful insights into myself and the world. All the normal things like time-dilation, munchies, laughing, whatever. Also lots of mystical and religious experiences. I once made friends with a house cat and we went hiking together for about 3 hours in the forest. I even wrote an exam on LSD once and the professor turned my answer into a class lecture -- I guess I came up with a pithy way of integrating all the things that the course was about. I've entered states where it was like programming my own brain as if it was a computer. I've been an insect on an alien planet, and I've had a UFO encounter and found a successful way to talk a friend out of suicide. I've seen Jesus appear and saw him convince a friend of mine to become religious. I've run from the police while feeling like it was in slow-motion. I also invented a couple of legit mechanical devices. It also changes the way I see/hear and process music and art, where I can suddenly hear through distortion, understand mumbled words and see more symbolically, metaphorically etc. Pot also improved my sports performance, and I actually had some of my best ever competition results while being totally baked. A few pro athletes I know don't race unless they are quite high on pot -- it seems to improve reaction time and endurance.

I once tripped sitting beside a river, and I had every visual element (trees, ducks, kids, dogs et.) map into a very realistic miniature simulation of the overall human superstructure, where I could look down- or up- stream and get a coherent snapshot of the past, present and future. After the high went away, the mental model proved to be durable and rational and the insights probably still affect how I see things. The very first time I dosed on LSD, the drug kicked in while watching the normal TV news. I still cannot watch any TV without seeing the gears moving on the propaganda machine, it literally cured me of the hypnotic susceptibility you need to "get into" watching TV. However, I'm probably even more interested in movies now. The best book about exactly how I see movies is this one, the only difference is that movies are sequential in the same space where comics are spatially juxtaposed, but the book is highly recommended regarding how it works.

However, I basically don't do any drugs at all any more. I probably went through a period of beyond-average experimentation, but I found there are a lot of risks for me personally. I don't particularly enjoy being actually high, so for me, it's a tool only insofar as it helps me direct my life. One major thing is that using drugs turns me into a dreamer rather than someone really living my life -- this happens in a seductive way that's hard to notice. The way that my personality is, I need to actually focus on executing on real ideas rather than coming up with more and more possibilities or being in a state of creative flux all the time. As a professional creative, I have an endless stream of possible ideas all the time even when I'm totally sober, and drugs make that overwhelming to the extent I don't (and can't) get enough done. Drugs are super time-consuming.

Your friend is sort of right about the pen. It can help do away with the "chicken scratch" method of drawing by forcing you to be more confident with your lines but you should stick with pencil for now.


I'm mostly self-taught as well (although I learned a bit from Watts Atelier until it got to be too expensive) and the sheer amount of information out there can be really overwhelming. I mean, there's so many things to learn: perspective, line weight, figure drawing, portraiture, landscape, etc.


What definitely helped me is realizing that I'm never going to stop improving as an artist. That means that I'm going to have my entire life to hone my skills. Even if you have to unlearn a lot of bad habits, you've still got plenty of time to practice slowly, deliberately and mindfully.


If you understand that you've got your whole life to get better, it's easier to formulate a strategy to get better. You've got to think about this in the long term. That means taking a month to work solely on anatomy, another month to work only on perspective, another month to work on tone and values, while always revisiting the skills that you've already cultivated.


For example, I've laid out my artistic goals 3 months in advance. That means that for the next 3 months, I'm only focusing on anatomy and gesture/figure drawing. My daily schedule this week looks like this:


warmup

1, 2, 5 and 10 minute gesture/figure drawings

study/copy hands from Bridgeman's Constructive Anatomy book

draw 50 hands

spend about 10-15 minutes drawing hands from memory and comparing them to the references I was using earlier

work on something fun


If I have extra time, I'll work on some more anatomy studies but it depends on how busy I am with work/life. After this week is up, I'll move on to arms, then the core, then legs, head, etc, following the same setup I've made. Maybe the next 3 months, I'll move on to perspective drawing but I haven't thought that far ahead yet.


If you're confused about where to start, just pick something that you're the weakest at and start drawing that. It's a grind and you're going to be producing hundreds, if not thousands of drawings but that's the way to get better.


Like I said, if you start thinking in the long term, it gets less overwhelming. I'm gonna link some resources that really helped me out.


Books

Perspective Made Easy

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Fun With a Pencil Actually, anything by Loomis.

How to Draw Kind of a technical book but goes into really great detail about perspective


Youtube Channels

Watts Atelier Highly recommended. Watch his figure drawing videos. Also, if you can spare the cash, join his online school. It's fantastic and very structured course in drawing. Definitely look into this if you have trouble deciding what to learn next.

Proko This guy has great intro videos for figure drawing. I think he learned at Watts Atelier as well.

New Masters Academy They have a ton of great videos about everything. Definitely look into Glen Vilppu's figure drawing series. He's the god of figure drawing.

Alphonso Dunn Really great pen and ink tutorials


Sorry if I overwhelmed you (ironic, considering your original post) but I just wanted to share some stuff that's really helped me develop a schedule and get better. Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help you a fellow art student out.


TLDR: You have plenty of time in your life to get better, so make a schedule and stick to it.

It depends. A game design degree from a well-designed and well-connected course (USC and Carnegie Mellon are both well-set-up) can sometimes help, but more through the connections you'll make than the things you'll learn in the course. In general, though, I agree strongly with the people here advising you to learn a practical skill.

Someone looking to hire a junior designer (and please don't have any illusions that you'll be considered anything other than junior until you've shipped titles) will be looking at you through two lenses:

• Does this person have potential to be a good designer?
  
• Can I use this person right now for work I need done?
  For both questions to be answerable in the affirmative, you need to be able to demonstrate both that you know how to think like a designer (what choices were made to make a given game work, and why did those choices have the effect they had?), and that you know your way around a game engine. A designer who knows only how to write design docs won't be useful in the short-term, and probably won't be useful in the longer term either, because this person won't be able to prototype their work. Good design is an iterative process, and your ability to explore and respond to your work hinges on your ability to express it in the medium.
  
  Regardless of the degree you choose, my recommendation is that you pursue your own education aggressively. The game industry changes extremely fast, and your ability to teach yourself constantly is essential to your ability to keep up and stay relevant. To this end, I'd do two things:
  

1. Pick a game engine and learn it. Do the tutorials, learn how it runs, and make something worth playing in this engine. My recommendations here would be either Unity3d or Unreal. Both of these are solid choices for a few reasons: they're commonly used in the industry, so there's a high likelihood that someone on the hiring end would find your knowledge of the engine attractive, and they both do things in standard enough ways that if you learned either one, any other engine you approached would likely be structured similarly enough that you'd get what it's doing. Both of these engines allow you to get very deep into the sort of scripting designers regularly do (UnrealScript or C#). Most designers don't wind up needing C++, but it does happen on rare occasions. If you walk in the door with running software that's genuinely fun to play, you'll put yourself ahead of a huge chunk of the candidates in the field.
   
2. Learn how game designers think. There are three books I'd recommend for this, probably in this order:
   

• A Theory of Fun, by Raph Koster, as a good relatively lightweight introduction to design thinking.
  
• The Art of Game Design, by Jesse Schell - the best practical course in design thinking I've ever seen.
  
• Rules of Play, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman - a foundation for most current game design thinking.
  There are other great books out there, but these three will set you off in the right direction. As a practical way to learn to apply this thinking, I'd recommend writing notes about the games you play from the perspectives taught in these books. Learn the theory by reading about it, recognize how it's working in the games you play by writing about it (even if just for yourself), and then try to apply this thinking to the game you're designing and building in the engine you're learning.
  
  Do these things, and you'll be an impressive candidate, and well on your way to becoming a good designer. At that point, the degree you choose really comes down to the specific areas in yourself you'd like to strengthen. I've worked with designers who earned degrees in architecture, film, english literature, philosophy, computer science, experimental music, and game design. Truthfully, few people will be swayed one way or another by the particular degree - they'll want to see your work and your ability to think. Above all, listen to those people here who are telling you to learn both sides of the coin - how to think about and write about design, and how to build running software - they're absolutely right that you need both.
  

I've posted this before but I'll repost it here:

Now in terms of the question that you ask in the title - this is what I recommend:

Job Interview Prep

1. Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
   
2. Programming Interviews Exposed: Coding Your Way Through the Interview
   
3. Introduction to Algorithms
   
4. The Algorithm Design Manual
   
5. Effective Java
   
6. Concurrent Programming in Java™: Design Principles and Pattern
   
7. Modern Operating Systems
   
8. Programming Pearls
   
9. Discrete Mathematics for Computer Scientists
   
   

   Junior Software Engineer Reading List
   

   
   

   Read This First
   

   
   

10. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
    
    

    Fundementals
    

    
    

11. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
    
12. Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
    
13. Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach
    
14. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
    
15. Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software
    
16. Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing
    
17. Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application
    
    

    Understanding Professional Software Environments
    

    
    

18. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game
    
19. Software Project Survival Guide
    
20. The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
    
21. Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams
    
22. Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules
    
23. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

24. Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
    
25. Against Method
    
26. The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
    
    

    History
    

    
    

27. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
    
28. Computing Calamities: Lessons Learned from Products, Projects, and Companies That Failed
    
29. The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management
    
    

    Mid Level Software Engineer Reading List
    

    
    

    Read This First
    

    
    

30. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth
    
    

    Fundementals
    

    
    

31. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
    
32. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
    
33. Solid Code
    
34. Code Craft: The Practice of Writing Excellent Code
    
35. Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative
    
36. Writing Solid Code
    
    

    Software Design
    

    
    

37. Head First Design Patterns: A Brain-Friendly Guide
    
38. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
    
39. Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
    
40. Domain-Driven Design Distilled
    
41. Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
    
42. Design Patterns in C# - Even though this is specific to C# the pattern can be used in any OO language.
    
43. Refactoring to Patterns
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

44. Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems
    
45. Software Factories: Assembling Applications with Patterns, Models, Frameworks, and Tools
    
46. NoEstimates: How To Measure Project Progress Without Estimating
    
47. Object-Oriented Software Construction
    
48. The Art of Software Testing
    
49. Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software
    
50. Working Effectively with Legacy Code
    
51. Test Driven Development: By Example
    
    

    Databases
    

    
    

52. Database System Concepts
    
53. Database Management Systems
    
54. Foundation for Object / Relational Databases: The Third Manifesto
    
55. Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design
    
56. Data Access Patterns: Database Interactions in Object-Oriented Applications
    
    

    User Experience
    

    
    

57. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
    
58. The Design of Everyday Things
    
59. Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
    
60. User Interface Design for Programmers
    
61. GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

62. The Productive Programmer
    
63. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
64. Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming
    
65. Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering
    
    

    History
    

    
    

66. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software
    
67. New Turning Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science
    
68. Hacker's Delight
    
69. The Alchemist
    
70. Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages
    
71. The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    In spite of the fact that many of these won't apply to your specific job I still recommend reading them for the insight, they'll give you into programming language and technology design.
    
    

72. Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC
    
73. Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets
    
74. Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming
    
75. The C++ Programming Language
    
76. Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    
77. More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    
78. More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#
    
79. CLR via C#
    
80. Mr. Bunny's Big Cup o' Java
    
81. Thinking in Java
    
82. JUnit in Action
    
83. Functional Programming in Scala
    
84. The Art of Prolog: Advanced Programming Techniques
    
85. The Craft of Prolog
    
86. Programming Perl: Unmatched Power for Text Processing and Scripting
    
87. Dive into Python 3
    
88. why's (poignant) guide to Ruby

There's a ton of advice I could give you - and I'll try to throw a bunch of it at you - but keep in mind I've barely begun this process myself. This is what I can tell you based on what I've observed, take it as you will.

My first piece of advice is to do the thing you said you never do. Put them down to paper. These little scenes and random thoughts you have swimming through your head are exactly where "we all find ideas to start from." It could be a simple scene in the middle of a larger story, it could be the very last words you want to someone to hear. Regardless of what it is, put it down on paper. I always carry a small moleskin notebook with me and have gotten into the habit of just jotting down something whenever it goes through my head. When you're used to just thinking of things, it's a little jarring at first to stop and write it down, but believe me - it will be worth it. This is the fountain of ideas you're looking for.

Arguably the most important thing I can tell you, is to write. Don't worry about whether it's formatted right, if you've structured your characters enough, or if you've done a good outline. Write. Whenever, wherever, as much as you can. You're only going to get better at writing by writing.

That being said, worry about format, structure, and outlines. And what I mean by that, is look back on the work you did, figure out where you could have done better and the next time try to do that. The first thing I ever wrote, I did without thinking about my characters, what they really meant, their back story, the environment they lived in, and said to hell with an outline. After it was finished, I knew for my next project that this had to change.

Consume the media you want to create. Not only should you actively read comics, you should try to consume anything that gives you insight to the business and how other people work. This is a list of books I bought and think have been extremely helpful. They give insight into the importance of creating characters, environments, etc before you even begin a script. I've listed them in the order I personally liked from best to still pretty damn good

• Writing Comics & Graphic Novels by Peter David
  
• Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative by Will Eisner
  
• Writing for Comics by Alan Moore
  
• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
  
• Making Comics by Scott McCloud
  
• Panel One: Comic Book Scripts by Top Writers by various
  
  The last one is great because you get to see the various script styles of in-the-business writers. For comics, I also actively listen to these podcasts:
  
  
• The Process - great podcast centered directly on writing for comics. I honestly cannot recommend this enough, and have yet to find one I like better than this.
  
• Nerdist Writers Panel - while this isn't for comics, it gives you great insight on writing in general. It's geared for TV, which I think translates to comics relatively well (in some respects).
  
  In addition to all that, I follow /r/writing and try to stay active on this subreddit. We've done a few writing prompts, which I think are great ways to get you writing - though I wish more people would take part.
  
  JoshLees has compiled a larger list of resources, definitely take a look at that. The above listed things are what I consume personally.
  
  That's all I have for now, and the community can feel free to correct me or add to it, but other than that good luck!

1. Depending on where you live, you might be able to get through the early stages of your drumming life without a kit (acoustic or otherwise) at all. Try and see if there is any place near you where you can rent a kit for an hour. If you live in a moderately-sized city this shouldn't be hard.
   
   If you can find a place, this is a great option because it is a low cost, low risk (like you said, what if you learn drums aren't for you and lose motivation - you don't want to be stuck with a bunch of expensive drum stuff) way to play on a decent kit. This is what I did for a long time before buying my first kit.
   
   If you can't find a place or if you're insistent on buying you're own, I would look for a cheap used starter kit (high hats, snare drum, bass drum, maybe one tom, and a cymbal - should be able to get a decent kit for <$200) on craigslist or your local music store. I would not recommend a new kit, those will be significantly more expensive and you won't really even know what you're looking for in a kit anyway. I'm not personally a fan of electronic kits, but if you want to, try one out at a music store and if you'd like to learn drums that way, by all means do so.
   
   
2. Rudiments! Rudiments! Rudiments!. The links on the sidebar should help you out too. Also, there are a few big books that all drummers have practiced with, the most important of which is probably Stick Control. There are other ones too but get this. Practice with it. It won't be the most exciting thing you do at your kit, but it will make you a lot, lot better. Trust me. (You don't actually need a kit to practice, buy a practice pad!)
   
   Even with all this, I would still recommend that you get a couple of lessons. Even if it's just 1 or 2 lessons, it will really help you a lot to have someone to help you get started. The first time you sit down at the kit will be the hardest, and having someone to talk to and converse with will do wonders. If you can't get lessons, it will be harder but certainly not impossible. Remember that it's only going to get easier as you play more, so don't get discouraged.
   
   
3. Sometimes it can get really frustrating, I'm not going to lie. Sometimes your brain tells your hands or feet to do something and for some unknown reason, your limbs don't comply. This happens a lot at the beginning and you will get better as long as you practice, even if it doesn't feel like you're getting better. Honestly, all those rudiments and books I mentioned above are great, and will help you get good fast, but for God's sake just sit down and play. Play to a song you like, play random noises, improvise, try to compose a song. Whatever. Just play. If drumming is for you you should be having fun by now. You should never get too frustrated because you should be having a lot of fun while playing. So that's that.

Dude thanks for the proverb but I asked for book titles. I understand that I need to take more pictures, that wasn't even remotely in question. As an athlete I don't think reading a book on rugby tackling is going to make me the perfect tackler but it'll sure as hell help with the basics and knowing what to look for.

Similarly, if I know little to nothing about exposure, composition, and the basics of photography, continuing to take bad pictures will not help me as much as if I had actually read into these concepts and covered the fundamentals as to what I should be doing/prioritizing when taking a picture.

You don't go and just solve mathematical problems. You learn HOW to solve them (or at least build up a toolbox) then you go and practice solving them and using your tools until you've mastered that process.

And yes, your photography will improve through taking pictures, but to say that it will ONLY get better through photography? That's just incorrect. Reading a manual? I'll learn how to use my gear better. Better knowledge of gear? Better pictures. Knowing how exposure works? I'll know to crank up my shutter speed and change my aperture before I just resort to setting my ISO at 6400 and taking bright enough yet terribly grainy pictures. Knowing how to frame a picture or where to place the subject? That will make my photography more pleasing to the eye.

Going and taking a bunch of pictures will not inevitably make my picture quality as great as if I actually studied photography.

You don't tell someone who makes finger paintings to just keep painting. You show them what great art looks like, and maybe even teach them the basics. You don't say "eh, maybe if you do a couple thousand paintings you'll learn how to paint a beautiful landscape."

Just leave the cookie cutter answers that everyone gives when they don't want to be helpful in your head, and actually answer a question. If you have no answer, keep it to yourself.

The pretentious, non-helpful answers in this sub need to stop. Everybody knows that they need to take more pictures to get better. Help people when they ask questions.

OP- if you're looking for books I decided to look some up:

Understanding Exposure

The Photographer's Eye

These are both seen as great introduction books for beginners. From what I've read, the first will basically help you figure out what type of lighting and exposure settings you would want to get your desired look for a given scenario, whereas the second book will help you develop your creative abilities and understanding what makes a good picture.

Those might help out your photography a teeny bit, and you won't have to take a picture!

I'm in RTF, and I've taken both classes the department offers in 2D animation, so hopefully I can help you out.

The first class, Intro to 2D animation, is really simple. You begin with assignments like some drawing exercises to get you acquainted with 1, 2, and 3 point perspective, making a character sheet, animating a single second in Flash, [animating a bouncing ball] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoR2k3B0ifk), [animating a flour sack] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGPtMvIsjMY) (both of these are really standard animation exercises that basically everybody has to do when learning 2D animation). From there you work up to doing a walk cycle, doing lip sync in Flash, and then for your final project you begin with an animatic, and work from there up to a whole minute of conversational video between two characters.

Advanced 2D Animation is meant to be a direct continuation of the content from the Intro class, but I'd say this class is split into two parts: production readiness and the final project. "Production readiness" is my name for it, but basically the professor, Lance Myers, has you do certain assignments in order to acquaint you with the roles different people would have in a normal 2D animation production pipeline. For example, you do key animation, cleanup, assistant animation, and ink & paint. You also learn to read animation charts, and do a basic exercise where you make a character interact with a heavy object. Once you get into the final project portion, it's kind of the process you'd go through if you went to pitch an original short and develop it through production. You begin with a pitch document, with concept sketches, character designs, and the plot you'll include in your final short. From there you make an animatic, and then you'll proceed onto the final short. These are about 1-2 minutes in length, and can vary greatly in quality. With the pitch document, the animatic, and when working on your final project, you'll have the opportunity to get Lance's and your class mates' input on your stuff because you can share as much or as little with the class as you want.

They're good classes, but I'm a bit overambitious with my final projects, and this usually comes back to bite me in the end.

Now, what I don't like about the 2D classes is that you're taught Flash exclusively. In any creative discipline, I like to know what the cutting edge is, and I can tell you that Flash is not it. In Lance's own words, Flash has barely changed in ten years (he sticks with an older version that's basically identical to Adobe Animate CC), and in my research, I haven't run across a single studio using Flash/Animate in large scale 2D animation production in a long time. ToonBoom Harmony is basically the standard for 2D animation software now, and in Europe a number of studios use a piece of software called TVPaint. After Effects is really popular for motion graphics, and likewise DragonFrame is a helpful piece of software to know if you want to do stop-motion. There was one day when Ben Bays, another RTF professor, came and introduced us to DragonFrame, but by and large, we still stick with Flash. I know it might be a question of departmental resources, but I wish we could get our hands on some other software so we could use what professionals are actually using.

Also, I wish we had a chance to do real, traditional, hand-drawn animation on paper. Throughout both courses, all the animation we did was in software, and the only time someone did hand-drawn was because they decided to do it for a portion of their final short. It would have been a cool thing for us all to at least try.

On the whole, though, I think I've got a solid understanding of basically every aspect of 2D animation because of my time in these courses.

I'd REALLY recommend picking up [The Animator's Survival Kit] (https://www.amazon.com/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284), which serves as the optional textbook for both courses. It's not required, but this really helped me in my animation, both in 2D and in the 3D stuff I'm doing now. It's written by Richard Williams, who is basically the god of 2D animation, who gifted the world with this book so that they could become enlightened (or at least semi-enlightened) animators like him.

Also, another thing to consider is that some of my classmates started the Animators Club this semester, which is a student org devoted just to learning animation and sharing it with one another. They've had two meetings so far, but I'd say definitely look into it. Some of their meetings will even cover basic techniques and exercises for someone trying to get into animation.

Also, if you felt so inclined, you can access the course website for my Intro course [here] (http://intro2danimationfall2016.blogspot.com). It's got all the lectures up there for you to view if you wanted.

I hope this helps. If you want to talk about it more either online or in person just PM me. Cheers!

It might be slightly shameless but you're at least being very upfront and honest about your project. I would also say you are realistic in your funding goal. It might be best to make it clear next time that you're the developer when you post these things as Reddit tends to be a place that isn't too thrilled about unclear self-promotion.

I would say a working demo of the game would be best but all things considered it doesn't sound like you'll really have one relatively soon. I would say a video of yourself that's maybe accompanied by some 3D renders of assets you've made for the game and an explanation of your overall design would be good.

But most of all I would dial down your expectations. It sounds like you have a lot to learn in this project and I mean it in the nicest way when I say 20 karts, 10 characters, and 15 tracks is probably more than you'll be able to handle. I would aim for a much smaller and more realistic goal - perhaps just 3 of each for now. Remember that creating all of those things will involve not just modeling and animating them but also balancing them out so they are all fun to play with. Really you don't need that much if your game is fun. Check out "Lethal League" as a good example of how you can make a really great game with very little. There's only a small selection of characters but they worked to make them distinct and fun to play!

There's also a book I definitely recommend to you that you will probably find very useful in planning out your game and figuring out the steps you need to take:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses will teach you a lot about the process of actually making and designing a game from scratch. In fact I may recommend holding off on your indiegogo campaign until you've read at least a good portion of this book. I think it will help you clarify your idea to yourself which will in turn make it easier to clarify to potential backers.

When you say "2D rpg" we all have a different view on what you might mean. You probably mean numbers in a single player game, but the thing is, the more detail you give, the better. Are there any items? Is the amount of items nearly infinite, do you pick some prefixes, suffixes like in Diablo? Are there classes in your game? Do they have a unique purpose, different play-style? I'll try not to focus on multiplayer, because it's highly improbable that it is in your game. And even if we know nothing about your game.. There are still a lot of useful tricks and rules about balance.

 

Numerical relationships

Firstly, math, excel, custom tools.

Most things are numbers. The player has 5 health, is that a lot? No idea. Enemies might deal 500 damage, maybe they deal 1 damage. This leads to NUMERICAL RELATIONSHIPS. How does one stat work with others? Make diagrams showing enemy damage vs player health and you'll see how many hits the player can take in a quick succession in some part of your game.

There are a lot of numerical relationships. Linear, Identity, Triangular, Polynomial, Exponential, Logarithmic. Try to figure out what works best. You can see a lot of information scanning through diagrams in the Reverse Design: Diablo 2, make sure to check out the other pages, because I just gave a link to the beginning. Also check out Ian Schreiber's GDC talk A Course About Game Balance.

 

Expected Values

Use expected values, they are a very powerful balancing tool.

Lets say we have some kind of board game and the players pick cards from one deck of cards.

Player A picks a card:

You gain 2 gold.

Player B picks a card:

If you have at least 2 buildings, gain 3 gold. Otherwise gain 1 gold.

Oh well, Player B didn't have 2 buildings, he got only 1 gold. Did he get a worse card? Maybe yes, maybe no. How do you even treat calculate things like this? Well.. If the players played this game 100000 times in a row, how often would one card be better than the other? Or.. How often does a player have at least 2 buildings? Maybe players have 2 buildings about 70% of the time, which means that on average, in 70% cases that player gets 3 gold and in 30% cases players get 1 gold. Of course, if you pick a SPECIFIC case, you get 3 or 1, but hopefully you get the point.

Expected value of card1:

100% 2 = 2 [gold]*

Expected value of vard2:

70% 3 + 30% 1 = 2.4 [gold]

Hey, maybe card2 isn't that bad after all? It actually is better than card1!

Of course there are many other relationships, maybe gold is only good at the beginning of the game and worthless later, check out how the expected value changes over time, in turn 1, turn 2, or after 10 minutes of play and so on. Maybe on your turn the chance to have 2+ buildings is 0% or only 10%, but it gets higher over time.

 

Treating everything like numbers

Now that you know expected values, just treat everything like a number! Make sure that all players feel that the game is fair. In single player games, make sure that all characters have same power level. One way to do it is to assign a value to each attribute or ability and make sure that it adds up to the same number for all characters.

Base Value | Health | Damage | MoveSpeed

--------|:--------:|---------:|---------:
Low | 1| 2 | 2
Medium | 3 | 3 | 3
High | 4| 5 | 4

Then look at the starting values of your classes and check if they same the same or similar total power.

Class | Health | Damage | MoveSpeed | Total

--------|:--------:|---------:|---------:|---------:
Warrior | High (4) | Low (2) | Low (2) | 8
Archer | Medium (3) | Medium (3) | Medium (3) | 9
Mage | Low (1) | High (5) | Low (2) | 8

From these made up stats, it looks like the archer is the best character. Does playtesting support this? Maybe I got the table wrong, it needs a lot of iterations to get it right.

 

Randomness
You might want to add some randomness (which means probability, which means expected value again). When people win, they will think they are good. When they lose, they can always blame it on bad luck. This is a very powerful feeling that works for a lot of casual players. Hearthstone might be a good example, if not a bit too extreme.

 

Rock Paper Scissors
You can also use rock-paper-scissors mechanics. Card games have it, strategy games have it. The most common example is archers beat pikeman, pikeman beat cavalry, cavalry beats archers. Just don't make it too obvious or straightforward, just enough to prevent players from going full-on one thing. For example, look at armor and damage types in Warcraft 3, you can't just go and produce the same unit all the time.

 

Diminishing returns
"is the decrease in the marginal (incremental) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is incrementally increased, while the amounts of all other factors of production stay constant", which in RPGs it can mean that the first 100 points in strength increase your damage by 5 per point, but above 100 strength they only increase it by 3 per point. Sure, the math is usually more complex, just an example. Even Blizzard uses this in Diablo 2 and 3.

 

Choices and dominant strategies
Giving players a lot of options is generally good, but if goals can be achieved in many ways it can lead to dominant strategies. Even if you give 5 options (you can shoot an enemy, shoot a chandelier to make it drop on enemies, sneak past them, use dialogue to avoid fights) players might pick the "best" one, even if it is boring. This is a kind of a balance problem. Make sure nothing is the best in every case, but make sure the player doesn't have to change weapons every 10 seconds in order to be efficient or to progress.

 

Proper level of challenge
When you make it too hard, people will get frustrated.
When you make it too easy, people will get bored.
In addition to that, you will have different types of players and they will get better over time. This is one reason why you need to know your target audience, know what your average player will be and how much time are they realistically willing to play your game.

 

The problem here is that the players will get better over time and you need to keep them challenged. You can have a game with waves, where the game gets harder with every wave, thus increasing difficulty all the time. This leads to a problem of boring early waves, maybe give pro players an option to skip the early parts of your game so they don't get bored and just quit the game. You can have difficulty levels and just let the player pick. It might seem I'm getting off topic here, but "too easy" and "too hard" are balance problems as well and you need to keep that "just right" level all the time.

 

Sources
- GDC - A Course About Game Balance
- Art of Game Design - A book of lenses
- And more.

Perspective is critically important, and in my eyes, the number one area of focus, if you had to pick. However, I would tie learning perspective with a re-evaluation of basic shapes and start thinking about structure and form. Drawing basic shapes in space allows you to construct and build anything you can imagine, realistically and even a cartoon. It's the first thing that people notice is wrong about an image including non-artists, even when they can't place their finger on why it's wrong. Everyone with functioning eyes have great vision. You could say that we are all black belts at seeing things, because it is one of our senses since our birth, and the one that we are always using. So when you're drawing and painting, you are a visual magician. You're using these fundamental tools to fool these people into believing that an image on paper is as deceiving as reality. It's all an illusion. You cannot avoid the importance of perspective. If you aren't practicing it, no cheap tricks will be able to deceive a person into believing what you created.

You learn as early as elementary school about the 2D shapes. The square, the circle and the triangle. You know about their 3D counterparts, the cube, as well as a sphere, cone and a cylinder. In geometry everything is perfectly symmetrical and easy to solve. But when you step out into reality, everything is thrown into disarray, all of these shapes are merged together mechanically and organically, and on top of that, your vision is deceiving you. Very advanced forms of mathematics were created to solve those problems accurately, but we are not interested in that. You'll also realize this when you come across proportion diagrams, and why it does nothing when you are drawing from the model. You will also need to understand what circles look like in perspective[ellipses.] Do you know how to draw an ellipse properly? Do you see what happens to these shapes in space? Learn to draw these basic shapes correctly in space, it requires knowledge of perspective. Would it help you to think of a basic game like Snake? Imagine what it would be like to play that game in 3D. Although we aren't playing a game, we are just observing reality and interpreting it in 2D, that's where perspective falls in. You can use perspective construction thankfully. You can simplify areas into basic shapes. You can measure and draw pipes and cubes, aligning them to their current vanishing points. Until you're finally building whatever you need for your own worlds.

The other fundamentals are critically important as well. But drawing in space with perspective is what you need for your drawings to look structurally correct. Yes, it can be a complex hurdle. It's both easy to understand and difficult to wrap our eyes and brain around. Thankfully there are dozens of great free resources available, and no threat of them going away, any time soon. If you have great reading comprehension, there is a free resource that pretty much covers every single thing you would ever ask about perspective. Otherwise many instructors have done a great job simplifying what you need to understand for your own work. Here are links to two great resources that have emerged more recently.

Mow some lawns, shovel snow, baby sit, beg for money, sell a game, buy these.

• $12 - Marshall's 1994 Perspective Video Series
  
  
• $20-$40 - Scott Robertson Book
  
  And some nice free ones.
  
  
• Perspective 101: conceptart resource
  
  
• CtrlPaint Video: Constructive Form
  
  
• ProkoTV Video: The Basic Elements - This one will explain the other important areas of focus
  
  
• ProkoTV Video: Structure
  
  
• ProkoTV Video: How to Shade a Drawing
  
  
• Handprint - Advanced article on perspective principles
  
  
• Fox Orion DeviantArt Tutorial
  
  There's dozens of others, but that'll take all day. These will get you started. Good luck OP.
  
  

Boy, I disagree strongly with most of these comments.
You go write a script every four weeks, and more power to you.

TL;DR: Learn to write fast, here are tools and best practices.

I encourage you to pursue your goal to become more prolific and write a feature every four weeks. That's 90 pages a month, which is slower per page than a TV writer gets to write an hour-long drama.

Learning to write quickly and productively actually improves your writing. Producing more work, with the emphasis on finishing, rather than quality, ultimately produces better work in the long run. This is true of all art. Read this quote from the book *Art & Fear:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot -- albeit a perfect one -- to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes -- the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

source

Do not listen to the naysayers. Learning to write prolifically will improve the qaulity of your writing, and give you a competitive advantage over other writers. You will get more specs out per year, you will hand in more rewrite drafts. You will be attractive for production rewrites, and you will be able to perform under tight TV deadlines.

Most writers don't have the grit to pursue the path you have chosen. Be proud and write like mad.

>Are there any tips on how to be more prolific as a screenwriter?

Sure - here are my suggestions:

Set Up A System To Capture And Review Your Ideas. Every writer gets a ton of ideas when they are away from the keyboard. Prolific writers set up a system to capture those ideas and review them later. The method you use isn't as important as choosing a method that you will use all the time, and you will review later to make use of the ideas. For example, I have two apps on my iPhone: one is DropVox, which records voice memos to DropBox. The other is a notetaking app in case I don't feel like dictating. I also keep a pad and pen handy in case my phone has a problem. By my bedside as well. Waterproof notepad in the shower.

If capturing your ideas and reviewing them is a new idea, consider looking into Getting Things Done. (no link because I want to stay on topic.)

Buy Scrivener And Learn How To Use It. Scrivener is a $50 wordprocessor that will make it much easier for you to write prolifically. It's designed to help organize your thoughts and turn out pages faster. It has built-in screenplay formatting, index cards and more.

Scrivener can improve your productivity quite a lot. You do need to spend the time to learn how they have laid out the controls. Once you get used to it, you will love it. Look at the pro screenwriters and book authors who endorse it on the website.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, I strongly recommend buying the $20 iOS version as well. The iOS and desktop versions talk to each other over sync. You can jot something on your iPhone, and it appears in your desktop project automagically. I may start using Scrivener iOS as my note capture software.

Learn A Method To Break The Story Rapidly. Coming up with your outline, known as "breaking the story" is the hardest part of writing. Writing is easy and fun; figuring out the story is the hard part. Writers like Jim Cameron, JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon all talk about how tough it is to break the story. You need a method to go from idea to outline in the most efficient way. To start with, I recommend The Writer's Journeyand Save The Cat. These two books give you a quick start on structure that covers 75% of commercial Hollywood films.

Ignore the redditors who will squawk about these books. Use the books to break your story faster and write more scripts. The redditors will still be looking for inspiration when you are signing your union card.

Build Your Story Around A Theme. I recommend reading this book for a useful approach to theme. It's really about making a philosophical argument, which is really the purpose behind storytelling. Audiences like stories that are held together by a philosophical point of view.

More importantly, using the method in that book will allow you to structure your story faster and with more emotional resonance. Once you understand your philosophical argument, you can rapidly build other subplots that explore it.

Build Your Characters From Contradictions. Instead of writing lengthy character biographies, describe them with a broad, bold stroke, and then add one or two major contradictions. Tony Soprano is a tough, ruthless criminal who it tender to his family, and he's seeing a psychiatrist for anxiety attacks. Hannibal Lecter is a cannibalistic serial killer who is also a genius, and artist and a wine connoisseur.

Make sure to figure out how the character reconciles their contradictions internally. (Tony Soprano never thinks he's a bad guy, even when murdering people -- they had it coming.) Also, try to figure out how to turn their contradictions into a dilemma; a choice they don't want to make. Like choosing between his family and his crime business.

Outline Your Scenes Before Writing Them. This is important. Before you write a scene, figure out why it needs to be in the script, which character's intention is driving the scene, what forces resist them, how it resolves, and plot out the major beats of the scene. Go over the outline a few times and make tweaks and corrections. Make sure the shape of the scene is right before you start writing it. This single technique will speed up your daily productivity dramatically.

If You Feel Resistance, Write The Twitter Version. If you outline the scene, start writing it, and still feel resistance, try rewriting each beat of the scene outline as though it were a tweet. You have 140 characters to write the first beat, and so on. You'll end up with a brief sketch of the scene that's a little more than a rearticulation of the outline. From there, you can rewrite it over and over, fleshing it out a little more each time. The Twitter Version gets you to keep writing and continue making progress.

Capture Notes While Writing. You'll come up with all kinds of ideas while writing a scene. Many ideas will be about other scenes or even other scripts. Have a mechnism to jot down those ideas and then forget about them while you go back to writing the scene. Keep your eye on the ball; don't get distracted.

Write The Ending First After you know the story, write a rough draft of the last 10 pages or so of the script. Know where you're going. Realize that you will be rewriting the ending, this is just to plant a flag at the ending destination.

Make A Chart And Make Your Quota. Make a wall chart, get a calendar, use an app -- keep track of your daily page count. Make it visible, to remind you how you're doing. Two pages a day is doable. Five if you're disciplined. Ten if you're a monster. I'd say start at two and see what's comfortable for your schedule and personality. Mark off every day with your page count. Don't try to make up for short days or missed days. Just write you quota the next day. Feeling you're "in debt" on your page count can grind you down. You job is just to make your quota every day.

Remember The Real Purpose Of Your Job. Your job is not to write a great draft. Your job is to get a draft done, so you can improve it later. Your drafts can get great by draft 10 or draft 20. Just worry about getting them down on paper.

Have Fun.** Part of the joy of writing prolifically is that you don't need to worry about being perfect. Concentrate on being productive. Have fun, don't be too hard on yourself, and remember that you'll fix it in the next rewrite.

Good luck, write fast, and don't expect to be any good until you've written 1000 pages.

I'm assuming this is a be-all, do-all type of room that includes tracking and mixing. I'm going to give pointers based on a "perfect world" scenario. It's up to you to make the necessary compromises.

1. Your monitor position is not great for mixing or tracking; for a few reasons. You got the angles right for the ideal sweet spot, but the monitors are close to the front wall boundary. The ideal placement is somewhere around a third of the room length away from the nearest boundary (9' room length = monitors at ~3' from front wall). Setting monitors on top of a desk is also not ideal because desks will most likely move with the speakers, thus effecting bass response. Desks also cause bad early reflections, and monitors on a two-tier desk will be sitting approximately half way between the floor and ceiling (thus breaking our 2/3 rule again). My suggestion would be to mount the speakers on heavy duty brackets screwed directly into the wall studs 2/3 of the way up the wall above you, pointed down. You will be able to get a wider sound field without sacrificing floor space due to the geometry, avoid reflections, and get better bass response because they will be coupled to the highest amount of mass possible (wall studs + slab). This was my personal solution at home and I have pristine stereo imaging and excellent bass response as a result. This obviously isn't an easy option for most consumer monitors though because not all of them have mounts. The alternative option (although pretty weak) is to at least use Auralex Mopads between the monitors and the desk to keep the two from coupling. I've used them and you will hear an immediate difference. Acoustics are all about mass, and you either want as much mass as possible keeping monitors still or as little as possible to let them move. Two schools of thought, both of which have applications, but setting them right on top of a wooden desk is the worst of both worlds.
   
   
2. It looks like you have bass traps in the corners, which is good. Ideally these should be 4" thick Owens corning 705 or a mineral wool of similar density. Yes, you can stack two 2" thick sheets together to get the same result as long as you don't use the stuff with the aluminum on the outside. 705 is better than 703 for bass traps because of the density. 703 is good for mid frequencies, so you can save a buck and get some of that for the door panels, but I'd go with 705 anyway because bass will go through the panel and then through the door (assuming it's a lightweight interior door) into the hall, acting as another bass trap. Do not pack pink stuff behind the corner panels. It's not worth it and it kills some of the bass trapping.
   
   
3. The panel above the piano will not be doing much. A more effective placement for that panel would be to use 4" of 705 mounted parallel to the wall but with air space of 2+ inches between them. This will trap lows down to ~50 or 60hz, mids, and highs. Mounting the panels directly against the wall will not allow them to absorb low end. The airspace is necessary to stretch down to deep low absorption. Mount as many of these types of panel as possible in this sized room for the flattest bass response. Expect to have some pretty bad modes below 80hz without more bass trapping. Ideally you'd cover as much wall and corner as possible.
   
   
4. Lots of insulation around a room will make it sound pretty dead in the highs, which make be to your liking. you may be happier though by taping crate paper or grocery bags to the faces of your wall panels. This will reflect the highest highs, keeping the room sounding a bit less claustrophobic. It's cheap and effective.
   
   
5. I don't see any ceilling treatment or mention of ceiling height. I'd install (at the very least) a 4" thick cloud above the drum kit and above mix position to kill early reflections. Ideally you would cover the upper corners where the ceiling meets the wall with 4" bass traps as well. This will greatly improve clarity. You can never have enough bass trapping in a room.
   
   
6. If that's a closet next to the drums, I'd fill it with bales of pink stuff as an additional bass trap (yes, just leave them packaged and stack them up).
   
   If you're interested in where I got my information, I basically just followed any advice I could find from Ethan Winer, but a lot of it didn't make sense until I built my studio and ran some of my own calculations using this porous absorber calculator. I found it very interesting that a really thick layer of the pink insulation works way better than the dense fiberglass stuff at controlling low end for cheap. The reason people like the dense stuff so much is simply because it saves space, but it's actually pretty ineffective compared to say, 8" of pink stuff.
   
   If you plan on mixing in this room I would highly suggest the books Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio and Home Recording Studio: Build It Like the Pros, as they both go over small, existing room treatments in great detail.
   
   Good luck with your room.
   
   Quick edit: Don't be tempted to put your monitors on their sides just to look cool. If they have tweeters then they should be standing upright to give the best imaging.

I seem to get asked this a lot, but here is my list, posted here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/comments/1uq58s/good_graphic_design_books_for_a_beginner/ceklj3y



> These are all books that I absolutly love, and bought for either personal use or to accompany different courses while I was getting my BFA in GD. I have seen some of them both are brick and mortar book stores, and college book stores. If you get a chance to see them in person before buying, leaf through them to get a feel.
>
> Megg's History of Graphic Design, absolutely essential to understanding where graphic design comes from historically. IMO the best GD history book on the market, at least the most encompassing. One of my favorites, was very helpful writing different papers and researching historical styles.
>
> Graphic Design School. Another great book, focuses more on design process and stuff like that. This one more walks you though being a designer. Gives tutorials on different things too, which is useful.
>
> Graphic Design Referenced is a really great book that is a bit of a hybrid. This book describes a lot of design terms, styles, and general knowledge while referring to historical and modern examples.
>
> Those three for me are really essential books for new graphic designers, I learned more from those three than I can express. Below are a few more books I really like, but might be a bit more advanced than someone just getting started might want.
>
> Another book I have used a lot, and almost included with those three is above. Thinking with Type. Really great intro into typography.
>
> More advanced even.
>
> How to be a Graphic Designer without Losing Your Soul
>
> A Graphic Design Student's Guide to Freelance
>
> Hope this helps!
>

Keep in mind this is just a starting point. There are tons upon tons of inspiration books out there for graphic design stuff, not to mention educational books on all sorts of specialties. I love graphic design books, the hard physical copy of them. When I'm stuck on a project I like to flip through them, read a bit, and then revisit my work again.

Here are the books currently in my amazon wishlist, so I can't vouch for them, but I do plan on eventually owning them.

Wish List:

• Graphic Design Solutions
  
• Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills
  
• 100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design
  
• Graphic Design Thinking
  
• Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don't teach you in design school, but should
  
• Making and Breaking the Grid

Hey cool. It’s vocal thread day. My time to shine! Kidding. I’m an amateur like most folks here. I’ve only been making tunes for about a year and half or so. But I see myself as a singer, primarily, a bad one, but still a singer. I answered something similar in a different thread but in general you can do vocals/melody/lyrics a couple of ways. The first way is to write some poetry then attempt to come up with a melody that fits it. If you’re good at keeping a melody in your head or written down, you could write lyrics, make a vocal melody and then flesh out the rest of the song. It’s like making skin for a person then making the muscle and skeleton afterward.

The second and most common way, as prescribed by Maynard from Tool, is to make your tune first. Build the skeleton and muscle first, then custom fit the skin over top. Maynard on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast talks about how he needs a finished, done track before he can do melody and then lyrics. He says he needs a stable foundation before building a room (the melody) and decorating it (the lyrics). He mentions that every time he has tried to cram some of his poetry into a track it has failed his standards.

After a little experience at the craft, I can corroborate what he says. It’s so much easier to put everything together first. When you’re constructing music though, if you want to sing on it, pre-plan your sections. Here is verse. Here is chorus. Then a bridge. Then verse 2, and two more choruses. Any structure you like, really. That’s just an example. You have to change the song for these parts so your singer or you know when to start. If you’re exceptionally good at counting (I am not, since I’m rhythm deaf, I said I was bad) you could do those parts on top of an unchanging foundation, I.e, the track never changes. You can change the drum pattern, the chord progression, something to help block out parts and make your song interesting.

Once you have that skeleton and muscle mapped out you can put the skin on your song. My best tracks have all been from that place.

Good luck my friend. Welcome to music creation. It’s pretty great.

Bonus help:
This is a fantastic book I highly recommend. You can be a know nothing and this book will guide you well.

https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Computer-Musicians-Michael-Hewitt/dp/1598635034

Hey, I'm a CG Lighting artist by trade, I'll let you know some good resources that have helped me.

As a lighter, your goal is things things, Setting the mood/atmosphere, Shaping (making sure you can make out forms of the scene), and Leading the eye (I feel like there is a fourth, but I can't think of it this morning lol)

Some good books to read:

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

Light for Visual Artists (hard book to find, but worth finding a copy)

Digital Lighting and Rendering(new edition coming out soon)

Great resources to start and help train your eye, studying films is the next step. Picking apart scenes to understand how and why they lit the scene the way they did, studying photography is a great place to look as well.

Also if you can afford it, TD-U has a fantastic online course from a couple of great instructors to help you on your way of understanding CG Lighting. If you can afford the class it will be a great place to start. I took the class last year and it was an AMAZING resource, I didn't know anything beyond the technical understanding of lighting, this course really helped me understand the artistic side of lighting. The instructors are great and very helpful.

anyways, hope that helps, if you have any questions feel free to message me.

Reeves is crap paint. Try using it up as a paint you sketch with rather than finishing a whole piece with it. The reason why economy (or student) quality paints such as Reeves are not so great (even for beginners) is because if you try to do any sort of color mixing with them, you end up with mud. Reason why is because the pigment to medium ratio is poor (less pigment and more fillers/mediums in the tube than a more pricey brand). I teach art classes to beginners and I am now requiring that they purchase artist-grade acrylics, oils or watercolours for class. Here's a bit of a shopping list for you... obtain the following: Golden-brand paint in these colours: Hansa Yellow Opaque, Quinacridone Magenta, Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) or Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber or Burnt Sienna, Zinc White and Titanium White. Also, pick up some Golden Acrylic Glazing Medium (Gloss) or Retarder Medium to mix into your colours instead of adding water. Adding water to acrylic polymer emulsion paints breaks down the paint, therefore resulting in a less saturated, washed-out or "dull" surface. You can mix water with watercolour paints, but try using acrylic mediums such as the glazing medium instead of water. The paints I mentioned and the medium will run you about $60-$70 depending on where you live (the stuff is cheaper in the USA). If you have any questions at all about art materials, please message me and I will answer your questions. I've worked in art supplies for a some years now and have extensive product knowledge about the stuff.

As far as composition goes, I get my students to use their own photographs only. The reason is because if you take photos off the net (even though you are giving your painting away this time around), the composition has already been solved for you, so you aren't learning much when it comes to that. Use your own photos and crop them using a viewfinder window to obtain a composition for your work. Oh, and also another good practice tip would be to sketch out at least 5-10 different compositions in thumbnail format in a sketchbook (using a pen or pencil or whatever you want). That way, you will have a nice little plan before starting on a canvas.

It is always best to draw or paint from life when you can, but when you can't get outdoors to paint, be sure to stick with your own photos (or composites even; you could do this in Photoshop and then print it out).

When mixing, do not use black. I say this because it is good to learn colour theory, and then make up your mind whether or not you'd like to use black to darken areas. Complimentaries create neutral grays, so for example: Red & Green, Blue & Orange, Yellow & Purple. Theoretically, you can mix equal parts of any two complimentaries and obtain black. Add white and you get grey. Zinc white is a good one to start with because Titanium White can be overpowering. Try mixing both whites together in order to create a "Mixing White" and then use that when tinting (tint = adding white to a color). Another little trick to obtain black (and subsequent grays) is to mix Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber. You can mix Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna to create a warmer black/grey.

And now, for some books that you simply must purchase and read through! I'm real picky when it comes to good art instruction books... so here are my recommended selections :)

Color & Light by James Gurney

Landscape Painting by Mitchell Albala

Composing Pictures by Donald Graham (Disney's art instructor for many years)

Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting by John F. Carlson - written in the 1920s, this is THE DEFINITIVE book on landscape painting. The man's writing is sharp, witty and to the point)

One more thing... failure and criticism from others (and yourself) are your friends. Failure will drive you to create better work, and criticism will help you know where you aren't doing so well. Praise is great, but it can be extremely dangerous because if too many people praise you and not many give suggestions then where are you at exactly? You won't know if you've made a mistake (especially if you are just starting out).

Quantity (and quality) are everything... paint paint paint! Paint one a week or even daily if you can! Create your next post on Reddit when you've completed 30 paintings. Seeing your progress would be nice. Start a blog to keep track of your progress. Also, try and enroll in a night class at your local art university/college. Take the basics like Life Drawing first.

Oh, and... paint for yourself, first and foremost. Do not give a shit about "is this going to sell?". Do not care. Just do it for yourself. And don't be afraid to create something out of your comfort zone (pure abstraction or something with shocking subject matter).

Good luck!

First off, let me paste this... I keep this in a text file on my desktop for this question, when it pops up:

• Order Scott Kelby's Digital Photography Box Set. His books are incredible resources.
  
  
• If you're going to use Photoshop and/or Lightroom for your post-processing, also pick up Scott Kelby's Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers and Scott Kelby's Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book for Digital Photographers.
  
  
• Order Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson. This, along with the Scott Kelby boxset, should be required reading for any aspiring photographer.
  
  You're on the right track, starting with the /r/photoclass subreddit. Now for your other questions...
  
  As far as what is and isn't relevant, given most of your work would be shown on the web, don't get all hard over megapixels. Get what you can afford, but don't let yourself be swayed into getting a camera with a huge MP count. The higher numbers of megapixels come into play when you're doing close cropping, or printing large prints.
  
  For example, take a look at this picture. I shot this several weeks ago with my Canon 40D, which has 10 megapixels. Are there cameras with higher megapixel counts? Sure. For the type of photography I do, though, this camera suits me perfectly.
  
  As far as why you should get a DSLR versus a point-and-shoot, the biggest reason is lens interchangeability. A DSLR will let you change your lens based on the kind of shots you're taking, which gives you much MUCH more freedom in the kind of pictures you take. Also, DSLR's generally can offer you more freedom as you grow in your photography due to more advanced features (full manual mode, the ability to shoot Raw, etc), which ultimately give you far greater control over the finished product.
  
  So to blanket answer your question, it's not the camera that produces great photos, but the photographer. Hand Ansel Adams a point-and-shoot camera and I guarantee he'll outshoot me with my 40D. You want to get a camera that you feel comfortable with, you can afford and gives you the greatest freedom to grow as your interest grows.
  
  Does that help? :)
  
  
  
  
  

The D90 is still a great camera, but I'd also lean towards the D7000.

Adorama has [refurb D7000 bodies.](http://www.adorama.com/INKD7000R.html?emailprice=t&utm_term=Other&utm_medium=Affiliate&utm_campaign=Other&utm_source=rflaid21866
)

Buy from B&H Photo, Adorama, 42 St. Photo, or another of the biggies. Abe's of Maine is great too. Even if they're slightly more expensive than some little outfit, it can pay for itself many times over if an issue needs addressing. The big guys just fix it. Put together the package you want, and call all of them to get their best price.

Get her a copy of Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson.

Despite the plastic build, the Nikon 18-55mm kit lens is optically very good, and a great place to start. The $99 "import" is fine. If it breaks, screw it. Put it on eBay for parts, and get another one.

Nikon 35mm prime. ("Prime" means that it doesn't zoom. Fixed focal length.)

Used Nikon 28-105mm -- Good, older lens.

Which lenses she uses most will depend on how/what she shoots. Go general. Later, she may want a macro lens or a long zoom--you can't predict that.

At least two memory cards. Getting three mid-capacity cards is better than getting one huge, fast one. (If a card dies, you don't lose everything.)

At least one additional camera battery. Nikon is best, though there are good 3rd party batteries out there, it's hard to know which use good cells.

A couple good lens cloths (I love the BIG Nikon ones,) and a lenspen. Also, a Giotto Rocket Blower.

A decent bag. Don't go crazy here. I found a LowePro Slingshot 200AW on eBay for $40, shipped. I like it OK, but I'd prefer a backpack style. Look at what kind of bag she carries -- backpack, messenger, etc. Different styles work for different people. The key is to have everything padded and held immobile.

Also... If you're computer savvy, maybe think about some software (there's plenty of good, free stuff available,) to organize and edit her photos.

Um... that's all I can think of right now.

I have not tried other ones yet. I have been considering Schoolism or Society of Visual Story telling. I have opened and started fidiling with Michael Hamptons figure drawing book, but i felt that i needed to concentrate on boxes a little longer. I wanted to be able to rotate a box freely and make each one look like the one before, just rotated, before i started to try to build more complex shapes like faces and torsos and then rotate them. I have gotten to a point im almost satisified with rotating boxes and cylinders and have moved onto building my own complex shapes, then rotating them. No other courses have the perfect structure that drawabox has (to my knowledge at least). I really liked the structured learning.

I dont know what to say about motivation/perseverance. I see it come up a lot on /r/ArtistLounge as well as here and i never know what to say. I feel like it is a question for /r/selfimprovement or something like that, because it is really more about how you approach life vs. about drawing. Its easy for me because its basically the main thing i enjoy in life and its my main motivation to stay alive lol. All i want to do in this world is be able to create amazing images as naturally as possible and not struggle to accomplish a drawing. I just want it to flow from my mind to my hand and i know that to get there i have to work at it constantly. Good luck and dont let to much negative self talk get involved. Its just a matter of lots of practice and lots of analyzing how you are currently drawing in comparison to where you want to get. I completely struggle with implying form/shadow with a pen, but it gets better every day. Try to take a long view and realize that it will be years and years before you are happy with a drawing and you might not ever be happy because the whole thing is a constant desire to be better and thats where the enjoyment needs to come from.

I think every theory book I've ever read has opened up my mind in some way - while always being unsatisfactory in other ways (incomplete, too dense, too little on some forms of music, etc). My experience and interest is largely in popular music of all kinds, less in classical, so that has biased my reading somewhat; but I can recommend all the following (not 100%, but worth reading):

Eric Taylor: The AB Guide to Music Theory, pts I and II - good review of the basics, aimed at pupils studying for grades. Not deep in any way but good if you're just starting out. Solidly classical, which could be a downside for some. The concepts up to grade 5 are shrunk to useful pocket size in [this] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Steps-Music-Theory-Grades/dp/1860960901/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466150641&sr=1-1&keywords=theory+of+music+grades+1-5) - 100% recommended for any absolute beginner.

George Heussenstamm : [Harmony and Theory, pts 1 & 2 (Hal Leonard)] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hal-Leonard-Harmony-Theory-Diatonic/dp/1423498879/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466150878&sr=1-2&keywords=Hal+Leonard+Harmony+%26+Theory) Usefully split into Diatonic and Chromatic. I've read a few texts on standard classical theory, and this is the most approachable, IMO.

William Russo: [Jazz Composition and Orchestration] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Composition-Orchestration-William-Russo/dp/0226732150/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466151290&sr=1-1&keywords=russo+jazz+composition) Taught me more than I thought I wanted to know about counterpoint. Most of which I've now forgotten (not much call for it in the bands I played in...). But if you're not into big band jazz (at all), maybe not worth it.

William Russo: [Composing for the Jazz Orchestra] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Composing-Jazz-Orchestra-William-Russo-ebook/dp/B01EZ8OKQW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466149432&sr=1-1&keywords=william+russo) Neat little guide book on jazz arranging (NOT composition).

Mark Levine: [The Jazz Theory Book] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazz-Theory-Book-Mark-Levine/dp/1883217040/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466151006&sr=1-1&keywords=levine+jazz+theory) 50% recommended. Well written and presented, eye-opening in many ways, but beware - chord-scale theory! (controversial stuff, in ways he doesn't admit.)

Robert Rawlins and Nor Eddine Bahha: [Jazzology] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jazzology-Encyclopedia-Jazz-Theory-Musicians/dp/0634086782/ref=pd_sim_14_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=41YkvVcCfEL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR120%2C160_&refRID=ZR730GKYPSZYA2THNXGT) The somewhat dry antidote to the above. 50% recommended. Should have been good, but somehow hard to read, easy to put down. Unlike Levine, no quotes from jazz standards or recordings - all music examples are written by the authors.

Dominic Pedler: [The Songwriting Secrets of the Beatles] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Songwriting-Secrets-%2522Beatles%2522-Dominic-Pedler/dp/0711981671/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466151087&sr=1-1&keywords=pedler+beatles) Outlines the vast number of theoretical concepts that the fab four would be astonished to learn they employed. Includes a useful appendix on basic concepts of tonal harmony. If you like pop and rock (and theory) but don't like the Beatles, still worth reading.

But then if you like the Beatles AND theory... [Alan Pollack's site] (http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-alphabet.shtml) is essential reading. (Pedler is deep, but doesn't examine EVERY song. Pollack is briefer, but does.

Allan F Moore: [Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Popular Song] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Means-Analysing-Interpreting-Recorded/dp/1409438023/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466151140&sr=1-1&keywords=allan+moore+song+means) Does what it says in the title - and goes deep! (way beyond the plain old superficial harmony concepts peddled - sorry - by Pedler :-))

Walter Everett: [Rock's Tonal Systems] (http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.04.10.4/mto.04.10.4.w_everett.html) More stuff to raise the eyebrows of any rock musician. "Wow - we really do all that?"

Paul F Berliner: [Thinking in Jazz] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thinking-Jazz-Infinite-Improvisation-Ethnomusicology/dp/0226043819/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466151218&sr=1-1&keywords=thinking+in+jazz) Not a music theory book in the usual sense, but discusses how jazz musicians think about improvisation.

> For beginners learning to draw accurately, just focus on the Elements of Art.

I'd actually like to chime in here to give OP another option (not looking to argue about fundamentals haha. We all know how that goes).

Quick backstory:

I studied art for two years and went through pretty much the same training that you described above. I had a wonderful experience, but decided that it wasn't for me. I then decided to pursue Industrial Design, which meant I had to study the fundamentals all over again, only this time they were different.

Just like the elements of art, we still started out with the basics of line, shape and form, but with a much heavier emphasis on accurate perspective. In fact we were taught about the different kinds of perspective and how/why they work from the get go. The equivalent of "value" in Industrial Design was "rendering", only it was much more technical (how to construct shadows in perspective, how light decay and occlusion work, the Fresnel Effect etc.)

Of course this all just sounds like a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo, so let me make a small change to what you said above to summarize what I am trying to say.

>For beginners learning to draw beautifully, just focus on the Elements of Art.

and likewise

>For beginners learning to draw accurately, learn perspective.

I am personally in favor of learning the rules before you break them. Want to paint a pretty cottage? Paint a convincing one first using perspective. Again, this is not the only way to learn. It is just what I would recommend based on my experience. This is, of course /r/learnart and not /r/learntodrawperfectly, so please take all of this with a grain of salt.

"Well gee, thanks a lot Mr. useless design person."

Wait! Don't go, OP! I have some actual, useful advice!

1. Avoid digital for as long as possible. Nothing beats the muscle memory you will gain from drawing with a real pen/pencil on real paper.
   
2. Exercise those muscles every day! Here are some of my favorite exercises: 1- Straight, parallel lines. Keep your wrist as still as possible and draw from your elbow and shoulder. Grip the pen lightly and DON'T rotate the page. 2- Dots connected by lines. Draw lots of dots on the page and then draw nice, straight lines connecting them. You may rotate the page for this one. 3- Lines through a point. Draw a dot on the page and try to draw straight, intersecting lines through the center. Don't rotate the page. This one is tricky. 4- Circles! Just fill the page. Try to do these quickly. "Ghost" the shape of the circle over the page before putting your pen down, and then try to draw the whole thing in 2 or 3 quick gestures. 5- Ellipses! Draw some line segments on the page and then draw some ellipses with those lines acting as the minor axis. 6- Cubes in two point perspective. Draw your horizon line, and then just fill the page (I didn't fill the page here but you get the idea). Try to relax while doing all of these warmups. They might not be very exciting but eventually they can become sort of a calming, zen exercise. Your lines will look horrible at first, but you will get much much better if you just practice.
   
3. Listen to everything /u/cajolerisms said above, and if you're up to the challenge, try approaching things from the technical route as well. Once you learn how perspective works you will literally see the world differently. It seems daunting now, but the more you practice, the more it will all make sense and your artwork will become more convincing as a result.
   
4. As much as I hate telling people they need to spend money to learn how to improve their drawing/painting, I highly recommend this book. Scott Robertson does a great job of breaking down how perspective works and has some great tips on shortcuts for constructing accurate drawings. Plus, once you get the book, you get access to video lessons that break down all of the topics in the book.
   
   Remember that every time you put your pencil to paper you are creating something that has never existed. No one has ever seen the things that you will draw. You are a creator, and that is just about the coolest thing to be in the universe. Don't give up, and happy arting!

I often see questions like “How do I become a screenwriter?” or "How can I write a screenplay?"

So here’s an answer you can read in five minutes or less.

Read at least two screenwriting “how-to” books

For example, you could try:

• How to Write a Movie in 21 Days
  
• Screenplay (Syd Field)
  
• Story (McKee)
  
• Writing for Emotional Impact
  
• Save the Cat (series)
  
• The Screenwriter’s Bible
  
• My Story Can Beat up Your Story
  
  I think it’s a good idea to read more than one book because you don’t want to get the idea that there’s only one right way to write a screenplay. Different authors have different approaches that you may find more or less useful.
  
  TAKE NOTES ON WHAT YOU LEARN.
  
  

  Read at least five professional scripts
  

  
  You can often find them by googling the name of the movie along with “PDF.”
  
  You can also try Simply Scripts and The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb).
  
  Your reading list should include scripts for movies that have been made in the past five years, so you can see what styles are current.
  
  TAKE NOTES ON WHAT YOU LEARN.
  
  One thing you should notice is that professional scripts have certain things in common. For example, they almost all have sluglines that look something like this:
  
  EXT. RAIN FOREST – DAY
  
  Some writers put sluglines in bold (which is a current fashion), and some don’t.
  
  You should also notice that other things are different. For example, some writers use CAPS for objects and sounds a lot more than other writers do. Some writers write long, detailed descriptions of locations; others don’t.
  
  One reason for this exercise is to get a sense of what a professional script looks like – what’s “standard,” and what’s more a matter of individual taste/style.
  
  Another reason to read a lot of scripts (especially award-winning ones) is to get a feel for what “good” looks like.
  
  Think about how these pro scripts follow (or not) the “rules” in the books you’ve read.
  
  

  Follow along in the script as you’re watching the movie
  

  
  Notice how words on a page translate into sights and sounds on the screen.
  
  Notice how much detail is written out by the screenwriter, and how much is left to others (like the costume designer, set designer, or fight choreographer).
  
  

  Come up with a screenplay idea/story
  

  
  A good source for help with developing commercial story ideas is Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds.
  
  Or read this blog: https://lauridonahue.com/fantastic-ideas-and-where-to-find-them-stps-5/
  
  It can be helpful to put your idea into logline form. One basic model for loglines is:
  
  >[Type of person or group] must [do or overcome something] in order to [achieve some goal].
  
  You can also add details about where and when the story takes place, if relevant.
  
  For example:
  
  >A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, a restless farm-boy must rescue a princess and learn to use his supernatural powers in order to defeat an evil empire.
  
  

  Create a beat-sheet
  

  
  A beat-sheet is a short (1-2 page) outline of what happens in your script.
  
  For example, you can use the famous/infamous Blake Snyder “Save the Cat” Beat Sheet.
  
  The books you’ve read may have other models for this.
  
  Some people don’t like outlining. They just like to jump right into the story and start writing. How you work is up to you. But you may find that having an outline will let you know if you’ve got enough story (or too much), keep you on track, and save you from wasting time.
  
  

  Write a treatment or a scriptment
  

  
  A treatment or scriptment is a longer kind of outline.
  
  Again, you may prefer just to dive in. It’s up to you.
  
  

  Try to write a screenplay
  

  
  It’s a good idea to get script formatting software, like Celtx or Highland or Final Draft. If you try to write a script in Word or another standard word processing program, you may drive yourself nuts dealing with format issues, and the end result may not look professional.
  
  Or, just can write your first draft in a notebook, and do your second draft using formatting software. (I decided I wasn’t going to spend money on Final Draft until I proved to myself I could finish a first draft by hand.)
  
  If you finish, congratulations. You’re now a screenwriter. Most wannabes never make it to that point.
  
  However, your script probably isn’t very good. Most first scripts are awful.
  
  What if you want to be a GOOD screenwriter?
  
  Then you’ve got a lot more work ahead of you.
  
  

  Put the script aside
  

  
  Don’t work on it for at least a week. You want to be able to see it with fresh eyes.
  
  Don’t show it to anyone yet, however much you want people to tell you how awesome it is.
  
  This would be a good time to start working on your next script.
  
  

  Rewrite
  

  
  Look back at your notes from the screenwriting books and scripts you read. Think about what makes a script good.
  
  Compare your script to the professional scripts, in terms of format, structure, dialogue, pacing, description, action, etc.
  
  Re-read the chapters on revisions in the books you read.
  
  Read a book like Making a Good Script Great and apply what it suggests.
  
  Rewrite again and again and again until your script is as good as you think you can make it.
  
  

  Get feedback
  

  
  Do NOT get feedback on your first draft. Get feedback on your BEST draft.
  
  So where do you get feedback?
  
  

• You could try Zoetrope.com for free (swapped) peer feedback or pay a screenwriting consultant (like me, ScriptGal, or Screenplay Mechanic, or check Sites, Services, Software, & Supplies) or put your script on The Black List.
  
• Some screenwriting contests, like the Nicholl and Austin, also offer feedback – but you may have to wait quite a few months to get it.
  
• You could take a screenwriting class – in person or online – and get feedback from your teacher and classmates.
  
• You could form or join a screenwriting feedback co-up and swap notes with fellow writers.
  
  Whatever you do, don’t be a douche about the feedback you get. Accept it with THANKS and graciously, even if you think the reader is an idiot for failing to recognize your genius.
  
  And before you ask anyone for free feedback, read this – and don’t be that guy.
  
  

  Rewrite again and again and again
  

  
  Again, in between rewrites and while you’re waiting for feedback, put your script aside and work on more scripts.
  
  You could experiment with different formats (feature, TV, short, webisode, etc.), genres, and styles. Discover where your strengths and interests lie.
  
  

  Get more feedback; revise; repeat
  

  
  Repeat as needed until people who know what they’re talking about (not your buddies, not your mom) say it’s good, and/or you start placing in contests like the Nicholl and Austin and/or getting 8s and up on The Black List.
  
  Keep in mind that it may take years, and many drafts of many scripts, before you get to this point… if you ever do. (Most people don’t.)
  
  If you do make it that far – congratulations again!  You’re now a pretty good screenwriter.
  
  
  (If you like this, please subscribe to my blog: https://lauridonahue.com/how-to-become-a-screenwriter-in-five-minutes-or-less-stps-4/)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Edit: this isn't mine it's Seshat_the_Scribe but it should help

> Say if I can't find a teacher right away, how would you say I should try striking that "balance" you talked about? Any resources you'd suggest for each element (technical/musical/theoretical)?

Technical and musical elements are quite difficult to advise on because they are quite individual. Some people are very expressive but aren't necessarily brilliantly technical players and some are brilliantly technical but make music that sounds like robots, and all shades in-between.

If you pushed me I would say that something like Yousician's free lessons will get you off the ground as far as basic technique is concerned. Their free service is perfectly adequate for a complete beginner.

As far as musicality goes that's more difficult to teach. Really you're looking to try and "feel" something while you're playing and it's not quite the same as feeling an emotion - you're trying to feel the flow of the music. I found it helpful when I was first learning to play along to a track and not worry too much about getting it right - just noodle around trying to get into the feel of the thing. Playing with other people helps here too.

As far as theory goes that's easier.

Standard theory (you can call it 'classical' theory if you like but it applies to pretty much any form of music except really early music and more modern experimental stuff):
The AB Guide to Music Theory Part I
Music Theory in Practice Book I

(As you'll see from the Amazon listings there are more books in the Music Theory in Practice series, and there's an AB Guide to Music Theory Part II as well).
Get someone who knows what they're talking about to check your answers!

Jazz theory:
The Jazz Theory Book

Songwriting:

Chord Progressions for Songwriters

Bear in mind that music theory is a bit like art theory in that it's largely descriptive rather than prescriptive - it describes common practice and therefore gives you some guidelines but it's quite possible to follow all the rules and still come up with something that's fucking dreadful. So when you're writing try not to get bogged down with "is it correct?" - just ask yourself "do I like it? does it sound good?".


> What would an ideal (or even okay) progress would look like according to you?

I would say classical guitar grade 1 within 1-2 years is normal progress. If you're ambitious then 6 months to 1 year.

Sure.

Josiah Brooks has an active channel with all kinds of drawing tutorials that are very beginner friendly, so that is one that you should definitely check out.

Sycra has a really beginner-friendly channel as well, with a lot of great tutorials that you'll probably find super useful when you're starting out.

Circle Line Art School has a bunch of videos about perspective that are worth checking out.

Alphonso Dunn specializes in traditional media and shares a lot of tips that will definitely help you out as a beginner and as you move forward and begin experimenting with different techniques.

James Raiz specializes in the kind of artwork I think you're interested in and he shows you his process for constructing characters from sketch all the way to final rendering. Sometimes it might be a bit advanced, but it will give you an idea of the type of process you're looking at.

Ahmed Aldoori has a slightly more advanced channel that is mostly centered around digital art, but includes a lot of short videos with decent tips that could help direct you in your studies.

Joe Cornelius is a painter who is very knowledgeable about colour theory, and so when you begin to use colour in your drawings he's definitely someone you should check out.

Feng Zhu is a master concept artist and teacher who's channel is very advanced and focused entirely on digital painting for video games and movies, and so it might not be particularly helpful for helping you learn to draw comics, but he's a wellspring of information about being a professional artist and it's a joy to watch his process.

Typically you can just type "beginner drawing tutorial" into youtube and it'll give you a ton of other options to choose from. As you move forward, you can refine your searches to learn about more specific things like technique and colour theory.

Also, you should search for comic documentaries on youtube and take some time to learn about the history of the artform and master artists like Jack Kirby and Jim Lee. If you aspire to be a professional then it would be to your benefit to have knowledge about the men that made the artform great to begin with.

Another great resource you should locate is a book called Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. This book will change the way you think about comics as an artform, and I can't recommend it enough to ANYBODY interested in them whether as an aspiring creator or simply as a fan. McCloud's other books are good too, but Understanding Comics should be on every artist's shelf.

Hey, man! You're stuff looks good, keep it up! And honestly color blindness isn't an issue. Just make your style saturated colors.

So, I do notice things that I once did when I was in high school that you also do with your drawings.

First, lets talk about equipment. You said you use a Wacom Bamboo tablet, and Sketchbook 6 pro. While a bamboo tablet is excellent for beginning drawings, if you want to improve noticeably, my suggestion is getting an Intuos Wacom tablet. The smallest size goes for about $80 bucks, and it is more dynamic than a Bamboo tablet. Secondly, I used, what I am assuming you have, is Corel Sketchpad 6 pro? If you can, try to get Corel Painter X3. It's a much better program. Now, this might be hard, since it is a $500 dollar program, so I would suggest getting an "extra-legal" copy on the website with a cool looking galleon ship on it.

But I also believe this: you should stop exclusively using the tablet from here on out, until you're in a professional setting. Why you would do this is because you want to train yourself classically first. A lot of artists use tablets as crutches, or just started out using a tablet, but you want to draw with a pencil first (or even better, a pen, so you can't erase, and this will train you to be faster, and be better at line quality). And draw a lot with it. I essentially go to Starbucks with a sketchbook, a fountain pen, and a ball-point pen, and draw people walking in, for 3 to 4 hours. And draw people who are leaving, that way, you have to remember what they look like from your head. This helps you conceptualize what a person looks like. Once you're comfortable with pen and pencil, then you can start doing a lot of tablet drawings again.

Gesturally, your drawings look pretty good, but structurally, your drawings could use improvement. You want to start drawing with 3D shapes so you can get an idea of perspective with your drawings. Also, and what I think is the most important to you, this is the ONLY way to get better at shading! Shading a person is hard. Shading a box is easy! Now imaging making a person into a bunch of boxes. Now, your brain has something to comprehend with shading. My bible is this book: http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-Invention-Michael-Hampton/dp/0615272819/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395995139&sr=8-1&keywords=figure+drawing+by+michael+hampton I carry it with me wherever I go. It will show you the best ways to draw bones, then muscles on top of bones, and skin on top of muscles. Can't draw skin without knowing what's underneath, and can't draw muscles without knowing what's under that. https://www.vilppustore.com/Storefront.htm#!/~/product/category=7091955&id=30369340 This book helps with clothing.

All of this is a jumbled mess of writing (why I am an animation major, and not an english major) so if you need to know anything else, just reply to this comment. And I've been academically drawing for 5 years, so, I barely, but confidently, know what I'm talking about. :)

>Reference things and add in my own inspiration that leads to understanding the idea?

This right here is exactly what I meant by "reinventing the wheel", right? So a little bit of fun history - during the Renaissance, a nice fellow by the name of Leonardo DaVinci got frustrated with his painting and how they wouldn't "come out the way he liked it". So he started to observe the world and figured out many of the rules that let us depict a three-dimensional world in the two dimensions of a canvas/paper/Photoshop file. Things like perspective didn't have may written rules before then, so he had to come up with those rules. I'm loosely paraphrasing here, but that's the gist of it.

Modern artists such as ourselves don't have to go through the trial-and-error method of the classics, we have much easier ways of doing that:

Dynamic Figure Drawing - I like this book but it's a bit more advanced. He doesn't explain much about what he's doing and how the basics work. Avoid for now.

Figure Drawing - Design and Invention - Good book. Also a bit advanced.

Figure Drawing for All It's Worth - Now this I have a PDF on Dropbox for whenever I need it. You can buy the book on Amazon, but this is the original from the 1930s. The copyright expired on it, so they can be shared.

Fun with a Pencil Same deal. Most of Loomis' books are available for free online. If you want to draw faces, start here. His method is essentially >The< go-to method for correctly doing faces of today.

I took those off a post I made last week for someone else, but it's about the same thing. If you view any of the books on anatomy for artists, for example, the authors are very good at building the body in its basic shapes and teaching you how to draw not only based on what you see, but what you know something should look like.

You can always do drawing classes, I think they're a good way to start, but they're not necessary. What you would get out of them is a personal sort of coach that will oversee what you're doing and try to steer you in the right direction and give you pointers on where you need to improve. Obviously, though, most art teachers will teach you realism (which I strongly recommend you start with to strengthen your basics). However, being self-taught myself I can't speak from experience on how much help a class could be.

Mentality wise you need to understand that, in the long run, having strong understanding of the basic rules of drawing, of drawing people especially, will save you much frustration in the future. And like I said before, if you're good at visualizing things and translating them onto paper, it's already a huge part of your work being done for you. This is a bit humorous but I think it's very accurate. If you can avoid steps 1-3, I think you'll be on the right track!

I will post some of my favorite books in a second for you as soon as my computer gets turned on. :)

Here are a couple of my favorites from my school "Hey, I actually like these.. I'm going to purchase them!" collection.

General Graphic Design:

Graphic Design: The New Basics

This publication does a great job of showing "relationships between formal elements of two-dimensional design such as point, line, plane, scale, hierarchy, layers, and transparency." If you are looking for a general overview on a lot of subjects within graphic design I think this is a great way to upgrade your vocabulary and general knowledge about graphic design.


Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field

I feel like this book really can help you improve your vocabulary and general knowledge of the graphic design world offering "primary texts from the most important historical and contemporary designthinkers." It's also nice that it offers a bit of history too, analyzing the early 1900s through today.


Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop

Great. Absolutely great publication for all designers showing effective use of the grid system and how to layout your compositions. "Effective layout is essential to communication and enables the end user to not only be drawn in with an innovative design but to digest information easily."


Typography: <3

30 Essential Typefaces for a Lifetime

I loooooove this book. It gives a bit of history and usage examples of 30 amazing typefaces you should know and love.


Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students

Another great typography book. This publication was one of my favorites because, at the end of the day, I'm a visual person and this book has SO many visual examples to compliment it's copy it's beautiful. "This revised edition includes ... the latest information on style sheets for print and the web, the use of ornaments and captions, lining and non-lining numerals, the use of small caps and enlarged capitals, as well as information on captions, font licensing, mixing typefaces, and hand lettering."


Typographic Systems of Design

This is a very good resource for learning, as the title states, typographic systems. It "explores eight major structural frameworks beyond the gridincluding random, radial, modular, and bilateralsystems." Overall, I feel like this book helped me to improve my positioning and creative use of type in designs.

It seems like you're interested in UX design but not entirely sure what it entails. The role of a UX designer varies between companies and has changed over time. You can think of UX designer as someone who is skilled in interaction design, creating wireframes & protypes, user research, information architecture, etc. A bunch of skills smashed into one job title. Some skills of a UI designer includes visual design, color, layout, typography, etc.

From what I've seen, what companies are looking for these days when they say what a UX designer is that they want someone who can do both UX & UI to define, maintain, and grow a product with Product Managers. Product Managers are driven by business goals, you are driven by user goals. A Product Designer is becoming a popular term for this type of job. It's hard to find a UX job where all you do is wireframes, user research, and information architecture (as least with the big companies).

First, you need to think like a designer. Time to start reading some material. I took a class on Design Thinking at my university, and it has really helped me put into words what designers do. Link to the course materials.

You can find a bunch of lists of UX design books out there on the web. I started out by reading The Design of Everyday Things, a classic. Other books on my shelf are Design is Storytelling and Value Proposition Design. Not related to design, but during one of my internships I was given Everybody Writes and I recommend it because, well, everybody writes.

After you have a better understanding of what UX design is, start thinking about what it means for you and what you want to focus in. If you ask a bunch of designers why they do UX, you will get different answers.

From there, you need to start practicing. You can look up examples of side projects you can do as a UX designer. The most important thing here is to get critique from other people, learn from it, and iterate on it.

One common side-project is to redesign an app like Yelp. One thing I personally don't like about these projects is that they are typically "blue-sky" redesigns, or designs without constraints. This is fine to do when you're starting out, but to think like a Product Designer, you need to think about the business goals, make assumptions on why it's the way it is, and create constraints for your re-design. What's the user problem? What are the business goals? What are some ways I can solve these problems? What assumptions am I making for these designs?

Lastly, I think all UX/Product designers need to have some visual fundamentals down. Typography, layout, color, etc.--visuals are a huge part of the experience (along with copy, but thankfully I've had the chance to work with great copywriters). To get you started, Thinking with Type is a great book. I'm constantly looking at designs on Dribbble and Medium - Muzli for design inspiration. See something you like? Steal it and make it work for you.

Look at design blogs from big companies like Facebook, Google, and Airbnb. Stay up to date on what's happening like Mailchimp's redesign. Look at works from famous agencies like Collins. Watch YouTube videos from channel like The Futur.

Notice that I never mentioned any tools in this post. You won't become a UX design by learning html or js, those are for front-end devs. It may be nice for you to know, but not critical. You won't become a UX designer because you learned how to use Sketch or Adobe XD. Tools are constantly changing and are easy to learn. It's everything I mentioned above that's hard.

No, it's cool.

Fantasy works and comics - GREAT. That's different.

I thought you were talking about drawing in general.

OK, I hear you now. In this situation there are in fact books out there that show you step by step how to draw the human figure specifically for comics. Here's probably one of the best.

But don't forget the importance of being able to draw anything. A book like this is great, but it can also be misleading, which is why I suggested ignoring books in the first place. A book like this can lead you to think there's one way you draw people, another way you draw cars, another way you draw buildings -- and in reality it's all about composition, observation, discipline, etc, the same set of skills for all. People who can only draw one kind of thing are of almost no value in any such field, really.

Which is why it's important that you keep drawing ordinary things too. Still life - definitely but start thinking about your goals and advance from still life with fruit basket to still life with egg beater to still life with Storm Trooper action figure and lawn mower engine -- catch my drift? Drawing technological objects, so that you will be able to draw the super hero and invent a really cool star ship for him to drive.

And really draw still life things precisely. Challenge yourself and don't be easily satisfied. This kind of drawing is very athletic, you will find yourself straining your hands and arms to do this right. It's not a field for snowflakes. Be very self-critical. Look at your work like you're a comic book editor who just saw it for the first time and is really critical and picky. You'll get it, trust me, just give yourself time and patience and stay at it.

There's likely a community college somewhere in your area and you can probably pick up a basic drawing class there that can fast-track you on some of these skills at a pretty low cost.

And never ever stop looking at the kind of art you want to make. Challenge yourself to work up to its standards. Freely copy the best as practice. Artists have done this since time immemorial. Try to figure out what makes some comic panels better than others. Get it into your head, you know? Think it through. When you see a crappy one, think out loud how you'd have done that panel a lot better, and then go ahead and draw it better.

I'm glad I understand now. That's a fun field but it's packed, the competition is fierce, so if you really want this, make it your mission and your passion and just do this and be a geek about it. Many of the best artists are loners throughout their early careers - think about it. Draw every day, every chance you get. Draw til your hand hurts, shake it out, then keep drawing. When you can't draw, think about drawing. When your hands are busy doing something else, look around and think about how you'd draw things around you.

Best of luck to you.

the reviews aren't really wrong... it does have its flaws, but there isn't really another book that does it better. i've read quite a few harmony books and it is the most comprehensive basic harmony book that i've found. it's also pretty much the standard for college courses.

Tchaikovsky also wrote a book on harmony. It is good and very inexpensive, but very short. he writes extremely efficiently though, so there is really a lot of info in such a small book, but obviously not as much as Tonal Harmony. It's also older than Tonal Harmony, so some more modern ideas are not included. That said, it's a great way to quickly learn a lot, and at the price it's really a no-brainer. It doesn't have exercises or lots of examples... just good info.

Also, I should mention that all these harmony books teach using the classical tradition of placing heavy emphasis on voice leading. If you are, for example a guitarist writing pop and rock songs, you may not see how the information will be relevant to what you do, but I would encourage you to go ahead and read through it, as it will make your writing better, and give you a more complete understanding of music. Also, there isn't really a good basic harmony book that doesn't teach this way.

Also, if you are interested in Jazz Harmony there is absolutely no better book than this one.

• Drum lessons or stay at home learning from me and a resource?
  
  I definitely recommend drum lessons if you can. Especially since you have no real knowledge of drumming, this will help immensely. Someone to tell him "No, hold the stick like this" will help in the long run and save him from making habits out of bad technique. This doesn't mean that he can't learn by himself, it just means he will learn quicker, and hopefully have good technique.
  
  
• If we go for drum lessons, is there a text book he'd learn from so there'd be daily practice homework? If it's learn at home from us, what book?
  
  Yes. As soon as he starts lessons I'm sure the teacher will recommend a few good books. They aren't really textbooks, though, as much as drumming exercises. I don't know a whole lot about different books, but I have heard good things about Stick Control for the Snare Drummer. Other than that, any basic rudiments book will be fine something like this.
  
  
  
• Drum pad and sticks or hand drums? Or both?
  
  Interesting question. I'm not really sure how to answer this. Does he want to play hand drums or a drumset? I know when I first started I thought hand drums were dumb (My only experience was playing a djembe in a drum circle in 6th grade music class with a bunch of rhythmically challenged idiots). There was something about all the drums and cymbals put together that just made it so powerful and awesome to me. I'd say whatever he likes to play, let him play. If he falls in love with the bongos, so be it.
  
  
• We're moving into a house in 4 months... adult drum kit or kid size stuff? I know there's stuff marketed to kids online, should I stick with the adult size stuff?
  
  This is a tough one too. I've never really messed with kid's drums, but I'd say take him to guitar center and let him play the full size kits. If he can play it comfortably and is able to hit all the cymbals with a little adjusting, I'd say get a full size kit. I just wouldn't be a fan of getting a kid's kit that he'll grow out of in a couple years. If you have the extra cash, though, it'd probably be more beneficial to get the kid size drumset.

In addition to learning songs you like, rudiments are always a good foundation. I've never used Stick Control, but I like these (free) resources:

http://vicfirth.com/40-essential-rudiments/

http://www.snarescience.com/index.php

All good hand exercises, some of them (singles, doubles, paradiddles) are good for your feet as well, although I wouldn't bother doing flams and drags with your feet. Also splitting rudiments between a hand and a foot is good, as is playing rudiments with two limbs and having your other two limbs play a repeating pattern underneath (ostinato).

If, as you say, you "listen to really heavy music, super fast drums" and you wish to be able to keep up, you're certainly going to want to get your single stroke rolls (hands and feet) pretty fast.

Edit: And make sure to use a metronome, especially when you are first starting out.

2nd Edit: I suggest buying a double pedal sooner rather than later if you like / plan to play music that uses a lot of double bass, even though most people on this forum will probably tell you otherwise.

3rd Edit: Every drummer's technique can look a little different and still be "good" (at least imo), but I think this is a good video on hand technique. As are these.

Cal arts is very prestigious, so they might be looking for both talent yet room to grow, and that will Really show in your portfolio. So what should you add to the portfolio?

1: A Well executed Bouncing Ball animation. Laugh if you will but seriously, if you do this well, you will have solidified that you know the fundamentals of timing, spacing, and gravity.

2: A correctly implemented walk cycle. Again, might seem simple, but it is actually not. Walk cycles will be your bread and butter to whether or not you are a competent amateur or just a wannabe who won't put in the effort. Walk Cycles will give you the foundation of weight, anatomy, and movement.

3: Life drawings: drawings of nude people in interesting poses (don't draw pr0n, they'll kick you out if you add THAT to the portfolio). Take a cheap life drawing class. This will help increase your speed in drawing, but also help in capturing the bare bones shapes that make up the human figure. Also if the admissions office knows what they're doing, they WILL be looking to see if you know how to draw, cause if you don't know how to draw in their standards, you won't learn how to animate in their standards either.

Those three things are essential to learn and have in your portfolio. Note I said learn, not master. They don't have to be perfect, just enough that they can tell you know what you're doing, you're willing to put in the effort to practice things you might not like to do in order to improve the things you DO want to do, and show you'll be a perfect fit for their classes.

Now, how to learn these things? Youtube has an excellent amount of references for drawing bouncing balls and walk cycles, some even from Famous ex-disney 2D animators. (Bonus points btw) If you're in a spending money kind of mood, then this is your kind of book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Animators-Survival-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

It truly is the Animator's Survival Kit, chock full of stuff that will help you learn the fundamentals of animation.

Now a few addendums to add to your portfolio. Add your creative stuff after you add the first three things. Concept art, Character Design, some animations of your own choosing, heck even a demo reel would be great. Beyond seeing whether you have the drive for animation, they want to see YOU, they want to see the you that is in your animations, your style, your emotion, your verve, your kookiness, your insanity, the you that you pour out into your work, and that you love whether it's crap or gold.


That's all for now, good luck, happy animating.

Artistically yours,

Io Kusanagi

I don't really have the time to do a fully fledged critique right now, but the most prominent issue to me is your line work. It's very chicken-scratchy and not confident. The quality of line is what separates okay artists from great artists, and you will be able to sketch a LOT quicker once you get better at it.

This reddit has some great resources and lessons

It's by a guy who did lessons with a well known artist at CDA (Concept Design Academy), this guy is a freaking genius and I can only hope to even scratch the surface of his ability!

The owner of this sub also recommends this book - Which I'm sure you can get in a more illegitimate manner, but it's fantastic and a must-have for any budding artist.

I want to recommend this to /u/Anagram-Daine, too, if he's here at all.

As a final note, this video on line weights is great, too.

Line weight can really help establish forms in your work without needing to add value, and being able to think in 3D forms can help a lot. The idea behind this is that you simplify everything you see into primitive shapes, such as boxes, spheres, cylinders and cones. All of these shapes can be warped, distorted and bent to form anything you can possibly think of, so being able to know these shapes and how light would pass over them will give you the ability to draw ANYTHING, should you know what it looks like.

Have fun!

First, I want to say that you have a pretty nice finish on this drawing. Your line weights are good, your use of spot blacks could use a little work, but you've got the right idea. I like the fact that you're lines thin out as you go back in perspective, really sells the idea that there is some distance between cyclopse and that cactus in the background.

Also your anatomy is pretty good, though it seems to me more like copying from other comics rather than taking the time to actually learn the muscles/muscle groups.

That being said, there's a lot of construction issues in this piece. I could go through and list off all of them, but really what it comes down to is the understanding of perspective. This is integral to creating a piece that has objects in it that feel 3 dimensional.

Now when I say lack of understanding of perspective, I don't mean that you have no understanding. You seem like you could probably construct some cubes in space, or even a rudimentary street view with a horizon roughly in the middle of the page. But the way to push your work further towards what you see in a an issue of X-men.

To get you where you want to go, I would either suggest Scott Robertson's How to Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments from your Imagination. Or if you'd rather you can search the internet for some tutorials like this Ctrlpaint Tutorial

I wish I had more examples, but it's been a little while since I was looking for this stuff. But it's something that I've practiced almost every day for many years and I've still got plenty of room to learn.

You're definitely headed in the right direction. It looks like you enjoy the work, so hang onto that. I'm not saying to bore yourself to death with technical practice, but take a little bit of your drawing time that you've set aside and practice some perspective and you'll see a huge improvement in your work. And once you feel comfortable, start checking out Proko for stuff about how to translate those perspective skills into bettering your figures (people) that you draw.

Good luck and keep up the good work

♥ Ethan

I recently graduated with my B.S. in psychology and will be heading to graduate school this fall to study Human Factors, also known as engineering psychology or ergonomics. Basically it's the application of psychology to the design of systems (hardware as well as software) and the environments they're deployed in. UX certainly falls under this umbrella, as the professor who will be my adviser is doing research in that area.

To answer your question, it's a yes as well as a no in my opinion. A background in psychology would be tremendously helpful in the field you're thinking of entering - knowledge about human behavior and mental processes is a pretty good thing to have when your goal is to design and improve the user experience.

As others have said, however, the minor itself won't necessarily be of any use. Employers generally won't care, and neither will any graduate schools you apply to. In other words, it's the knowledge you gained from studying the minor that will be attractive on your resume (or curriculum vitae), so be ready to explain exactly what you learned from studying psychology and how it makes you a better candidate for the position. Remember that the minor, if you choose to take it, will be little more than a footnote on your transcript in the long run.

To wrap this up, I'd like to wish you luck on this career path. UX is a really interesting subject that many people aren't even aware of. If you haven't already, check out the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Their site has some great resources for anyone who wants to learn more about the field (I used it to find grad schools to apply to). Lastly, I recommend reading Donald A. Norman's The Design of Everyday Things. It's the book that got me interested in this field in the first place, and is a really fun read.

If you have any further questions, I'll be happy to try and answer them to the best of my ability. Otherwise, good luck once again!

> Is taking on a drum student and saying something like "This means I need to learn to play kit!" really fair to the student?

Maybe not... but I've played kit before in bands (when the drummer takes a break from his throne for a pit stop at the porcelain throne...) and always been complimented on my timing. I just don't have the rudiments across different drums, so I feel like I should learn that. I've no aspirations to become a percussion instructor or put it on my business card, but it is music, and that one has always been on my card :-)

___

 

> How you teach little techniques (holding the stick, hitting cymbals, foot technique) will affect the student for the rest of their playing career.

Yes, and I've seen people learn technique on a variety of instruments that hindered their playing forever. Even (especially?) if they learned from a teacher with a music-ed degree. Seems that's always a risk, particularly when people don't shop around for teachers. But I totally get where you're coming from, esp as a trained musician yourself. I will say a couple of things to that, and I will avoid being defensive. If any of this reads as such, try to find a different voice in it.

First, even to my cello students, I don't just teach cello; I teach music, and I tell them this. For other students I teach music, theory, and composition. For this student, I told his parents that I'm not a kit drummer, but I can teach him music; and if he can play music, he can play music on drums [insert list of self-taught drummers here?]. I have experience with hand percussion (professional, if you count using a cello as a cajon... ¡kek!), but I don't call myself a percussionist or drum teacher. I do say I have a drum student, though, which gets a laugh from some colleagues. I've coached for other instruments and ensembles, all the way up to conservatory level especially for audition prep. I wish I auditioned for Curtis and Julliard when I was a teenager, but no, I had to feel cool and go to Berklee instead. (Big mistake; hindsight is 20/20, right?)

Secondly, this student was taking lessons with a teacher at a store last year and quit. His parents encouraged him to try a different teacher and I'm working on getting him excited about music. I can't force anyone to learn who doesn't want to... but I can show him good music, watch his reaction to find what music actually moves him, then get him to stop "practicing" and start "playing!" I always say that doctors practice for a living; musicians get to play :-) When he started with me he brought Stick Control: For the Snare Drummer and explained why he hated it. Fair. I hate it too! So we work on other stuff. Should I teach him traditional grip or match? French grip? Open handed instead of cross? Open handed traditional so the right hand holds the stick underhanded?? I'm gonna find what works best for me and teach him that way. Gotta be careful because I'm ambidextrous & do some things left handed (golf, soccer, snow and skateboard goofy-footed, use tools in either hand, etc). More likely I'll find a way that works for him and teach him that way. He'll be self-taught with a coach. Does that sit any better with you? ^(this isn't personal, but I genuinely appreciate this feedback, it's useful self-reflection!)

YouTube lessons can be helpful, but almost certainly never as helpful as an instructor. YouTube lessons can't see you making mistakes and can't correct them. You can't talk to YouTube lessons. They're alright for beginners but I would definitely recommend getting some one-on-one advice, even from people who aren't professional teachers.
There's this amazing book called Stick Control: For the Snare Drummer (https://www.amazon.com/Stick-Control-George-Lawrence-Stone/dp/1892764040 ) and it's full of great practice exercises that can help both you and your son. It's not a full kit book, but it's meant to strengthen your sense of rhythm and technique, and can help with speed aswell if you use a metronome. If you don't want to buy the book, I'm sure there's a .pdf somewhere, but the book is always better in my opinion.
Don't waste your money on Drumeo and Drumeo Edge. The whole Drumeo program is basically watching somebody else play drums and trying to mimic it. I can't speak for other online drum lesson services as I don't have much experience with them.
Find some music you like on YouTube, and use the speed feature to slow it down and really listen to what the drummer is playing. You can start slow and break it down and slowly increase the speed until you're playing it just as fast as the drummer in the song. It's a great way to teach yourself how to learn songs.
Learning drums takes a lot of patience (and can be quite expensive!) so I'd advise you to take great care in how you hit your drums. Drumsticks aren't very expensive and neither are drum heads, but when you're nailing them so hard you break one a day, it adds up quickly. Same goes for cymbals, but those are quite expensive aswell.
When you buy the second kit, I'd advise you to invest in a mid-range kit, not too great, but not garbage either. When you listen to songs and then your drums sound crappy, it's quite discourage. Get some mid-range cymbals as well, Paiste offers some pretty good beginner's cymbals.

Coordination and timing are big obstacles to overcome, but the more you play, the more naturally it comes. I never took lessons until I could get college credit for them (roughly 5 years after I started playing), and most of that was so I could learn to read music and maybe pick up on a few things. The biggest help for me was the fact that I could learn by ear, so if I heard it enough and tried it enough, I could figure out pretty much any song I wanted to play.

I would definitely invest in Stick Control, even if you can't read music. It's easy enough to read and it's really helpful in breaking habits when you have to think about what hand you're supposed to be striking with.

Really, the most important thing is just keep playing. Tap along to the radio. Tap along to everything. The more you play, the faster you'll break yourself from coordination/timing issues and the better you'll be. /u/crabjuice23 suggested trying different genres of music. I 100% agree. Play along to anything you can. If you hear something you like but can't quite stick it, slow it down in your head and keep playing it until it's comfortable and you'll have it full speed at no time. Patience is huge.

Yo, as a fellow aspiring mangaka, I got some tips for you:

Write for yourself, not for your audience (it's fairly obvious when you're intentionally trying to play to your audience [fanservice, super Japanese sugoi nihongo wo hanase dekiru yoooooo] and fans, especially Americans, will NOT appreciate it)

Shounen heroes can range from Ichigo (shatter fate, straightforward) to Yuuhi [Lucifer & the Biscuit Hammer] (brooding and thinking protagonist), this applies to every genre; research accordingly.

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I assume you are producing an OEL (Original English Language) manga. Don't fall into the stylistic trap, take a look at Osamu Tezuka's "Phoenix" and Hiroaki Samura's "Blade of the Immortal" to really see the artistic pioneers of the genre. Even things like word bubbles and panels can change the feel of an entire page. Don't fall into the Nick Simmons faulty thinking that manga is a specific formula.

If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics". No matter how good of an artist you are, there are certain nuances to the comic trade that need to be explored, if not the entire trade of art.

Take a look at the difference between the wildly successful Jason Chan and the sadly less employed Shaun Healey

Jason Chan is employed by everyone from Wizards of the Coast to Marvel Comics. Would I read a comic of his? Probably not. He can establish a temporary narrative (paint a sweet portrait of a single moment) but so far, seems to lack the ability to pace. A crucial element of manga.

Compare Oh! Great (Air Gear) to Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist). Holy shit is Oh! Great's art freakin' amazing. Have you seen how he renders people flying upside down and shit? This guy knows anatomy like crazy! Does his story make sense? HELL NO! He seems to make things up as goes along and abandons character development in favor of explaining his ridiculously complicated made-up physics (Air treks stopped making sense like 5 characters ago). On the other hand, Hiromu Arakawa's characters look like they've been through a steam roller, but hey, you can recognize them, they are fully developed characters, and you can understand their motivations.

Naoki Urasawa is an excellent mangaka. He created "20th Century Boys", my favorite piece of literature, and collaborated with Tezuka himself on "Pluto". They guy who won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize pretty much said that Urasawa should've gotten it instead. His art? MEH! But it's a style that makes characters readily differentiable!

STYLE is important. Know what you're trying to say and SAY IT. Ichigo may look like Ikkaku, but their motivations, the stylization of their eyes, and Kubo's backgrounds create entirely unique atmospheres.

Know anatomy, start from ground zero (gesture, proportions), emphasize what you think is important and become unassailable in your knowledge.

DO SOMETHING, even if it sucks, practice, post, copy, learn. Enjoy what you do, manga is awesome.

Skin is hard, because skin isn't actually opaque. It is translucent, so it picks up light and colors and scatters them within itself, as if it were a thin layer of wax all over your body. This is called subsurface scattering, and it gives skin a softer appearance, a reddish glow (from blood vessels), and more color and depth in the shadows.

Look at this image. It does a good job of breaking down the different elements of a face. The left image, of course, is the actual shape of the face. The second image is the flat shading; there is no scattering here, just straight up "Does the light hit this spot directly?" It also includes a "specular" map, which indicates which parts of the image are glossy and shiny; notice the area around the nose is shiny, for example. I'll get back to specularity later on.

The third image includes the coloration alongside the flat shading. A "diffuse" map shows the appearance of something when bright, diffuse light hits it from all angles. Basically, it shows the colors at the brightest and most saturated they can ever be. A computer program applies shading to a model, and then adds the color, such that the colors are their most vivid where the model is lit most brightly.

The fourth image shows flat shading with subsurface scattering added. Notice how the left side of the face--which does not get hit directly by light at all, and was previously almost black--is now rather bright and varied. That's because her skin is now transmitting light, which helps even the light out. And the fifth image just adds the diffuse map (essentially, the color map) back in.

---

Basically, this is what you want to create. And like a computer, it may help you to think about it in pieces, and then add all those different pieces together.

1. As you probably know, when you're learning art, you start by learning how to depict 3D shapes in 2D. This is very much like creating a mesh for a 3D model, except traditional artists use a much more simplified construction.
   
   
2. Artists next learn how to do flat shading. They think about where the light source is coming from, and they make the planes of the head that are facing toward that light brighter, while the planes facing away are darker. Beginner art schools make their students spend endless hours practicing stuff like this.
   
   
3. Then artists tend to start thinking about color (including pigment colors and light colors) and light scattering (including subsurface scattering and light reflection). This is the step you're stuck on--and, to be fair, this is about as complicated as shading gets. It's simply not intuitive, and even in computer graphics, it's only fairly recently that subsurface scattering has become a common thing. But without it, skin lacks luster and life. There is no rule of thumb I can offer here, sadly. The best you can do is try to draw from life or from photos as much as you can, and eventually you'll start to pick it up. You'll learn which parts of the face scatter light differently, and you'll learn how it changes as the light direction changes (e.g., backlighting is dramatically different from front lighting). Don't be afraid to open a photo in some art software and actually sample colors from it; this can help you learn how to identify colors better and avoid falling trap to this classic illusion.
   
   
4. Artists often add specularity last. This also relates to diffuse coloration, which is something I think you need help with, so I'll go into a bit of detail about that.
   
   ---
   
   When coloring and lighting an object, there are three basic sections: the part that falls into shadow, the part that is in light, and the part that receives a specular highlight. The part that falls into shadow tends to reflect light from the surrounding area, and it also tends to be cast in a different color from the part that is in light. Specifically, shadows will tend to be the opposite of the light color. However, when I say "opposite colors" here, I'm talking about light colors (in which red, green, and blue are the primary colors, and cyan, magenta, and yellow are the secondary colors). Here are the pairings of opposite colors, if it might help you:
   
   

• red - cyan
  
• blue - yellow
  
• green -magenta
  
  So, for example, if you have a reddish-blueish light (i.e., a magenta light), the shadows will tend to look greenish. They will also take on a bit of the color reflected off nearby objects (such as the ground), though.
  
  A common approach is slightly yellow (perhaps verging on red) light with slightly blue (perhaps verging on cyan) shadows, especially if sunlight is coming in from a low angle, as in this painting.
  
  The opposite (blueish light, yellowish shadows) can also look good, especially if the sunlight comes from direct above.
  
  Under moonlight, firelight, incandescent light, fluorescent light, etc., you can get different effects; for example, this painting depicts reddish light with greenish shadows.
  
  You can very effectively avoid the use of black altogether in your shadows by making dark areas the opposite color to light areas. For example, look at this picture. The part of her face that is in shade is not much darker than the part that is in light. However, it is blueish, which makes it immediately apparent that it's shaded. (Also, note that the edge of her jaw is picking up white light reflected from her T-shirt.)
  
  ---
  
  Now let's talk about the second part of an image, the part that is in light. Remember what I said earlier about diffuse maps? How they represent the object when it is in bright, diffuse light--and they, effectively, show the color at the brightest and most saturated that it will get in that image? Well, this is what you need to do. Figure out what color your character's skin is, and give him that color of skin in the parts where he is in bright light. Where parts of his face aren't as bright, tone down the saturation and brightness a bit.
  
  Going back to the photo here, you can see that her skin is pinkest where the light is bright (ignoring the shiny bits for the moment). You can see it in here hair, too. Where her hair is in bright light, it is very vividly colored.
  
  ---
  
  Now let's talk about the last section, the part that receives a specular highlight. The specular highlight is the part that is so bright that it gets washed out. There is very little (if any) color; it's usually just bright white (assuming the light source is also close to white).
  
  The shinier the object is, the smaller and sharper the specular highlight becomes, and the more it reflects the shape of the light source.
  
  The more matte the object is, the wider and duller the specular highlight becomes. It's worth noting that even objects that you wouldn't expect to have a specular highlight often still do; it's just very subtle, like on this cardboard tube.
  
  Also, the harsher the light is, the bigger and brighter the specular highlight will be. Even matte objects can get overexposed under the right conditions. But no matter how big or bright a specular highlight is, it will never occur in a place that is in shadow (assuming only a single light source; as you add more light sources, things get complicated--and keep in mind that nearby reflective surfaces do act as minor secondary light sources).
  
  When painting a face, think about the parts of the face that are the most oily or glossy. These tend to be the eyelids, the lips, the nose, the scalp (on bald people), the eyeballs, and so on. These are places you'll see smaller, brighter specular highlights. Perhaps needless to say, sweat also adds glossiness, while makeup tends to remove glossiness.
  
  ---
  
  If you want to learn more or if you want these concepts explained better, I highly recommend this book.
  
  Also, this is intended for pixel artists, but you may be interested in this tutorial, which illustrates a common method for creating a rich, harmonious color palette for matte objects.

keep it up dude! Seeing as you are a young drummer, I want to offer some advice for you to improve. You seem to lose some stick control throughout the song . I would highly recommend you work on improving your technique by going through books such as Stick Control for the Modern Drummer. You can use this as a warm up and play like 4 lines perfectly multiple times or something similar. This book is only a suggestion, there are many ways to improve technique. You just have to make a conscious effort to work on it. A good mixture of practice vs playing will keep you engaged and feel great about improving at the same time.

When I was your age, I spent a lot of time focusing on different patterns and independence and didn't really work on technique until a bit later, and I can say from experience that even though I was practicing a lot, I wasn't practicing near max efficiency because I didn't make technique a priority early on. Working on your rudiments and having great technique makes basically anything easier to learn and makes it sound 1000 times better.

I hope you find this helpful. I use to teach mainly beginners and intermediate players and if you ever want some advice or guidance feel free to shoot me a pm. Keep drumming!

edit- I looked through some of your other videos. I think your stick control was a lot better in some of them. You definitely have talent and I hope you keep at it and keep improving!

A thread I can help with! Nighttime urban shots are my thing. First and foremost watch this video if you want to shoot low light handheld. By far it has helped me up my game more than any other advice I have receeived. Also, this has some great advice as well.

On your submitted photo

Good news:

1. Your composition is great! I love the people at the end of the street, the location of the street lights and the leading lines.
   
   
   
2. The colors are very natural for your first go, working with those lights is a PITA until you get used to it.
   
   
3. You did not go overboard with most of the typical newbie mistakes and end up with a very artificial-looking image.
   
   
4. This is a great first attempt, especially with a 3/4 sensor. Gear does not make the photograph and you're making the most out of what you have. I started with a 3/4 sensor RX100M3 and got some really great results, work with its limitations and you can still capture great images.
   
   
   Areas for improvement:
   
   
5. Lower your total exposure let more of the background fall into shadow
   
   
6. Increase your contrast just a little to help create pools of light it will really add a lot of depth to your image
   
   
7. When you are shooting large buildings or a vanishing point down the stret, try to keep the camera level if at all possible if not, you may need to adjust your keystones to help straighten the image back out
   
   
8. Straighten your horizontal lines. the rest will fall into place after that
   
   
9. Watch for lens flare it tagged you in this image, cheater notes, you can pull the blue out of that flare and it will look a lot less obvious, also a local decrease in contrast for it and lowering its exposure will also help cut it down. But the key is to get rid of them at the point of capture.
   
   You have a good eye keep shooting! It gets easier every time you do it. I love this kind of work and I am happy to help with whatever advice I can. Feel free to message me with any questions.
   
   Advice for the total newbie to lowlight shooting:
   
   Time for some hard truths.
   
   
10. If you want low noise, ultrasharp shots at night you will need a tripod. This is the reality. Long exposure is the name for god on the lips of low light photographers and that means tripods. This is the one I use and it fits in a backpack.
    
    
11. Anything other than long exposure, usually even multiple exposures setup with a very low level hdr with a light touch will be a compromise between noise, detail level, or clarity usually all three.
    
    If you still want to shoot handheld.
    
    
12. Shoot in RAW you will need all the dynamic range you can get
    
    
13. Expose for the brightest object you want in focus, rely on your dynamic range you can get away with
    
    
14. Set your camera to about 1/30th shutter speed faster if you can't keep it steady at that, motion blur is worse than noise. Set your ISO to auto and your aperture wide open. This captures the most light your camera is capable of with the shortest shutter speed.
    
    
15. Be ok with shadow, not everything needs to have full detail visible.
    
    
16. Remember you are shooting digital you can recover shadow but you can't recover anything blown out. I will often adjust my exposure dial to -1 or even -2 at night wich is counter-intuitive but allows you to preserve the highlights.
    
    
17. Out of the camera, most low light shots are going to come out oversaturated and if you are shooting under tungsten lights may have wonky colors. Use a cheap white balance card to help resolve this. Also, drop your saturation in your editor by a point or two until the lights shrink just a smidge. It's hard to explain but you will see the effect easily enough.
    
    
18. For a shot like this, I like to put in just a little bit of split one, a little bit of blue into the shadows, and a little orange into the high lights. It will really make it pop. The key here is a little dab will do you.
    
    
19. The "waxy" look you're talking about it is noise, open your aperture all the way, or get a faster lens, or better sensor are your only ways to minimize it short of long shutter speeds. You can correct a fair amount of it with a specialized software, I use either DxO or Topaz Denoise. Keep in mind not everyting needs to be made for large printing, don't fear some noise if it makes the difference between getting the shot or not.
    
    
20. Shooting at night is very rewarding, it's hard, you make do with a lot of compromises but always remember to be safe. I wrote up a list based on my experiences shooting in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cinncinati, and Indy at night. Please read this..
    
    
    Obligatory link to my work so you can get a sense of the style that I go for.
    
    Full disclosure:
    
    None of the links are affiliate links, they are simply products that I use every night I am out. I have bought all my own gear, this is strictly my own experience so your mileage may vary.

Mark Levine's excellent The Jazz Theory Book includes a great list of mandatory repertoire at the end of the book, which I've edited down considerably to this list based on my experience in jam sessions and gigs. For a full-time working jazz musician though, there are many, many more essentials that I'm sure I'm missing. Also, I've tried to omit tunes already mentioned.

I've noted (Alternate Titles) in parentheses and [parent tunes with the same changes] in square brackets.

The tunes:
Ain't Misbehavin', All Blues [3/4 blues], All of Me, All of You, Alone Together, Autumn in New York, Beautiful Love, Billie's Bounce, Black Orpheus (Manha de Carnaval), Blue Bossa, Blues for Alice [Parker blues], Bluesette [3/4 parker blues], Cantaloupe Island, Caravan, Ceora, Chelsea Bridge, Cherokee, Corcovado (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), Darn That Dream, Days of Wine and Roses, Desafinado, Dolphin Dance, Donna Lee [Indiana], Doxy, Embraceable You, Footprints [3/4 minor blues, sort of], Four, Georgia on My Mind, Giant Steps, God Bless The Child, Green Dolphin Street, Have You Met Miss Jones, How Deep Is The Ocean, I'll Remember April, In A Mellow Tone, Invitation, In Walked Bud [Blue Skies], In Your Own Sweet Way, I Remember You, Israel [minor blues], It Could Happen To You, It Don't Mean A Thing, Joy Spring, Just Friends, Limehouse Blues [not actually a blues!], Lover Man, Maiden Voyage, Milestones, Misty, Moanin', Moonlight in Vermont, My Favorite Things, My Foolish Heart, My Funny Valentine, My Heart Stood Still, My Little Suede Shoes, My One and Only Love, My Romance, Night And Day, Now's The Time [blues], Oleo [rhythm changes], One Note Samba, Out Of Nowhere, Over The Rainbow, Poinciana, Recordame, Rhythm-A-Ning [rhythm changes], Ruby My Dear, St. Thomas, Satin Doll, Scrapple From The Apple [Honeysuckle Rose], Skylark, Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, Someday My Prince Will Come, Song For My Father, Sonnymoon For Two [blues], So What, Stardust, Stompin' At The Savoy, Sugar, Summertime, There Is No Greater Love, There Will Never Be Another You, Tune Up, Wave, The Way You Look Tonight, Well You Needn't, When Sunny Gets Blue, Whisper Not, Without A Song, Yardbird Suite, Yesterdays.

Edit: Whoops... my eyes completely skipped the word "skate". Ack. I'll leave this here since it's still good advice in general.

• Read up on photography composition theory, but just the basics and don't take anything as gospel. The rule-of-thirds is a good starting point.
  
• Learn your camera one button at a time. I started off in Aperture-priority auto-exposure mode. This let me manually set my aperture to control the depth-of-field and just experimented with that for awhile. Then I switched to shutter-priority for awhile. Once you've got a good handle on those, you can jump into manual mode and set both by hand.
  
• When shooting JPEG it is pretty crucial to get your white balance setting as correct as possible.
  
• Learn how to switch your ISO setting quickly and efficiently. ISO 100 == slower but less noisy, ISO 1600+ == faster, but grainier.
  
• Take pictures. Thousands and thousands of pictures. I am not kidding. Thousands. (JPEG mode is a good place to start due to the reduced size.)
  
• Experiment. In those thousands of photos, try every kind of framing you can think of.
  
• Review the photos you took. Pick out good ones and examine why you like them. Pick out the worst ones and figure out why they're bad.
  
• Only ever show people the very best photos you've taken. Out of a set of 100 images I'll usually wind up with maybe 6-10 good ones (if I'm lucky). The more I practice, the better my success ratio gets, but know now that you'll wind up not using the vast majority of pictures that you take.
  
• Cropping can save a bad photo. Do not be afraid to crop.
  
• Brightness/Contrast and Color Balance are your friends. Do not be afraid to digitally develop your images. Film photographers have been doing this sort of thing since the invention of photography.
  
  Do this for a year, and then you'll be ready to really start studying the "rules" of photography. I recommend getting The Photographer's Eye as a good all-in-one crash course in photography.
  
  Get Photoshop (or similar program) and learn Brightness/Contrast, Color Balance, Levels, and Curves. Shoot in RAW. Get addicted to expensive pro-quality lenses. Have fun. :)

I've worked in Game Development for several years now, so hopefully I will have something useful to say.

I'd start by asking, whats your end goal here? To be a game designer, or a level designer? To be able to make games on your own? Or to work on large AAA titles as a developer in a big team? Do you want to work on console, PC mobile, social or any of these?

If you want to be a game designer, understanding programming helps, but it's not the be all and end all. If it's console or PC games I'd look at games that come with level editors and try and make some great levels, and develop an understanding of how this works. Level design is a good entry level role to get in to the industry.

I am told this book is also very good for a design perspective - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348088653&sr=8-1

I'd also try and develop a good understanding of how a social game, or a freemium mobile app is different in design to a paid app or game, and how designing around monetisation drives these games.

If you want to make games on your own - or in a small group, you are looking at something like Flash, GameMaker or Unity. Here is a site with a load of stuff that can help you,

http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/

Finally, if you want to do programming, I'd recommend learning a basic entry level language, but not from a games perspective. Just learn about syntax, and fuctions. Then, once you have some confidence, try and write a Space Invaders clone. If you can do this, (get some feedback on it and then nail it), you've got a great thing to show people your commitment and passion, and will help get you a JNR coders job.

Here are some resources I’ve found interesting and/or useful.

Books

There are over 10,000 results for “screenwriting” when you search for books on Amazon.com, and at least one new screenwriting book is published every week.

Here are some “how to” books I recommend:

• How to Write a Movie in 21 Days
  
• Screenplay (Syd Field)
  
• Story (McKee)
  
• Writing for Emotional Impact
  
• Save the Cat (series)
  
• The Screenwriter’s Bible
  
• My Story Can Beat up Your Story
  
  There are also good books about the screenwriting life. Some of my favorites are:
  
  
• What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting
  
• Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting
  
• Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade
  
• Just the Funny Parts: … And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking into the Hollywood Boys’ Club
  
• The First Time I Got Paid For It: Writers’ Tales From The Hollywood Trenches
  
  

  Software
  

  
  Some of the most popular screenwriting format programs include:
  
  

• Celtx (free; upgrades available)
  
• Highland (free, with $49.99 pro upgrade)
  
• Final Draft ($249.99 for Final Draft 11; considered over-priced and widely-loathed, but also the industry standard)
  
• Movie Magic ($99.99 for version 6)
  
  More options are discussed here, and you can find about 40 screenwriting programs at The Writer’s Store.
  
  Most programs have free trials, so you can see which one you like best before you commit.
  
  Having screenwriting software is necessary (IMHO) but not sufficient to write a properly formatted screenplay. The software will let you designate dialogue as V.O. (voice over) or O.S. (off-screen), but it won’t explain when you use which. For that, and for many other things, you need to read something that gets into the details of formatting, like The Screenwriter’s Bible.
  
  Many format programs have lots of bells and whistles including:
  
  
• virtual index cards that can be moved around on virtual cork boards,
  
• text-to-speech (so you can hear robots read your screenplay out loud), and
  
• collaboration functions (which are actually useful if you and your writing partner are in different locations or don’t want to crowd around the same screen).
  
  There are also specialized software programs that supposedly help with plotting and structure, character development, etc., but I’ve never used any.
  
  

  Screenplays
  

  
  You can often find screenplays for produced movies by googling the name of the movie along with “PDF.”
  
  Scott Myers has collected a list of 100+ scripts made available by studios and production companies here.
  
  Scripts often appear online around awards season (roughly the three months before the Oscars) but they may disappear later. So if you find a copy of a script you really want to study, it’s a good idea to download and save it.
  
  You can also try Simply Scripts, The Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb), and Drew’s Script-O-Rama.
  
  Many libraries and bookstores carry published scripts, but often the format will be somewhat different from the original version.
  
  

Hey!

That's awesome you want to learn to create manga! As far as learning how to draw manga with video. Mark Crilley's YouTube channel is incredible. But also if you would like to learn how to draw manga I think it's important to study fundamentals of drawing (Mangaka are trained artists who learn their craft not from drawing manga but drawing from life and creating their own style afterwords) so I would suggest also going through a drawing book or two.


Also here are a few other resources that I think will be incredible for you if you want to not only learn how to draw manga but maybe turn that passion into an actual career!

• Mark Crilley's YouTube channel
  
  
  
• Jake Parker's YouTube channel
  
  
  
• Jason Brubaker's YouTube channel
  
  
  
• Figure Drawing Design and Invention book
  
  Definitely pick this up it's been an incredible learning tool for me and I promise that if you work through this. Your ability will improve drastically!
  
  
• Comics are Great Podcast
  
  Probably the MOST upbeat person in the world of comics/manga
  
  
• Comics Manifest Podcast
  
  My podcast, I interview creators and ask them questions about their work flow, habits, and lessons learned. A resource meant to inspire and encourage creators to keep creating and that building a career in this medium is a possible goal.
  
  
  It seems like you may be fairly young and if that's the case I'm excited for you. Keep working on your craft and I promise that in 5-10 years your work will be incredible! Work hard and keep learning!
  
  
  Good luck!

Increasing the gutter space will definitely be a huge help.

Also, some of the confusion /u/takvertheseawitch is talking about is due to the fact that in the first two panels, the 'camera' is pointing at one side of the characters, only for it to abruptly switch sides in the third panel. That's a big narrative no-no, as it makes it seem like the characters have suddenly swapped positions, which is quite jarring.

Also, an art question: are you able to draw traditionally and then scan in your work? Because I think it is very, very important to learn to draw with basic pencil/pen & paper before you focus entirely on digital.

Keep in mind that I love good digital art, and have a huge respect for those who are adept at it. In fact, some of my favourite comic artists of all time work all-digital (Brian Bolland being a great example). However, I believe that artists should learn to at least be able to do the basics on paper before they make the jump to digital. Some may disagree with me on that, but the vast majority of those who are great at all-digital learned their craft with analogue tools.

Basically, to use a clichéd adage: you've got to learn to walk before you can run.

Also, I highly (highly) recommend you check out the excellent Scott McCloud book, 'Understanding Comics.' It's an essential read for anyone who wants to get into drawing comics, and will help you understand a large variety of visual storytelling techniques.

Oh, and you'd also be amazed what you can learn just by reading the comic work of others. The next time you sit down to read a comic that you enjoy, pay really close attention to how the panels are laid out, how the art is done in each panel. See what works, what doesn't. Look at the page not only as a series of separate panels, but also consider the page as a whole; how do the various panels work together to create a satisfying whole? I read comics nearly every night before bed and, sometimes without even realising it, I subconsciously pick up new things that help me in my craft.

The best of luck with your work!

EDIT: Also, study Wally Wood's 22 Panels that Work and The Disney Comic Artist Tool Kit like your life depends on it.

I'm glad to hear that, though it's a shame to hear he's that sensitive about it. That's another reason I'd recommend against the gallery system (which I'm not a part of myself); many of my peers are and to be honest it's a very...unkind system.

I don't consider myself a sensitive artist but I deal with them on a regular basis so i understand your plight all too well. I might have an idea for how to help that. I recently bought this book, it's by James Gurney the author of the blog I linked to in the sub-comment of this. It could be an excellent christmas gift and at only $16 it won't break the bank. It's probably the single greatest book I've encountered about painting. It's succinct and well written and relies mostly on examples rather than big blocks of text. And if you decided to give it to him you could play it off pretty naieve like, "I know you like painting, here's a cool book about painting!" and probably not hurt his feelings.

Just an idea, might be a good way to circumvent the "sensitive artist" but still give him a good resource to improve.

In any case I salute your effort! Tell him to keep at it :D

I feel like you've been hammered here because of the amateurish nature of your work. Honestly though, I'm pretty sure that's why you came here, knowing that it wasn't up to par, and wanting to know how to change that. Here are some things that I would focus on if I were you:

Typography: By this, I don't mean using different typefaces, but rather the study of how to structure information in a legible manner. I work as a wireframer right now, and everything that I do is Arial. Because of that, I have a maniacal focus on size, leading, value, and block shapes to create a hierarchical system on a grid. A lot of it comes from practice, but I can also recommend some books, Thinking with Type, Designing with Type, Making and Breaking the Grid, and The Mac is Not a Typewriter. Typography is one of the most requested skills by design directors because it is hard and can be very bland, but it is absolutely vital for successful work.

Balance and Rhythm: When you are designing pieces, one of the important things to consider is the structure of negative and positive space. This structure influences the way that the piece is read, and the way that people move through the information. You seem to rely on center aligning things a lot, which is dangerous because it creates no action or movement. This topic isn't as advanced as typography so it's harder to give specific resources, but you can find information on this in any basic design text. I enjoyed Alex White's fundamentals book.

Style and Illustration: The type is amateurish, but what makes the work feel dated is the illustration style. When digital illustration was younger and the tools were rougher, the sort of illustration that I see in your portfolio was very common. The most recent trend has been "Flat", but honestly, anything that can complement or hide the digital nature of its creation can work. If you really would like illustration to be a continued part of your work, I would find some tutorials to really strengthen your Illustrator and Photoshop skills, perhaps stuff from Skillshare or Lynda, or even just internet tutorials.

In General: So to be blunt, you do have a long way to go, I'm not going to sugar coat that. That being said, you do have 2 things extremely in your favor right now.

1. You produce a lot of work. You're getting practice.
   
   
2. You know something is wrong. You're looking for a way to improve.
   
   Ira Glass has a really incredible short piece about creative work that describes the place where you are caught right now. Your taste is not aligning with your skills. You have taken the first step in the right direction, so now you need to go study more and keep seeking critique (Not criticism). Whether that is on design_critiques, or from a colleague or friend doesn't matter. Find a place where someone who is better than you can tell you what isn't working and challenge your status quo.
   
   Good luck, and keep at it!

> Obviously if I were to jump into a jazz improv session I couldn't say "wait everybody, tell me the exact order of the chords you're going to play and I'll memorize some scales to them really quick".

Exactly, this is how rock players tend to approach jazz and it's hopelessly difficult for most situations. Plus, even if you manage to do it you're unlikely to sound like a jazz musician. I wasted a fair bit of time trying to do this back in the day. Here's a clip of Hal Galper laying into this approach; incidentally, you should watch all his clips, they're great.

In particular, I wouldn't worry at all about "jazz theory". I'm not even convinced such a thing exists. I mean, if you want to you can work through a college textbook like Levine but it won't make you a jazz player. I think /u/awindupgirl is 100% right on this.

Echoing what others have already said I would say your first steps are:

• Start listening obsessively to jazz. Not jazz-rock, not avant garde, not recent stuff but bebop and similar stuff from the '40s & '50s. Include some vocal jazz (Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan etc) because you'll also need to...
  
• Start learning standard tunes. That means you can sing and play the melody and play the chords without looking at the lead sheet. I know everyone moans about them but get the Real Book and use that for now. This list is useful guidance. [EDIT: Also, lead sheets for most standards can be turned up by a Google image search.]
  
• It will help to learn some jazz chord grips, which tend to be different from what rock players use. This resource will get you started. When you go to a jazz jam, most of the time you'll be comping (playing chords) so this is a key skill.
  
• Slowly start attempting to solo on the changes to tunes you know using chord tones, like /u/beardling described. If you know your CAGED arpeggios from your rock days, that will help massively. When trying to solo, always keep the melody of the song in your head. You're playing the song, not noodling to a backing track.
  
• Also, start transcribing. That means picking a solo that's not too fast and complicated-sounding on a tune you already know, and listenign to it over and over with your guitar in your hand until you can play some of the phrases you hear. This takes a long time and is extremely frustrating. As with many things, the people who succeed are the ones who don't give up just because it seems impossible.
  
  Most of the time you spend on the above should be spent listening and playing, not book-learning.
  
  You'll probably find this page, and the whole rest of the site, useful. It's not everyone's thing but I'd also recommend checking out Kenny Werner [EDIT: link].
  
  Finally, good time is the single most important thing in jazz. Set the metronome to click on the 2 and 4 like Emily Remler tells you in the video in the sidebar and really nail your timing. You can play any note on any chord and make it work but if you're out of time nothing will sound good.

I totally love the Christopher Alexander books. Definitely check out his The Timeless Way of Building which is a great companion piece to A Pattern Language. You should know that his works, while great in my opinion, are sort of considered idiosyncratic and not really in the mainstream of architecture/urban design.

Here's a short reading list you should look at:

The Smart Growth Manual and Suburban Nation by Andres Duany & Jeff Speck. Another set of sort-of-companion works, the Manual has a concrete set of recommendations inspired by the critique of modern town planning in Suburban Nation and might be more useful for your purposes.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs is probably the most famous and influential book on city planning ever and contains a lot of really original and thoughtful insights on cities. Despite being over half-a-century old it feels very contemporary and relevant.

The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler is similarly mostly a critique of modernist planning principles but is both short and very well written so I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

Makeshift Metropolis by Witold Rybczynski: I can't recommend this entire book, but it does contain (in my opinion) the best summary of the history of American urban planning. Really useful for a historical perspective on different schools of thought in city design over the years.

The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup is the book on parking policy. It's huge (700+ pages) and very thorough and academic, so it might be harder to get through than the other, more popular-audience-oriented titles on the list, but if you want to include parking as a gameplay element, I really can't recommend it highly enough. It's a problem that's thorny enough most city games just ignore it entirely: Simcity2013's developers say they abandoned it after realizing it would mean most of their players' cities would be covered in parking lots, ignoring that most actual American cities are indeed covered in parking lots.

Finally there's a bunch of great blogs/websites out there you should check out: Streetsblog is definitely a giant in transportation/design blogging and has a really capable team of journalists and a staggering amount of content. Chuck Marohn's Strong Towns blog and Podcast are a great source for thinking about these issues more in terms of smaller towns and municipalities (in contrast to Streetsblog's focus on major metropolitan areas). The Sightline Daily's blog does amazing planning/transpo coverage of the Pacific Northwest. Finally [The Atlantic Cities] (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/) blog has incredible coverage on city-issues around the world.

I hope this was helpful and not overwhelming. It's a pretty big (and in my opinion, interesting) topic, so there's a lot of ground to cover even in an introductory sense.

So first step to improvement is self examination. As long as you are hungry and looking for ways to improve it's going to happen with practice. All things considered you are doing pretty well for doing this one year and not having a background in music(saying your self taught is I guess what this means) is. So right now what is the difference between you and most people on soundcloud. Frankly not much. But out of let's say 1000 people who are at the level where you are how many say, "Yeah what I got is pretty good" compare to yourself who says "Alright, what I got is fair but how do I take it further". There are people out there better than you but if you are hungry and want to learn you will eventually pass them.

Now regarding your product. Beats are fine. If you were collabing with someone who wanted a simple beat for them to burn on its fine. But fine doesn't cut it with so many people out there. You need to learn how to use equalization, compression, filtering, delay, reverb. These are just as important as what you compose. You have a vision right? You hear other people's beats that you want to get close to. The more you learn the dynamics and effects the better your will be. And yeah when it's appropriate automate your tracks man. Not to a point where you step all over an artist but enough to engage the listener. Rule of four, if something doesn't change in four measures people check out.

I highly recommend this book for someone like yourself.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0240815807/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1466480159&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=small+studio+mixing

Lastly yeah you should be collaborating. You will touch base with people who are ahead of you now but like yourself there's always someone trying to come up. The more you practice w people the better. Keep at it man. You will get better it's just part of the process.

First off, I think this is the most elaborate contest I've ever participated in, so congratulations for that :P Fear cuts deeper than swords. I hope some of my items are awesome enough for some extra credit ;) Also I wasn't sure if duplicates are allowed. I will revise if necessary.

1.) Something grey and it's been on my wishlist.

2.) Rain, well not technically rain, she is a water bender :P Previously on my wishlist.

3.) Unusual, I think this is something I would use like twice a year. With ice cream or cereal.

4.) Someone else My sister and I want to start playing tabletop games. Previously on my wishlist.

5.) "Book" I took a little bit of liberty with this one because it's a graphic novel. But it's Batman, so...(Previously on my wishlist).

6.) Under a dollar.

7.) Cats There's a catbus in it, which is pretty much the best part of the movie. Previously on my wishlist.

8.) Beautiful As a Star Wars fan having the original trilogy on Blu Ray would be beautiful to me. I love high definition movies, especially ones that are aesthetically pleasing. Previously on my wishlist.

9.) Movie As a Browncoat, I would encourage anyone who has a remote interest in Sci-Fi to give this a chance. Previously on my wishlist.

10.) Zombie tool I don't think this needs explanation.

11.) (Updated) Useful for future. I have a desire to create meaningful video games. Previously on wish list.

12.) Add on I actually had this on my wishlist but removed it because add-on items are lame.

13.) Most expensive As previously stated, I want to be a game developer/designer so not only would it be fun to play with, I could create with it too. Previously on list.

14.) Bigger than breadbox Total in the box it is bigger than a breadbox. Previously on wishlist.

15.) Bigger than a golf ball It's a large book. Previously on wishlist.

16.) Smells good As a guy...I enjoy the scent of lavender.

17.) Safe for children toy I don't think this needs any introduction of why it's awesome.

18.) Back to school drawing helps keep me sane. Previously on my list.

19.) Current obsession I'm a noob to tabletop games. But have been wanting to get into it obsessively within the past month or so. And this also takes my love of A Song of Ice and Fire into the mix. Previously on list.

20.) [Amazing] (http://www.amazon.com/Sony-XBR-65X900A-65-Inch-120Hz-Ultra/dp/B00BSREQI6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1376281533&sr=8-4&keywords=4k+tv) I've seen one of these in person at the mall and it literally made me stop walking the resolution was so incredible. I know it's as expensive as dicks...but man...when these are affordable...

Bonus 2) Made in Oregon I would have put Tillamook Ice Cream, since it's pretty awesome...but alas not on Amazon.

Edit: Changed an item because I saw it won't count because it's a duplicate.

It's great in cartoons! I love our eternal mouse overlord. I love Disney. But when I was a kid I had this awesome book called How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way I just always thought that my idols like Kirby, Buscema, Franzetta, Ditko, Wrightson, Romita Sr. ect, were so talented that they were one in a million and drawing to their level would take a lifetime of dedication and natural talent. And that is why they worked for Marvel Comics because of their unparalleled talent.

Now I realize at the end of the day it is a book that is made to be sold for a profit. I get that. It's a business. But I just always thought keeping a certain level of quality in your art was a cornerstone for Marvel. There have been some stinkers here and there and some Leifeilds. But generally a Marvel book has always had a certain consistency with art. It's always been really good!

I'm not pointing fingers or even pointing out a certain timeline for the demise in the art. Or even matching a certain cheap anime style. Don't mistake me. I don't think an acquisition to the eternal mouse overlord had anything to do with this. I mean paying that extra $0.99 for a Marvel title should be enough on it's own right? You get nice paper, great art, and fantastically original stories right? I wouldn't know cause I dropped all my mouse droppings over a year ago. I mean how do you make X-Men suck? Even Clairmont couldn't do that on his short run. </sarcasm>

Some of the newer ones...maybe. But as a means to block out shapes and forms it is very concisely set up. You can find the same info online too but it has a pretty solid core for most aspects of drawing. Perspective, shading, for-shortening, and basic proportions. Once you can break a body into basic shapes at the right proportions you can go deeper into anatomy. Which, if I remember it even touches on this too.

Does it have a comic book slant? Yes. But most really skilled comic artists spend a great deal of time understanding anatomy (rob liefeld not withstanding).

Breaking down the depth of the eyes and slopes of the nose. That comes after you understand to basics.

Now the one I am recommending is Stan Lee’s how to draw comics the marvel way, the original. I saw a newer version and was not as impressed. But the original is still sold online.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Comics-Marvel-Way/dp/0671530771

Edit: saw you hand work and you are on the right track. Hands and feet are super hard to get the hang of.

Look of some of the classic painters, Da Vinci has great hand sketches to review or grays anatomy of useful but you can download for free online.

One thing that helped me with getting a softness of form in hands was old Archie comics. Incredibly simplistic but had a delicate aspect to them. All about shapes and form.

There are a lot of resources online - youtube etc, but I prefer books so when I decided to teach myself how to play around 2 and a half years ago I used Alfred's Adult all-in-one, progressive sight reading, and Easy classics to moderns.

Once I felt comfortable enough with sight reading, I just started buying whatever I liked. I also sit down and transcribe the music I like. Just got done learning this track from pride and prejudice, and it barely took a week to learn! It's so wonderful to see my fingers flying across the keys, I can't even describe it.

You might also like flowkey.

Good luck, and I'm sure you'll thank present you for starting - say 5 years from now, when you're sitting at your piano and feeling generally amazing after a particularly good improvisation :)

I have some experience with webcomics. I write and draw Miamaska, which has been going on for 2+years, and I'm about to start my second comic next month.

General advice for web comickers!

(or: How I learned things the hard way and eventually stumbled into a good system)

• Always have a buffer. Always update on time. Be dependable, your readers won't invest in your story if you seem flaky.
  
  
• Don't do video/audio or fullpage ads. New readers will close your tab out of annoyance, and those that stay will be extremely peeved when trying to read a chapter all at once.
  
  
• Set up donation incentives. Wallpapers, progress art for the next update, bonus page when a certain amount is reached, bonus mini-comic, etc!
  
  
• Interact with readers! Put up a comment box, do twitter and tumblr, do request drawings. It's fun, a confidence boost, and a good way to build a fan base.
  
  Regarding dialogue and pacing... what I tend to do is thumbnail an entire scene (3-15 pages for me) first and read through it a few times. I'll leave mini-cliffhangers at the end of each page (like a question, or a realization, or a character entering the scene). During this little review process, I'll also make sure the view for the reader doesn't violate the 180 rule too much, that it's obvious which bubble should be read next, and where the reader is going to look first.
  
  I don't have any experience in the print form of comics yet. So no advice there. Just make sure your comics are in print resolution as well (300+ DPI), or you'll be sorry later.
  
  Resource time
  
  I didn't have many resources starting out, but I'm gonna recommend these for you and anyone else interested:
  
  PaperWings Podcast -- podcast and blog on web comic-making (ongoing, good community, regular but sparse updates, good backlog). Has even more resources on its website.
  
  Art and Story -- podcast on print +web comic-making and the comic industry (ended, but a great backlog).
  
  Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics, and Making Comics by cartoonist Scott McCloud, worth a read for any comicker. A little more geared towards print, but breaks down comic theory really nicely.
  
  Comics and Sequential Art, Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative, Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative, by Will Eisner.
  
  Those books are pretty popular, so you can probably pick them up from the library or find them on the web somewhere.

Regarding speakers for your studio, you don't need the huge hi-fi speakers that big studios have, they use those mainly to flatter artists and industry reps. For mixing, you should get a set of speakers with a relatively flat frequency response that spotlights the midrange and has low distortion. The Avatone Mix Cube is good for this. You only really need one because a lot of mixing is in mono. The Yamaha NS10s are also good (these are more expensive and are pretty standard in most studios. The thing about these speakers is not that they sound good, but that, on first listen, you'd probably think they sound bad; they highlight problems in your mix.

I imagine if you're doing hip-hop a lot of your listeners will listen on headphones so it's useful to do some mixing on headphones (you might do mono mixing on your nearfield and work out panning and stereo stuff on headphones, for example), so get two good pairs of studio headphones-one for you, and one for people you record (unless you're building this to record yourself, although if people know you have this cool studio they might want to get in on the action and it'd be good to be prepared for that if it does happen-you might also want to record a feature on your track or something).

Get a DAW and know it back and forth. I would say for your purposes, unless you're already well-versed in Pro Tools or already have a copy of it, don't get Pro Tools-there's a huge learning curve and it's by far the most expensive. Reaper has a free demo that you can use indefinitely and FL Studio and Audacity are free. Ableton is what most producers use but it's not really made for tracking or mixing, so what some people do is they produce in Ableton and bounce the track to another DAW to mix.

Microphone-wise, ideally for vocals you want a large-diaphragm condenser. A small-diaphragm will work too but LDCs are standard. You can record on a dynamic mic but they usually need a lot more gain which might mean more noise and you'll need to be handy at mixing to get the sound you want out of a dynamic mic.

If you're investing in a big project like this, read a lot and know what you're doing. This book will get you started on mixing techniques and the basics. This one is a must, it starts out with some chapters on how to acoustically treat the room you're working in which even though it isn't glamorous or fun is totally vital to a good studio.

It does get boring, it's study. It's up to you to learn to have fun with it.

Divide your time between the study and the fun, spend some time doing gesture drawings(they serve as great warmups), then some time doing figure drawing, then move on and draw something for you.
I think the key to it is focusing on what you learn while drawing from life, and learning how that translates to styles you love.

As for resources, I personally believe for character/figure work, a good anatomy book can go a long way. Figure drawing design and invention by Michael Hampton or Classic Human Anatomy by Valerie Winslow are my personal recommendations, but there are plenty of great books out there. The idea is when you get stuck on something then you reference it, and study it; work it out on the side of your drawing, or on a separate sheet/layer, but understand it as best you can before moving on.

Online recommendations, like most people mention, Proko is great, good information, and easy to understand.
For environments and design Feng Zhu's Design Cinema is a goldmine of solid tips.
I've found Kienan Laffarty to have a lot of good general information on all sorts of topics, like color, design, etc.

finally I think watching other artists work in real time(not the 400% sped up timelapses) can be indispensable in understanding how to handle the nuances of creating believable forms, or just how to progress your work from rough to finished, if you go in with the mindset to study what they're doing.

My degree was only in Film, which was heavily spent on theory, which at the time I thought was stupid. I wanted to learn the tools.

Now I realize that it's actually a lot more important to understand how and why things work(the kuleshov effect, editing theories, story archetypes) because the tools are always changing(at an insane rate too). Learning these theories and studying the past gives you a better "eye" and more inspiration to pull from.

So you can take those ideas/theories you learned in film school and apply them to almost any visual medium. I was already using After Effects and Photoshop outside of class(heavily) and I originally wanted to be an editor. So eventually I just cutup a reel of all the animations I was doing in my free-time. Luckily learning all those techniques and devouring tons of other material and reels allowed me to create a shitty but short reel(nobody wants to watch 2 minutes of garbage animation).

It was enough to get me an internship, which lead to my first advertising job, which lead to my second job in a much higher paying field. In-order to keep up and progress I basically just bought a bunch of textbooks on animation and design.

I didn't read all of the books, I just got what I needed from them and moved on. Online communities are incredibly helpful as well. You can learn everything you need about design, animation, and even film online. Just create a good portfolio.


And I'd just like to clarify animation is a pretty broad term, technically I'm in the middle of design, animation, and video. I've worked on commercials, installations, and explainer videos and I'd like to eventually get into title sequences like the Bond intros or True Detective titles.


I'd recommend picking up these books.

Animators Survival Guide

Design for Motion

Animated Storytelling

Also start learning some of the tools. All of the adobe programs are heavily used, specifically After Effects, and some 3D programs like Cinema4D are helpful. As with anything it's good to get the fundamentals down. People don't realize how much animation there is in their daily lives. From apps to games to TV shows. You can carve out a niche in anyone of those spaces.

Hmmm... this is a tough one to answer. I consider myself to be one who oozes confidence, so I feel like I have the authority to answer.

First, body language is a good, simple one to fix. Always walk with shoulders back and chin up. Also, from this TED talk, I learned that you look/feel more confident when you spread yourself out while seated. This TED talk has truly left a lifelong impact on me.

As far as talking goes, always be learning and always be passionate about what you're learning. I guess that's the biggest part. When I speak, I'm very enthusiastic about what I'm talking about, and I try to tailor my conversation topic to link it somehow to what the other person is interested in or has been doing lately. And -- very important -- I make sure to keep my enthusiastic rants short and to the point, always being aware of how long I've been talking. This is all a lot easier when what your learning can be related to a lot of things, or, conversely, if you're learning about a variety of different things.

You also really need to build confidence, which I think is actually easier than it sounds. If you want confidence, you need to build self-esteem. To build self-esteem, set goals and achieve them. And these don't need to be huge, difficult goals, either. For the past few years, as a college student, I've switched majors three times, so I've never been able to really pick something to obsess over and accomplish. But I have been exploring my interests, and during this exploration I've accomplished a lot of small tasks that have made me a more learned person. Even little things: over the past few months, I've gotten really into comic books, and last night I got hooked on a couple of new series (Afterlife with Archie and Trillium if you're interested). I've been reading books and watching lectures outside of school and taking notes on them. Right now I'm taking notes on Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. None of these "accomplishments" will get me any awards, but they make me a more cultured and more interesting person. And I enjoy the experience.

Make sure you're exercising. If I go a couple days without exercising, I physically feel like crap, and my self-esteem takes a dip. Make sure you're exercising, and make sure you set goals for yourself so you can build confidence as you achieve them. I've been weightlifting since the 8th grade, and just last week I was approached at the gym by someone who wanted to recruit me onto the school's rugby club. It's little things that slowly pile up to make you confident.

Lastly -- and this is more along the lines of your question -- teach yourself to be aware of other peoples' social cues. You can only really learn this through experience and/or by deliberately paying attention, but it's something that's INCREDIBLY important. If you notice that the person is "zoning out" while you're talking or that they're barely acknowledging you while you speak, stop talking to them and ask them a question. Most people enjoy talking about themselves, so it's a good thing for people to associate their joy of talking about themselves with the time they spend with you. This doesn't make you a 'beta' male or an interrogator, so long as you make room for yourself to contribute to the conversation.

And don't be a dick. Everyone hates assholes. Golden Rule and whatnot.

This is pretty good! It's impressive you were able to work that out by ear.

If you can learn to read sheet music, that will really help you out a great deal. If one issue you have is reading rhythms, you need to use a counting system. (The system I use is described in this PDF.) An excellent resource for reading rhythms is the book Rhythmic Training, which you can get inexpensively, especially if you buy it used. (Edit: note that this book is for professional/college level musicians, so if you can't get all the way through, that is completely OK. But going through the first few chapters slowly and steadily and clapping the rhythms is probably a good idea.)

For reading notes on clefs, you kind of just have to do it. It takes a lot of practice and will be slow going at first, but will get easier. One book for piano that includes both the very basics of music theory and some things on technique is Alfred's Basic Adult All-in-One Course. Maybe you could ask for Book 1 for Christmas, if you celebrate Christmas?

As far as technique goes, one thing I notice is that the index finger of your left hand is collapsing at the first knuckle (screenshot). That shouldn't happen. You might find this video (by piano professor John Mortensen) helpful on what your hand should look like when you play.

Good luck as you keep playing!

Gotcha! Some resources that might be helpful:

Loomis has some good (free) books on constructive figure drawing, which is what you want to learn if you're interested in drawing characters out of your head. I'd recommend Figure Drawing for What It's Worth in particular.

Ctrl+paint is another great resource for learning the art fundamentals that are specifically relevant to illustration. He also has a lot of great information on how to get into Photoshop.

If you want to be drawing characters, it would probably be good to thoroughly learn anatomy. I've seen scattered tutorials for this, but I've had better luck with books- Burne Hogarth and Bridgeman are good, and I've also found Netter's anatomy useful for learning the names of bones and muscles.

For color theory, I would recommend Gurney's Color and Light.

Also check out the sidebar, there's a ton of educational material under "useful links."

I would recommend starting with ctrl+paint or Loomis, and working from there. Both sources will give you an overview of a lot of topics that you can go on to explore in more depth. And of course, keep up the practice.

Best of luck!

I'm late to the party, but I made a cheat sheet for my boss niece last week: here's all the ressources I can think of to kick butts at matte painting.

The sites where we pay per month

Gnomon Online School
Super school of vfx in California. They have on their site a lot of tutorials from 8 to 20 hours to learn to make your own camera projections. You can either pay (expensive but worth it) for a private class with a teacher via Skype. Or you pay (cheaper) for a bank of tutorials.

private lessons
https://www.gnomon.edu/courses/online


the bank of tutorials
https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials?tags[]=matte-painting


I recommend: All the tutorials of Dylan Cole (vol 1, 2,3), Camera Projection Techniques in Maya, Matte Painting Production techniques, etc.




Plural Sight (formerly Digital Tutors)


a site that has courses on a little everything. This site is very good when you want to learn new programs. Excellent serie on the 3D which becomes more and more present in the matte painting, and some tutorials


https://app.pluralsight.com/library/


related to 3D

Quick start to modeling in Maya (volume 1,2,3)
Professional Tips for Modeling Complex Shapes


related to matte painting

Photo manipulation and Clean Plating Fundamentals
Matte Painting Basic and the Static Camera Shot


Sites where we pay per tutorial (Gumroad, etc.)



The tutorials of Anthony Eftekhari

Good DMP tutorials that show you the latest techniques and how to do it step by step.


https://gumroad.com/anthonye

The tutorials of Eytan Zana

More concept art, but the main lines apply just as well to the DMP.

https://gumroad.com/eytanzana


Free sites and tutorials


Garrett Fry's blog

He also has a Facebook group that helps each other in DMP, it is THE technical reference for matte painting. His blog is full of technical stuff for camera projections (aka moving your matte painting). A treasure of information.
https://www.gfryart.com/blog



Other


TEXTURES! (Or can we find good textures to make DMP)


CGtexture

http://www.textures.com

Flickr (Matte Painting References)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjframe/sets/72157605581901392/

Flickr (Matte Painting Resources)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dman3d2000/sets/72157629164518650/

Photobash.org (paying a card)

https://www.photobash.org/

Pictures of Jacek Pilarski

https://gumroad.com/jacekpilarski

Books (yes yes, it's a thing)

Digital Matte Painter Handbook

it's old, the drawings are ugly, the photoshop stuff in it is pure candy though. Full of stuff in DMP that I have never seen elsewhere but that is the basis of the trade. Still actual today. The matte painting of the castle in is also an excellent starting point if you start from scratch.

https://www.amazon.ca/Digital-Matte-Painting-Handbook/dp/0470922427/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1523975893&sr=1-1&keywords=Digital+Matte+Painting+Handbook

How to draw and How to Render

Scott Robertson, a big shot of concept art, shows the basics of traditional drawings, perspective, etc. An essential.

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=pd_sim_14_4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=GWB27RDDYF5E0JG7TTY0

https://www.amazon.ca/How-Render-fundamentals-shadow-reflectivity/dp/1933492961/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=K9W1RK5K9KVWMPY14EAE

Imaginative Realism and Color and Light

James Gurney is an illustrator who specializes in realistic fantasy artwork with traditional mediums, excellent cues on light and color

https://www.amazon.ca/Imaginative-Realism-Paint-Doesnt-Exist/dp/0740785508?th=1&psc=1&source=googleshopping&locale=en-CA&tag=googcana-20&ref=pd_sl_2y2j9az9y9_e

https://www.amazon.ca/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YCNYYJCTNJ4405KD1S6B

Nuke 101

We can make the projection of matte painting in Nuke or Maya. An excellent book for Nuke.

https://www.amazon.ca/Nuke-101-Professional-Compositing-Effects/dp/0321984129/ref=pd_sim_14_8?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=FNST5YS1F7464SZY3QZV

First off, congratulations on getting your comic book published! Your drawing is fantastic and, as a comic reader, I would pick it up for the cover alone. That's quite a feat, as I'm very picky. :)

As for the coloring, I'm not great at color personally, but I've been reading a lot about it lately and can maybe offer a useful opinion from what I've learned. It looks to me like the difference between the orange foreground and the blue background is too stark. I'm not sure if the blue flames are meant to be in the same physical area as the people in the foreground, but blue flames would cast blue light on objects, not white light (or lighter orange), and would bring the two parts of the picture together. If they aren't meant to be in the same physical space, I would maybe use a gradient on the blue pathway or create a delineation of some sort to separate where they're standing from the fire behind them.

If it's the former situation, there's a great book called Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter that covers all sorts of lighting and how it interacts with color and illustrates the idea of color transference much better than I can. I've mentioned it on here before, but I can't really recommend it enough; it completely changed my understanding of light in art. It also covers working with a (deliberately) limited color palette, which helped me a lot with actually understanding color theory instead of just picking random opposites/compliments off a color wheel in despair.

I also (and only upon closer examination...at first glance it seems fine to me) think the hands in the foreground need a different value from the figures in the midground to provide a better sense of depth and focus. If you look at the image in grayscale, I suspect the hands and the figures would be very similar. I wouldn't make a huge change, but having the hands and figures all the same color and same value makes them blend together, where a bit more contrast (light and dark) would help draw the eye to the figures. Obviously your composition does most of the work there, but color can either boost a composition or take away from it and I think it could be working harder for you here.

I hope this doesn't sound critical; honestly, the more I look at your cover, the more I like it, and these are the only issues I could find. I think your flames are great, and I'm really impressed by the coloring/shading on the hands in front. Who's your publisher, so I can pick up a copy?

A big thing is to not let your practice routine stagnate. Take it from a (tuba) performance major who learned most of his stuff without lessons. You need to keep fresh material under your fingers. Pick up the Jazz Theory Book and use some of the examples in there for scale and key studies.

Also, I would highly recommend studying classical rep as well, work ona new solo peice every month, and try to play (and work up) one etude (at least) every week.

You practice should look like this, in essence:

10-15min of warm-up with long tones (focusing on superb sound and tone at ALL dynamic ranges), and easy, finger warming chromatic scales and the like.

30min of etude practice (try to do a new one every week)

30min of solo rep/stuff from band you need to work on

whatever time is left to you doing scale studies and jazz improv.


As far as getting better at jazz, the biggest one I know of is simply transcribing solos of other players and playing them. It takes for FUCKING ever, but if you're serious, it's what you do. Since I only ever play Bass Trombone in jazz band, it's not really worth it to me, but if you're looking to get better at tenor, man, listen to some coltrane and write down what he's doing for at least one chorus and play it with him. You start to assimilate some of the licks he uses and get an innate understanding of how to navigate the chords. Start with blues based songs, since they're the easiest. Move up to rhythm changes when you have solid material for any blues song. After that, man, you'll be set.


ALSO, you can always google and find some great stuff written by other great players, either on forums or on professional player's personal websites. I learned alot of what I know doing that when I didn't have lessons.

If you have any questions, send me a PM and I'll do my best to help out.

If you can spare the money I most definitely recommend finding a teacher. You will want to start with rudiments (they can be boring, but you'll be glad you did them in the long haul) and while you can pick them up from books, having a teacher giving feedback helps a lot. You don't have to stay with a teacher on the long-term, if you make it clear that you just want a solid base most teachers know what you mean and want.

If you don't have that money, these are three books I highly recommend to anybody who wants to play any percussion instrument:

http://www.amazon.com/Stick-Control-For-Snare-Drummer/dp/1892764040/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

Description: This book is full of rudiments. Like ctrocks said: This book is evil. You will most likely both grow to hate and love it. Hate it for both how boring rudiments can get (to me, at least) and how hard they get. But love it for the results and seeing how all those rudiments advance your playing immensely. I suggest picking this up as soon as possible.



http://www.amazon.com/Accents-Rebounds-For-Snare-Drummer/dp/1892764067/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343162586&sr=8-1&keywords=Accents+and+Rebounds

Description: The 'sequel' to Stick Control. This book adds accents and even more difficult rhythms. I would suggest picking this up at an intermediate level.

http://www.amazon.com/Progressive-Steps-Syncopation-Modern-Drummer/dp/0882847953/ref=cm_lmf_tit_5

Description: Don't let this book fool you. It all starts out really simple. But this is one of those books that really lays down a foundation you will be very grateful for. And when you're getting to a more advanced level, you will see how you can translate a lot of these syncopated rhythms to the entire drumkit. I suggest picking this up as soon as possible.


http://www.amazon.com/4-Way-Coordination-Development-Complete-Independence/dp/0769233708/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c

Description: This book is very well named. You will want to grab this book after you got the basics down, imo. You want to work on the independence of your limbs as soon as possible, but not too soon. Yet again: rudiments. But now rudiments that require all limbs.


http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Techniques-For-Modern-Drummer/dp/0757995403

Description: We're starting to get into the bigger leagues with this book. I honestly don't quite know how to describe this book except for the word: challenging. Challenging in a very, very good way. I recommend picking this up once you're starting to get into a more advanced stage.


These books are for the basics, imo and in the opinion of many fellow drummers as far as I know. But don't forget: the books are merely tools. You don't want to be only playing rudiments, you'll go crazy. I tended to go for a trade: every half out of rudiments rewards me with a half our of putting on tracks and rocking out. Resulting in one-hour sessions a day. Hope this helps!

Edit: Feeling bored so added more books and descriptions.

Nice to see someone just hop into drawing :)
As /u/Lotusbunny mentioned, everyone learns differently. You need to find the right way that fits for you. If you really want to improve and don't hesitate to spend some money, search for some drawing and sketching books. There are tons out there. My approach was a bit more techy because I like Industrialdesign and Scifi, so I bought myself How to Draw from Scott Robertson and How to Render from Scott Robertson

Same goes for environment, anatomy, rendering, etc, there is a huge amount of books you can choose from. Also Imagine FX is a nice magazine with tutorials and cool stuff to read, see and learn. They also got a Youtube Channel Give it a try.

But of course you can entirely come back to Youtube videos. A quick search with 'How to draw X' and you're ready to go. Also twitch is really nice where you can see people drawing in realtime. BUT don't rely enterily on videos - you won't get better by watching hours of tutorials without actually drawing :)

For anatomy Posemaniacs is awesome! Tons of poses you can choose and study from. Grab you Wacom or pencil and keep drawing. The 30 seconds drawing option is very nice to improve your time limit output.


The keywords are practice and patience. Art and drawing is a skill you need to obtain, digitally or mechanically. It won't grow overnight so don't force yourself with every piece to get better and better. You will automatically with every minute you're drawing.

And the best thing to do is to improve your visual library. Look at pictures and try to adapt. You need to see and remember things before you can draw them without looking them up first. Always open up references you can rely on. I'd suggest you start to paint studys first. Open up Daily Dozen and redraw/study a picture you like. First start off with black & white and if you're confident, get into color. Also, a great way to improve your skill is to limit your time. Start with quick and small thumbnails with a 10 minute limit, then 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hour and open end. With this you are first forced to concentrate on the overall look and composition rather than details and with the 1 hour and above ones you can do more and more finished paintings.

One thing that scares many is a blank canvas. If you want to start, first get rid of the blank white space. Fill in a gradient, quickly paint some diffuse silhouettes or fill it with a colour but get rid of the plain canvas.


I don't know which software you're using (I assume Photoshop) but for the brushes and functions - just test them out. You don't need a ton of textured brushes but sometimes they're a nice addition. Search online for brushes and test them. Keep the ones you like and get the best results with.

Besides that - keep on and practice a lot :)


Btw, I did a small redo in Pixelart some time ago for someone :)

I've recently taken up photography as a hobby. r/photography can be a little pretentious, but the resources linked on the side are generally pretty helpful.

Granted, there is a bit of a startup fee, whether that's buying a point and shoot with manual controls, a bridge camera, or springing for a full-blown DSLR. I started with a Panasonic DMC-LX5 which is a very, very good point and shoot, but I recently have been using my dad's Nikon D40x that he never uses since I felt increasingly silly looking into the screen instead of a viewfinder. Learning about exposure and being able to shoot in full-manual mode is incredibly rewarding.

To improve my photography, I plan to take a picture every day for at least 100 days. Having a guideline really helps motivate me to get out and shoot.

There are a lot of good books out there like the Tom Ang Digital Photography books, which are good technical information about exposure or The Photographer's Eye and its sequels for composition. Recently I've been reading The Passionate Photographer by Steve Simon, which is an incredible photo essay/photojournalism book that is my favorite photography book so far, and has inspired me to start taking more photojournalistic style pictures.

edit: fixed a link

I'd say it's a pretty complex set of conditions that need to be met, ranging from game DNA, the technical scope, cost of the project, and the market viability/RoI (unless you have a grant or are making an art game).

Recently, I've really gotten into Scott Rigby's work because he seems to be on to a testable idea surrounding the DNA, but I also pull from Jesse Schell and others--I just prefer Rigby because he's testing the ideas, not just arguing for them. Using his framework, I can place features into different categories before writing up actual design specs, so before the feature's nuts and bolts even exist, I know where it fits into the machine ("This aids in the competency part", "This aids in the autonomy part", etc.)

The technical scope and cost go roughly hand-in-hand after you've got the DNA and design specs going on, but you can do things in stages. Make a prototype with programmer art, the most essential features, and test it. If that does well, pull from the plan and add more based on cost. Test again, etc. Build up the team as you need. If something isn't playtesting well, figure out if its worth it to double down or scrap. And if you're scrapping something central to the DNA, then figure out if you can replace it with a functionally similar feature or scrap the game.

The market viability and RoI can be more or less important depending on the type of game. If it's something like Jason Rohrer's Gravitation, then your scope and technical cost is smaller, and you might have a grant, so there's less risk to sell. If you're making a F2P mobile game, you're at the exact opposite--business is much more at the forefront and really has to be for a financially successful game. AAA are less extreme vs. F2P, although there's high investment which certainly puts the pressure on, but the business model isn't there as much. An Indie PC, crowd-funded darling focuses much more on the developer/community relations and how the community, when treated as investors, have a voice in development, like any other investors would. So there's complex constraints there too (the public may not understand a decision at first or might disagree with you, do you explain and try to win them over or listen to the sway of the crowd?)

As you mentioned, there's also platform concerns that will change the design. A mobile phone experience is different than a tablet experience. The market's on those platforms react differently to different products. I wouldn't make a game with features that indie PC gamers would love on mobile because the market just isn't there. Likewise, I wouldn't make a console game on mobile phones, because that mistakes what people want out of mobile phone experiences over a long period of time. Other features, like VR, come with huge unknowns because we're just starting to work in that space.

Finally, I would say, "Make something you would like." and "Make something you can sleep with at night." If you want to make something like Smash, do it, but put your own spin, since you can't make Smash (unless you work at Nintendo). If you work in F2P, make something you would like to play, not just something you think will make money. And, paradoxically, realize that sometimes you aren't the consumer (AAA and mobile F2P come to mind), and in those cases, playtest and listen to the people more than your gut.

Well, governments sort of do already, but not anywhere near the scale of the subsidies that are given to drivers.

Every car lane on a road that isn't a private toll road is an indirect subsidy for drivers and the frequent mandates that new development contain X amount of free parking spaces. There is a good book on this called The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup and you can read his original paper here for free. Free parking also subsidizes the car experience by taking valuable real-estate and making it free to use by motor vehicles.

If we take into account the subsidies for Oil and Gas Companies that keep the price of gasoline down it emerges that tens to hundreds of billions are being used in the US alone (the article references Australia but I'm more familiar with US statistics) to subsidize driving.

Some cities install bike lanes and bike parking but use a fraction of the resources to do so. Given the long term health benefits of cycling and the ecological impacts of mass driving it makes sense to me to shift some of the massive subsidies already going to drivers to cyclists.

Most cities spend less than 1% of their transit budget on bicycle infrastructure even though a much higher proportion of their population rides a bike regularly or as a commuter.

Given that the US government is willing to subsidize new electric vehicles with multi-thousand dollar tax breaks I see no reason why it should not be possible to write off on one's taxes 25% of the cost of a new bike or some similar scheme.

Alternatively it could set up a system where people who can verify that they bike to work 50% or more of the time receive a $1,000 health tax credit at the end of the year. This would also encourage people to work close to where they live (if your commute is only 2 miles it is a lot easier to achieve this tax credit) which would encourage density.

Thing is, that sort of thinking doesn't really work too well in jazz - there isn't really "repertoire" in the same sense as in classical music. Some standards are more complex than others, sure, but the difficulty is really what you make of it. In jazz, you generally work from what are called "lead sheets", where all you have is the melody and the chords. Here's one for When I Fall in Love. Pretty simplistic, right? Here's Oscar Peterson playing it. The lead sheet is the basic framework for what he's playing, but all the embellishment and runs and extra chords and everything is just coming from him. So you can't really say whether When I Fall in Love is an "easy" standard or not.

As for how to learn, the single best way is to get a teacher. But if you just want to start dabbling, I would suggest getting some books of transcriptions of famous jazz pianists, just to start getting the feel and sound of it in your mind. Those books will have real performances transcribed note-for-note, so you don't need to know how to read lead sheets or improvise to play them. I would also check out Mark Levine's Jazz Piano Book to start learning the theory behind it all, and a Real Book to start practicing with. If you're good at teaching yourself things, the combination of those two books will give you years and years of material.

But I want to re-emphasize that getting some kind of teacher or mentor will help enormously. It's good for classical music, as you know, but jazz is even more like learning a foreign language, because it's improvised. If you just want to dabble for fun, that's fine, but if you get serious about jazz, find someone to guide you, even if it's just an hour a month.

Anything by Alan Moore. Promethea is a personal fave, but might not be the best place to start. Top Ten is also very good if cop drama overlaid with some super-hero stuff sounds appealing. Watchman is a cornerstone of the form, but you will definitely appreciate it more if/when you have a fair bit of 'capes & tights' superhero work under your belt.

Blankets is just stunning. I've bought it 3 times already and have the new hardcover edition on perorder.

Stardust is another great one by Neil Gaiman. It's also unique in that if you enjoy the story you can experience it in 3 different, but all very good, forms. The original comic, the prose novel, and the film all work quite well and give a nice window into what bits a pieces work better in each form.

Of course no comic list is complete without Maus and Understanding Comics.

The best bit of advice I can give is to go out and buy a sketchbook. If you want to focus on anime/manga inspired drawing, a medium grit medium weight paper sketchbook offers a durable surface that is perfect for practicing. As you improve and, should you so choose, incorporate inks, you can move to a smoother, medium weight paper, to prolong the life of your pens (especially if you like the brush tips).

There isn't really a "best" paper to use, and spiral notebooks are the preferred media for artists who are bored in class, but for the times when you are free of distractions and can sit down to draw, I'd recommend an artist sketchbook. Do some browsing online, find a reasonably priced sketchbook, then go to art stores or even places like Staples that offer art supplies. Open the books, feel the paper, make sure you like the quality of hue, grit, and weight before you buy. And don't be suckered in by the more expensive books and papers. Some papers are much heavier and are used for different projects. You don't, for example, need a heavy, high grit, expensive paper meant for watercolors, if you plan on doing pencil drawings and ink pens.

If you have any questions on pencils, pens, inks, markers, or any other materials, ask away.

As for the drawings themselves, there are a lot of resources available online for free. Or, if you are the kind of learner who benefits most from having a book to read from, How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way is a resource I can recommend. It's good for beginners and practiced hands alike, and has a lot of overlap with manga style drawing.

Keep at it, don't get discouraged, and make sure you don't forget to pay attention in class from time to time.

This book has solid overviews of the various playing styles, including for left hand

For improvisation, you are not going to sound good right away. What it sounds like you are doing is basically exercises, just running pentatonic scales over chords - that will sound very exercisey. "Okay, Cm7, playing C minor pent, okay, F7, playing F pent..." etc. What you want to do is look ahead to the notes in common and work on your ear training around that. So, instead, you might go: "Okay, Cm7, gonna play C - Eb - F - G, then the F7 comes up and you continue to A - C - D - F....

Basically, point is you can still play pentatonics, but try to create runs and melodies that move over and through the chords, not just shifting the scales once per chord.

It's not something you think about - you want to get used it and how it sounds so that you can focus on using a combination of ear and theory to make musical sounds and shapes that you want, and the fabled melting away of the notes and chords happens.

As rough as it is, you gotta do that kind of thing in all keys as well. It really opens up the piano and reveals secrets of how things work.

Also, listen a lot and try to play along with your favorite recordings. Take a class / find other improvisers who are at your level. It helps so much.

Final thing is, there is more to improvisation than getting the notes right. A solo with wrong notes and great rhythm and lot of passion is much more interesting and listenable than a solo with all the "correct" notes and no feeling and just running uninspired rhythms. Try soloing with just roots and fifths of the chords and see how much fun you can have. Try soloing with absolute abandon and let your hand just flop around and see what kind of interesting sounds you can make. Prepare your mind to forget about the notes...that's the eventual goal (even though you can still be strategic about scale degrees and chord tones and such).

Good luck and have fun!

I think it's not bad, I would say the biggest things are around typography.

1. Add more padding around some of the typography.
   
   
2. On the second image that "intro paragraph" is kind of weird, its two paragraphs I think, but in it's own style? Usually those type of things are one headline sentence which leads into the content.
   
   
3. Fix what is called a "widow" basically one word on the last line of a paragraph.
   
   
4. If you are using InDesign, select your text, go to paragraph styles and uncheck "hyphenate" to remove all the hyphenated words.
   
   
5. Some of your text is just oddly aligned, the yellow box quote, each line starts more and more to the left
   
   
6. Look at the "Working in the industry" page, I would redesign to be left aligned, the "rivers" pattern (white space between words) as we call them in typography looks more like lakes in these pages.
   
   
7. I like the fifth image, but add more padding around the text so it's not to the edge of the bounding box.
   
   
8. Pros & Cons page, I like the title design, nice job here; But the box below again with justified text, not working too well.
   
   
9. On the note of the above, make sure your paragraphs have a clear space between the previous paragraph.
   
   
10. You've got a lot of different font types, and styles going on each page, which is fine, but you should come up with a look and feel, that makes it so if each page were looked at separately (like we are here) someone could say "Yes these pages are from the same magazine."
    
    
11. On the contents page (last screenshot) left align the text, it's generally not a good idea to right align text as it makes it difficult to read. (the numbers can stay right aligned)
    
    And Finally:
    
    If you can - try to learn more about grid systems and typography, there are some great books out there that if you have cash or can ask your parents to buy you a couple books, here are some recommendations (even to just look at for inspiration):
    
    Grid Systems in Graphic Design: A Visual Communication Manual
    
    Thinking with Type - This one is one of my favorites
    
    The Typography Idea book
    
    I hope this helps :) And keep at it!! Definitely better than I was doing in high school!

u/Lemwell gave you an especially great answer, and the others are quite good as well. So I'll simply provide some resources.

Here is a link for a free download of the Aebersold Redbook. There's a lot of great general info in there for all instruments, but it does discuss chords and voicings.

Probably the best jazz piano resource is Mark Levine's The Jazz Piano Book. (linked to Amazon, but available at several places. It's available spiral bound so it fits nicely on a music stand. It has a great deal of information about chords, leading, and everything else jazz piano related.

For a fun, easy beginning, do you know the blues scale? If not it'll be in the free Aebersold book, but it's 1-b3-4-b5-5-b7-1. So a C blues scale is C-Eb-F-Gb-G-Bb-C. Practice playing that over a standard C major chord. Then try mixing it up, finding some phrases you like. Then try the F blues scale over an F major, and a G blues scale over a G7. Then put them together in a 12 bar blues and see what you come up with.

1. Illustrator is a very useful tool, it would serve you well to know how to use it. Illustrator also uses a very similar skill set to other applications you will end up using like indesign for example.
   
   
2. No not at all, I think people love to complain no matter what industry they are in. However it is very competitive, there are plenty of very very successful designers out there and lots of really unsuccessful ones. No where is it more immediately obvious how "good" or "bad" you are at something than with a visual portfolio, people can see at a glance exactly how competent you are, that's pretty intimidating. For instance you might be able to escape notice as a mediocre insurance claims adjuster for much longer than a mediocre designer. If you can find a handful of solid clients and build good relationships with them it can go a very long way to having a long and comfortable career.
   
   
3. Pay varies dramatically and theres a reason that very few people can give you a straight answer, your dealing with at least 3 variables at any given time if not more. What you are worth, what your client is worth and what the client is asking you to do. So for instance if your doing a multi million dollar marketing campaign and rebranding of a huge corporation while sitting in your manhattan office expect to be paid a little differently than if you are doing the CD cover for your friends band (that they recorded in garageband), the skill set, stakes and experience are dramatically different in those scenarios.
   
   Graphic design is everywhere and at all levels, expect to be paid accordingly. Understand too that $1000 for a logo is completely relative and doesn't by any means reflect the work that goes into it. You may have a someone who whips something together in a few minutes or have a team of designers slaving away iterating on an identity for weeks to make sure it's perfect, to make sure it becomes a household/highly recognizable piece of branding.
   
   
4. One of the toughest and most technically challenging things I feel like you will have to deal with is typography. Having a good understanding of how to wield it's awesome power can go a very very long way. I think as far as learning your tools goes, for me at least the internet has been a far more valuable resource than any book, if you need a problem solved google can do that pretty quickly, theres also a ton of good tutorials or articles on design process out there, I have yet to see any books that come close.
   Now on the typography I can make a few suggestions, some of these are pretty dry and not so flashy but have very solid fundamentals in them. If you go to art school (and I highly suggest you do if you can afford it, it can be a phenomenal experience) then these are the kind of books you will be reading in the first year or two.
   
   Typographic Systems of Design ~Kim Elam
   
   Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type ~Kim Elam
   
   Thinking with Type ~Ellen Lupton
   
   Elements of Typography ~Robert Bringhurst
   
   
5. I started doing some design work and drawing in high school. Both my parents are designers so I'm sure that helped, from there I went and got a BFA in illustration. While my first love is drawing and most of my work is illustration I still end up doing lot's of design work because it is (in my experience at least) very frequently in demand.
   
   Hope that was helpful and I'm sure lots of other people have had very different experiences and will share their stories and opinions. It's a very diverse field.
   

1. If the reviews for that pad's good, then get it. I own a Billy Hyde drum pad and a Vic Firth drum pad. Both are good, but I prefer the Billy Hyde pad as it's less bouncy. However, when building stick control it's good to have some bounce.
   
   
2. The one practice pad is fine for now. When you practice, you can play seated and use your left foot (or both) to tap out pulses like you would a hi-hat. For example, tap out quarter notes with your left foot while your hands play eighth notes alternating.
   
   
3. For the Ted Reed book you should be fine for most of it. Another book you should (MUST) get is George Stone's Stick Control.
   
   
4. Ted Reed's book can be played using a practice pad and a drum kit.
   
   
5. Honestly, I'd get a private tutor right away then drop them later if needed. They'll help you save a lot of time with technique and direction. Starting a new instrument can be frustrating, so having some guidance is a huge benefit. Also they'll help prevent you from developing bad habits.
   
   
6. You can tap your feet while practicing seated. However, to learn foot technique you'll need a pedal. You can buy drum kits for cheap second hand online, which are fine for practicing. Check out kijiji. They may not sound like a professional kit, but they operate the same. I still practice on my old starter kit while I have my nicer stuff at my jam space.
   
   Hope this helps somewhat.

I bought this book years ago, when I started to get more into landscapes and colour theory. It's a good book, with solid advice.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0740797719/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Beyond that, observation and experimentation are invaluable. Don't be afraid to try different colors on things, see how they mesh and work. Don't be afraid to repaint. Knowing what works becomes natural over time, I swear. You'll instinctively know what colors to choose to enable a specific mood and how to easily mix them.

It's also not just about colour. It's about the hue, the saturation and the value. Value = dark and light. Hue = the shade. Saturation = how 'strong' or muted that color is. How close to neutral grey it is. Like, the image on the left doesn't seem to have a strong contrast in the foreground, but it does have red (okay, it's orange but orange is only red+yellow) and green shades which are complimentary colors: so it pops. The red is warm, it's inviting. The image on the right ditches a lot of the saturation in favor of strong color values, colors are muted (except for the green) and cool , there's no warmth in this image and that fence is a sharp, dark (ominous) contrast to the misty grey/neutral-ish background. Saturation and value play as much as part as just color when it comes to mood.

But this can all be learned and really easily! Youtube is also great for this kind of stuff.

Honestly mate, seems like you need to broaden your minds creative library. The best way to do this is to do a lot of studies of things from life and combined them with the things you love. So if you want to design cool vehicles then you need to do studies from vehicles we have around us today. Best way to learn this is to use your perspective knowledge and draw those vehicles/buildings. Scott Robertson honestly breaks this process down the best. And if you don't already have it I suggest picking up How to Draw, by Scott Robertson. https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541794749&sr=8-1&keywords=scott+robertson He goes pretty in-depth on how to create vehicles and buildings with perspective.


Also check out Feng Zhu on YouTube. He talks about how to go about expanding your creative library. And being able to pull from it when concepting.

​

Hope this somewhat helps. Good luck with your art journey mate!

Oh man do I have a list for you!

Joe Murray's Creating Animated Cartoons with Character is an amazing read and he gives some information on the creation process for his shows.

Nancy Beiman's Prepare to Board! talks about story development and character creation, but she mostly covers storyboarding in the book. Beiman also has exercises included as you read, so it feels a bit more interactive.

Jean Ann Wright's Animation Writing and Development covers writing for TV animation. Wright talks mainly about how to land a job as a writer for an ongoing show, but he does cover character in the book.

Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino's Avatar: The Last Airbender (The Art of the Animated Series) talks a bit on character creation for the show and how the show kept evolving until they finally arrived at Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But you shouldn't just stay with finding books on how to create characters for animation. It shouldn't matter if they are animated or not, we need to believe in these characters!

Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing
is my personal favorite on character development. Although this book is mainly about writing a play, Egri covers dialogue, characters, character motivation, and story development perfectly. I keep returning to this book everytime an idea pops into my head. I cannot express how much this book has helped me in creating believable characters and conflicts.

Blake Snyder's Save the Cat! is a book I have never gotten around to reading, but I feel it worth mentioning as most of my colleagues and friends keep recommending this book back to me.

And again, although you will learn many new things from these books and they will help you view stories and characters more analytically, you won't get better until you start to create more and more characters and stories. You may also start looking for interviews of your favorite creators and look for what they have to say about character.

Hope this helps!

Eh. It's a fine method, it's not the only method and I'd probably advise using multiple categorization systems to look at your game. Yes they mention that it's only one of many but I don't think they really highlighted that particular point enough.

You can find many different patterns in game design if you look - but games are not really made of such discrete parts.

So yeah look at the planning, improvising and practice involved in your game. But also look at the different challenges it provides, or any of a hundred different lenses.

Game design taxonomies each present themselves as the way to look at games, but they're each just a way of looking at games and you should use a variety of different points of view when analyzing or otherwise working on your design.

But because I liked the video: my game Honor Bound is heavy on improvisation, and practice - but that practice is only to support the planning you will do.

In Honor Bound you play rock paper scissors but you choose a Class that has Abilities that may encourage you to use one move over another. Also you can tell your opponent what move you're about to play - you can psyche them out or gain a damage bonus for telling the truth.

There's a lot of improvising against your opponent's strategy. Previous experience (practice) will inform you how each Class is played and you will plan around that at the start. However this will always go back to improvising against how your particular opponent is mixing things up to try and psyche you out.

Hi there. You are really asking how to be graphic designer, so there is no quick or easy answer. The first and best advice is to stop looking at "motivation" or "quote" posters. Your instincts are correct, and forgive my gross generalization, but they lack any design standards. The next step would be to look at better stuff. You can search for inspirational sites and the like in this subreddit and get excellent recommendations. A site like typo/graphic posters might not be immediately helpful, but it is the kind of work you should be looking at. While looking at good things you can also read about good things Reddit Reading List is a good place to start. You can't go wrong with Ellen Lupton's Thinking with Type or Kimberly Elam's Typographic Systems of Design.

Specifically with what your are doing now should look at typeface selection and heirarchy. Do all of the words in the quote have the same importantance, the same "weight"? Are "everybody" and "window" the most important words, and of such importance that they drown out everything else?

Hope that answers your question a little. Best of luck.

The best book on how comics work, for my money, is Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. That would be followed up by Making Comics from the same author. It's a little theory-heavy but it's amazing. I'd say it's good for 14 and up, or maybe a little younger. This would get him a fantastic background in how comics work and how to create them in general. The first book is literally used as a textbook in some college "Comics Appreciation" type classes. The coolest thing about it is that it's a comic itself, and it demonstrates the things it's talking about right there on the page.

If he's younger, and/or he really just wants to learn to draw superheroes, How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way is really good on the fundamentals. It's old-school (most inkers don't use a brush anymore, they use computers), but the fundamentals haven't changed all that much.

Here's a more modern one from DC that looks pretty good and has good reviews, though I haven't read it.

For 18 years old that's pretty fucking good. But there is always room for improvement for every aspect of drawing. As an artist you should never stop learning.

A lot of good suggestions in this thread, the most important thing is to just keep generating content and finish an issue or a story with your art. It's not going to be perfect or up to your ideals all the time but just getting the work done is great for feeling accomplished and proving to yourself that you can finish something (this is really fucking important).

Then every once and awhile go back to a comic, or a page that you've already done and think about and write down the things that you can do better and ideas on maybe different layouts - and then try it out. Iterate on the same basic concept and you'll start to gravitate on what you like personally and what feels good to you. You do enough of that and you'll eventually have your own distinctive style.

Also getting inspiration by digesting and studying professional work is important too. I'd refrain from copying a style, especially for professional work - but I'd look at other's work and write notes about what this artist did in this book that you like, try it out and see if it's compatible with what you're trying to accomplish.

Some resources:

Understanding Comics:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006097625X/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Strip Panel Naked: (dissecting panels, layouts)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYJAToPH5GSGShP7Yoc3jsA

Since you want to mainly do logo and branding, focus on Illustrator first. There are tons of YouTube tutorials on everything you need to know.

I would highly suggest checking out Lynda.com and Skill Share. They're paid services, but you might be able to get them for cheap or even free while you're a student. I know my university had free sign-up for Lynda. (My favorite videos are from Aaron Draplin on Skill Share, there are also a few short videos for free on YouTube.)

While learning the technical skill is good, the biggest part is learning the principles and theory of design. Look into the Gestalt Theory and learn as much as you can about typography. Read this book, it's a perfect resource for typography. The Vignelli Canon is also a great read from one of the best designers ever.

If you have anymore questions, let me know.

So... your only technique in mixing is moving your faders?

I don't want to sound rude, but that's not enough to get your mix to sound good. It's only going to get you a starting balance.

I'm not going to write a book here, but I'd like to give you a short overview of what concepts an average mixing process comprises of (in a nutshell and NOT comprehensive,... there's enough information out there to learn about each topic).

• Editing: check phase if you're layering instruments/recording stuff with more than one mic, clean up your tracks,...
  
• Gain staging (that's - more or less - what you're describing)
  
• Equalizing tracks
  
• Compressing tracks
  
• Panning tracks
  
• Transient shaping
  
• Sweetening the mix (room tone reverb, delay, saturation, ...)
  
  Seriously, educate yourself on mixing and your sound will get an enormous boost. There's a ton of resources out there, including some of my favorites:
  
  
• Mixing secrets for the small studio
  
• Mixing audio - concepts practices & tools
  
• Zen & the art of mixing
  
• shameless plug, but I've started a video series on mixing as well, maybe you'll find it useful: Start To Mix
  
  With regards to mastering, I would really consider sending your mix to an external mastering engineer. You will get a much better result, not only because these people specialise in what they can do, but a second pair of ears is always a good idea.
  
  Hope you find this useful & best of luck!

Wow, I have no idea honestly. Well you've got to start somewhere and that has to be with graphic design obviously. Knowing everything about typography & design fundamentals is key before moving onto web design. Web Design will help get you introduced to UI/UX design. Obviously there's a lot of things I can't really give you advice on. It's something an instructor or teacher is best suited for.

If you're just starting with graphic design I recommend this book.

This book was definitely my intro to web design years ago, but it's even dated now. So much changes so fast. These guys are super helpful too.

Obviously, these things aren't going to be teaching you coding, but it'll definitely get you acclimated to UI/UX Design. But it's still a very complicated path. Everyone has their own ways. The best way is to learn is through fantastic instructors which I was super lucky to have.

Firstly, drawing, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop are just tools. Learn how to use them well but they are only tools. Design is more psychology than it is software expertise. Learning the tools is important of course, just don't confuse the two. Design is the "why" and "what" you are trying to communicate, the function. Art, illustration, type, etc is the "how" you create the form. Form follows function.

With that said. Keep drawing. Everyday. Look into illustration as an art discipline, it's very closely connected to graphic design as far as purpose and mindset. Far more so than traditional studio arts. (painting, sculpture, etc).

Learn typography. Really learn the difference between typeface and font and families. Learn why serifs work for body copy generally better than sans. Learning how to hand render type, and do it well, is an invaluable skill especially paired with illustration.

In my view these are essential to add to your reading list:

• Die Neue Typographie by Jan Tschichold
  
  
• History of Graphic Design by Meggs
  
  
• Thinking with Type by Lupton
  
  
• Essays on Graphic Design - Bierut, editor
  
  There are about a hundred others I could add. Look beyond "Best Design Of The Year" kinda crap and seek out critique and theory. These skills far outweigh the ability to look at what's popular and ape it.
  
  Finally, remember that graphic design is communication above all else. Think about who you are trying to reach, what you are trying to say, and why you are trying to say it. Be true to yourself and your audience, and you will do good work.
  
  Good luck!

Here's my disclaimer: if you don't have access to a drum and at least one other person to practice playing clean with, you're already at a disadvantage. No pad feels exactly like a drum and when it comes down to the wire in an audition, what determines who makes the line is usually who can play clean consistently no matter where he is in the line.

Buy this:

http://www.amazon.com/Stick-Control-For-Snare-Drummer/dp/1892764040

No matter where you want to march, it will be your ultimate tool. It will lay the foundation of your playing, and it will give you amazing facility on the drum. Play through all of it. Play through it at every dynamic. Play five lines and crescendo the whole thing. Do whatever you can to essentially turn the thing inside out on itself so that you get as much experience playing things your hands have never felt. The key here is repetition. You want to shed layers so that your hands become so refined that anything you're asked to play is practically second nature.

Once you've played through the entire book ten times, buy this:

http://www.amazon.com/Accents-Rebounds-For-Snare-Drummer/dp/1892764067

Repetition, repetition, repetition. Variation, variation, variation. If something sounds disgusting, practice it until it's beautiful. You need to dedicate substantial time to practicing, and you need to always practice with a metronome. I advise against most phone metronomes, because they tend to be inconsistent. I recommend practicing for 90 minutes and then taking a 30 minute break. Practice consistently. Don't do eight hours one day and then take a week off. Two or three hours a day is ample practice time. You've got to be deliberate and take your practice time seriously if you want to make it. If you're unsure about whether or not you want to march, I'd advise against auditioning because the people who really want it are usually the ones who make the line.

Get on YouTube and check out some different lines from the past maybe three seasons. Listen to as many as you can and see which lines really pique your interest. Then get on Google and look for audition materials (either from past years or current materials). A lot of corps require you to buy their audition materials so if that's an issue for you, you could try another corps. Or you could step up your game, get back on YouTube, try to find some videos of the drumline warming up, and figure out their exercises on your own. Be wary though; that's a pretty significant undertaking.

My best advice is to take initiative, and to try harder than you want to. You'll have to do both of those things if you spend a summer with a corps anyway, so it's better to start now. Best of luck to you.

Some good advice from the previous commenter but I'd like to recommend Michael Hampton's Figure Drawing: Design and Invention. He does a great job of simplifying the major muscle groups and tends to take a much more practical approach to figure drawing. Life drawing from an actual model is always gonna be the best way to supplement your anatomy studies as well. It looks like you're on the right track for the most part though; there's definitely room for improvement but that'll come with time and practice.

Edit: You should also focus more on value before jumping into color. Taking on both at the same time tends to lead to unnecessary headaches and you'll have a much easier time understanding color once you've figured out how light and value work.

[Quick paintover/ color correction to help with the crit.]
(http://imgur.com/oBr6zkm)

I can see potential, but there's work to be done. If we had time I could take you through design/storytelling, perspective, and stroke technique issues, but for now I want to focus on color.

• Color choices: I kept your pink and yellow scheme to show what can be done with color and lighting. That being said they don't quite go together well. There's not a lot of cases where something is fully saturated, and you have a highly saturated yellow contrasting with a very saturated pink. You don't need highly saturated complementary colors to get the image to pop; that's mostly done in the design. The first thing I did when I color corrected the image was turn down the saturation.
  
  Also, it appears to be daytime judging by the background photo, but there's no strong shadows or bright sunlit areas. The sky is kinda dark and washed out. If it's daytime we (the viewer) need to really feel the warm sun and cool shadows.
  
  I numbered the points of critique here:
  
  

1. I fixed the hard yellow dust and made a mix to look more like the beams are hitting the surface.
   
2. When a color bounces off another color, those colors (in most cases) mix together. When yellow and pink mix they make orange. The eye will believe it looks pink when the right color is used. These are called context colors. For example, the two colors with the arrows are the same color.
   
3. Think about where the light is coming from. The yellow swamp is going to bounce yellow light up onto the structures. Also the blue sky will add a bluish hue to shadows.
   
4. You may notice in the shadows the water color is green. Again, this is because the sky is blue and when the light from the sky hits the yellow water it will mix to make green. Take a look around your images and think about how color and light will react with the colors around them.
   
5. Sky need's to be brighter in the daytime.
   
6. The sun is bright white (with a hint of yellow). When something is in the sun it should be well lit.
   
7. I used some yellow mist to push the structure on the right further into the distance.
   
8. (not numbered) I noticed you had trouble connecting your structures to the ground. They just stop at the ground. There needs to be a hand shake (of sorts) they should mingle a bit. They should be around the same value, and some of the colors should be bouncing off the ground on to the structure.
   
   My general advice: drop the photobashing for now. Save it for when you're killing it on the rendering. It's a good technique to hit those deadlines during production, but this early on it's gonna make you miss out on all those skills you'd develop painting those mountains. Also, get this book on color theory by James Gurney. It will explain color theory way better than I can.
   
   TL;DR learn how to render like a pro before you can photobash like a pro. Learn up on your color theory. Hope that helps.

Okay, first thing to know is that you're not alone. Animation is a pretty time-consuming and daunting skill to try and learn at first, but everyone has to start somewhere - and honestly, drawing skills aside, I think that animation is one of those things where with enough practice you can get the hang of fairly quickly.

I'm guessing you probably aren't out to hear the typical "just keep practicing and you'll get better" so I'll try and stray away from that.

Speaking as a current animation student, the best thing you can do for yourself is to view as many animations from skilled and professional animators as you can.
And I'm not talking just "watching" animations; Sit down and try and critically analyze a piece of animation. Find something where the movement is interesting to you and try and reverse engineer how that animator may have constructed that scene.
After sitting through a bunch of those, find animations from more amateur or beginner animators, could be of your own animations or someone else's. Compare and contrast between what makes these professional animations work and look good, and why these other ones just don't seem to match up.

I've also taken a look at some of your animations and I don't think they're totally awful. It's clear that you're making an effort to show movement and life in the characters, despite your minimal technical understanding.

​

So, educate yourself on the technical side of things.

Read up on the principles of animation, essentially the core rulebook many industry professionals follow when creating animations. Here is a video which has a pretty thorough look at each concept, and here is a considerably shorter summary of each principle with short examples.

The Animator's Survival Kit is one of the most popular books people recommend to people just starting out in animation - it lays out a lot of the key parts of the 12 principles in deeper detail and focuses a considerable amount of the book to timing and walk cycles.
Here's also a playlist to the book in, more or less, a simplified video form.

Some other books you might want to look into are Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair, and The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas.

​

As for the program you're using, I found that Adobe is one of the more simpler and intuitive platforms to use when first learning animation that's still considered an industry standard.
Pushing through and learning the program will help you considerably if/when you decide to move on to a more advanced program.

However, if the difficulty of the software is what's keeping you from animating, I'd recommend using flipbooks and indulging in more traditional forms of animation.
Not only will you be developing a skill in an area of animation not many people today seem to be very skilled in, but it'll keep you from being distracted by all the flashy buttons and options on some digital programs.

​

Hang in there man, and keep animating.

There are a number of color theory books out there but I'm not sure that will answer all of your questions. I have a copy of The Elements of Color that I reference often. The thing is, there isn't really one solid formula for mixing paint. It mostly comes through practice and understanding the physics of color and how colors shift in tone, saturation, and hue. There is some really good advice in this post already. I have a few other sources you might be interested in.

Wet Canvas has some great forums for people like us who need help with this kind of stuff from time to time.

The Dimensions of Color has a very thorough breakdown of color. It is extensive and a harder read than maybe you are used to. Take it slow. Read it a few times. Refer to it often.

Color and Light by James Gurney is a great resource as well. Be warned, that it isn't necessarily a "how-to" but it will give you insight into how a professional artist goes about his work. He provides insight on techniques and palettes and things like that as well as phenomena seen in nature.

Take a look at those. Best of luck.

One thing I tried doing was learning every chord in every position and every inversion. I'm not done writing them up, but I have charts for dominant, major, minor, and half-diminished chords I could scan for you. I also have the arpeggios to be played over the chords.

Another thing is to learn are your scale modes. I'll pick either 4 modes in 1 position or 1 mode in 4 positions and practice each scale for 5 minutes.

You could improve your sight reading with this. It's not meant to be studied, but to be opened up to a random page and played.

I'm also a fan of speed and dexterity exercises. You don't have to shred, but sometimes you need to get from point A to point B in a hurry. After playing these for a while, you'll also feel less fatigue. My favorite books for this are John Petrucci's Wild Stringdom and Frank Gambale's Technique Books

Also, if you really get into jazz, I highly recommend The Jazz Theory Book. It will help with your improvisation and teach you how songs are structured, which will help you with other genres. A more classic theory book that's good is The Complete Musician.

After you get technique stuff down, it all comes down to where you want to be as a player. What do you want to play? Do you want to write? Do you want to do covers? Maybe you want to teach.

Sorry this was so long. I love teaching music myself, so if you want to learn anything specific, PM me and I should be able to help you out and send you some materials.

Pick up some books on story structure. Save the Cat is a great one--it's about screenwriting but it has a lot of good advice that applies to writing novels as well. Joseph Campbell is a good call for this too, so you've got a good title there. I'd google "character building in novels" and check out /r/worldbuilding too, if that's your thing.

But once you read up on story structure, start practicing. Seriously, when you set out you're going to be horrible at wordsmithing (meaning you won't be able to string together beautiful sentences, and you probably won't be able to get the perfect imagery on paper) but that's ok! As a beginner, now is the time to focus on structure. Write yourself some really bad books where you just explore how to craft a plot, how to build characters, how to make a world... and the more really bad books you write, the closer the decent book is, and the amazing book.

The most solid advice is definitely just "sit down and start writing", but if you want to take advantage of being a newbie then ignoring craft for structure (at first) is the way to go about it, definitely.

Good luck! It's a great journey.

Learn composition. You have a compact camera so you already have the tool to take interesting photographs. I would start with a book like The Photographer's Eye to start learning about what makes certain photographs compelling and interesting. You can hit the photography section of the local library and just start looking at great photographs. As someone posted here couple weeks ago, "Buy books, not gear."

Later on, you may decide to buy a DSLR, but think carefully about what you need. A camera is a tool, nothing more. A great camera will open up new possibilities, but you still need knowledge and experience to convert those possibilities into good pictures. Since you brought up the classical music analogy, think of the camera like a piano. A grand Steinway can make beautiful music, but it cannot turn a novice into a concert pianist. Only hard work, training, experience, and knowledge can do that.

For inspiration, here is a great war photographer who uses only point-and-shoots.

Good luck and happy shooting!

Welcome to the wonderful world of photography. Enjoy the process of taking photos, loving them, hating them, and getting better at it everyday (just don't get caught up in the bottomless pit that is "why don't I get more likes on social media" :))

> I take a few seconds to compose before I shoot. Is this too slow or should I hold down the shutter button to take multiple shots?

Definitely not a rule set in stone, but composing and shooting a single frame is generally regarded as the "correct" way to shoot. It helps you develop your eye and mind in looking and finding subjects, frames, composition.. The other method is usually "spray and pray", and yields a very low keeper count. It's only relevant when you're shooting action and sports, where you only have a split second to get a frame worth capturing (and even then, you pre-compose and anticipate shots).

> I've enabled the rule of thirds grid in the EVF already, but how I can improve the framing/composition?

It may be cliché, but it's said that rules like the thirds are "always meant be broken". They are just suggestions, a place to start. There are lot of different aspects to composition, and it's best to study some basic techniques and look at a lot of examples. I find this article to be helpful. If you're looking to go even more in-depth, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

> Is there a decent post processing software on the PC that are free? If not, what's a good budget friendly option?

There are quite a few good options to choose from. Here are the most commonly recommended ones (may not be available on all systems, check their websites). The first three are Lightroom alternatives (they offer photo processing), the last one is a Photoshop alternative (photo processing + manipulation). I recommend starting with photo processing.

• Darktable
  
  
• RawTherapee
  
  
• Lightzone
  
  
• GIMP
  
  *Edit:Forgot to add GIMP to the list.

I'll be the 3rd person to recommend Understanding comics. It is required reading.

The big thing is practice. Practice. Practice. Then go practice. I've been working kinda on comics for a while and sometimes, I can churn out a panel like nobodies buisness. The pose aligns just right and its super easy. Other times, a single panel takes me hours, because I keep finding I'm doing it wrong.

But you know what? the next time I do a scene like that, I do it a bit faster. I rarely go online to find references. Instead, I stand up from my pen and paper, and make whatever stupid pose I'm trying to draw and mentally take inventory of where all my limbs are, how my body looks and feels. A mirror may help.

In regards to asking the artist, a quick google claims that
>This book has includes an extensive interview with creator Masashi Kishimoto, step-by-step details on the process of creating a Naruto illustration, 20 pages of notes from the author about each image in the book and a beautiful double-sided poster!

That might be worth checking out.

>About how many drafts would you guys predict that it took that whole comic, and what sorts of panels would you all say take more drafts to perfect than others?

That's a really hard thing to guess, because of what goes into the comic. there are 3 steps in my mind that might count as 'drafts.' 1st, the overarching story. The script to that was probably passed through a few editing hands before any art got started. It really depends on the project on how much script you should have. I've been focusing on just the next strip on my current stuff. I have notebooks with outlines for twenty odd chapters for other stories that can't see the light of day until i finish rewriting them.

(I saw a comment here recommending to find scripts and try drawing the first few pages, then compare work. I'm so gonna do that!)

2nd. the page itself. Panel layout, camera angles, action poses, there is SO MUCH that goes into each page, I can't do it justice. A lot of good books have been suggested, so check out those. Duck into a bookstore and see what they have. I have fond memories of draw comics the marvel way! and I love How to make webcomics

I do end up drawing and redrawing the pencils several times, before I ink it.

3rd, you'd be surprised how much rewriting can go into every line of dialogue. For me at least. I write what I want to say, then I remove every word I can get away with, then I have to cram it inside of a bubble. Sometimes, writing a sentence takes longer then drawing a panel!

Closing remarks: I have 2 final pieces of advice: 1st: Invent your own process. Figure out how you want to do it. Each of us is shaped by our environment, by our upbringing, by the books we've read, by the artists we admire. And then, none of us have exactly the same tools. Make a process that works for you. (Start making. And then, when you're comfortable, experiment! I recently bought a calligraphy dip pen and have been using that for my inking. For so long, I had thought it an outdated piece of technology, but now I love it so much! but you don't need one. I did a lot of comics with paper and a ball point pen. They weren't pretty, but they were mine.)

Finally, (because I doubt you're even reading this far down!) practice does not necessarily equal practice. All the anatomy lessons, perspective practice, the realistic images, those are good fundamentals. I wish I had them. But if you want to learn to make comics, come up with a story, not too long of one, and draw it. Play with what you can do. Learn to tell a story. And, ya know, you'l get to a point where you need a cool city scene, and all that perspective practice flows into the panel. Or you'll want to emphasize how beautiful your villainess is, and your anatomy floods down your pen. Everything you learn is a tool in your toolbox and the fundamentals are very useful, although they don't seem to be, they are part of the path.

TLDR: Confucius say: Make some comics. They you will know how to make them. Also, read books.

Mmmm... it's hard to say really, I'm self-taught so my way of learning is most likely very inefficient. The few tips I can give you though is:
at the very beginning, just make drawing a consistent habit, draw whatever, but dedicate some time and try to draw daily. Little but consistent steps are much more powerful than ''drawing entire day once a week''.
fall in love with the process and don't care much about result, aka never compare yourself to others. Your drawings will suck, a lot, for a long time - and that's completely okay, because we all go through that. Comparing yourself to someone with years of experience will only demotimate you. This video perfectly illustrated what I mean: https://youtu.be/lRtV-ugIT0k
once you get into ha bit of drawing relatively often, you can try learning some fundamentals like anatomy/perspective. For those there are many resources online, and books.
AND PRACTICE - a lot, on paper, with pen, or wahtever you got, there's no such excuse ''I odn't have a tablet or fancy pen or whatever'', in fact most of your studies if not all, in the beginning should be on paper, before you get into digital things.

Books I recommend for a begginer:
Perspective: https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732
Anatomy: https://www.alexhays.com/loomis/ (these are free)
and this channel is absolutely amazing https://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV

When you start with basics, you will be just drawing spheres and cubes. Learning fundamentals is very different from actual illustrations - it's quite tedious and even boring, but it propels you forward fast. When it comes to drawing fun stuff tho - always question what, why, how it works and use references. Look at many other artists and question how and why they did the things they did. Once you get down to it - it becomes just pure science.

I'm not gonna go on anymore because it's quite a long post as it is, hope it helps in a way. I use photoshop, because I started with it and it's very powerful- tho it's very hard for a beginner to use, in you case I would probably start with ''paint tool sai''.

If you wanna follow me and learn more about me, you can follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/tmiracleart and the links in the stream description, as well as join my discord (link in the stream description).

There are definitely guidelines. Some are strict, but many of them can be bent.

Your script says "awesome as fuck". I don't know what that means. I need you to explain it. What makes it awesome? That's how you have to spell things out in a script.

But great work on hammering out a screenplay! If you're interested, here are some good books on screenwriting:

• Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
  
• The Screenwriter's Workbook
  
• How to Write a Movie in 21 Days
  
• Essentials of Screenwriting
  
• The Dramatic Writer's Companion
  
• Save The Cat!
  
  The line you mention from Django is really good. We see that it is a stereotypical western town. We all know exactly what that looks like because we gave seen those millions of towns in westerns before. For your line, we all have different interpretations as to what "awesome as fuck" is.
  
  Did you use Celtx? If not, try it. Great free screenwriting software.

Thanks a lot! I actually have that first book bookmarked but I forgot to put it on the list.

I'm leaning closer and closer to purchasing a copy of The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses and it's one I'm actually really curious about.

On Game Physics Pearls - I peeked into the first few pages and it looks like something that I will pick up once I have a bit of experience in that area...does that sound about right or would you say it could cater to beginners fairly well?

Game Physics seems like it may be a bit more beginner-friendly but you are right about it not being a tutorial, which is kind of important for me at this step. I'm definitely bookmarking this until I know a bit more on the subject, though. I'll be taking a Physics course next September so it may be a good time to look at it after that!

Real-Time Shadows looks very interesting but I'm unsure to the difficulty level of it to a beginner. It sounds like I need to brush up on my math after three years of not using it very often at all.

Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

*I'll be taking a course on Linear Algebra here in the coming semesters, but that book does sound like a good introduction along with how it works within 3D programming. I'll keep a look-out on that for a while; do you think it would be very worthwhile to read that before something like Real-Time Rendering?

CGTalk is a great forum for cg and animation of all types, but it's more aimed towards professionals and becuase of that it can be pretty intimidating for beginners. It should be in your bookmarks any way!

Polycount is another great forum that specializes in game art. Unlike CGTalk it is a lot more beginner friendly and a great learning resource.

As for tutorials. In my personal experience there are a few good free ones out there, but the majority are rather lackluster. Most of the time you will have to pay for a DVD or a book. Digital Tutors' introduction DVD's are fantastic, The Gnomon Workshop is great too but geared more towards intermediate and professional users.

I'm not sure exactly what you want to learn because Computer Animation can mean a lot of things so I'm not sure what specific tutorials or resources I need to point you at. But if it's animation you want to do then The Animators Survival Kit is a book that should be in the shelf of anyone who even considers doing any form of animating.

Alright CC time. So by now you probably know you need to work on your anatomy, and really I can't give you pointers on what to correct because unfortunately Anatomy is something you have to practice A LOT. My advice for this is drawing from life or pictures of men, never try to copy other drawings or use other art references for studying Anatomy... only do that when you're trying to study a style you really dig.

The arm is too big for the guy with the knife, just his shoulder alone is almost as big as his head. The muscles look weird and this is probably from a very common mistake that happens when you start to draw anatomy, you kinda memorize where lines go from other drawing and art you saw. Like.... oh well I remember in Dragonball Z when Goku would flex his arm he would have the biceps as a square here, the lines to show his shoulder muscles here and voila there's a buffed arm. In reality there's a flow of lines that follow muscles in anatomy, just look at medical illustrations of what a body looks like without skin and only muscle tissue, it's basically all lines that start together, fan out and then meet again somewhere else. Also perspective changes how muscles look A LOT, a line that might be concave in a muscle area from the front might actually look convex when the man is looking away from you. When you start to understand the major muscle groups it'll become much clearer how to position lines to convey muscle tissue.

Hands are tricky, any artists will tell you that. Even some professional artists absolutely hate hands (coughRobLiefeldcough), but the good news is that whereas body anatomy is impossible to observe without a model or reference because you can just look down at your body and try to draw that, you'll only really see one perspective and that's no good. You can always just raise your hand to your face and turn it around and you can draw your hand from any angle... do that... do that a lot.

As for the stiffness of the figures, that's something that happens when you're trying to convert poses from your head to the paper without actually having a reference to work with. There are two things you can do to help here... use guidelines to draw, most artists I know use them and it has nothing to do with skill, you know when you do your little stickman skeleton to get proportions right before you draw in the muscle shapes. If you ever see an artist just nail the pose of a character in one try chances are it's because he's drawn that same pose a ton of times. You should be doing stuff like posing in front of a mirror and taking pictures or going to google images and searching for models to use, like for that monster you can just google "man crouching" and find a pose you like. This will make it so that poses you draw have a more organic feel and not so stiff.

Now, my advice would be that you practice the things that you did wrong in this drawing like arm proportion towards the body, poses, hands and all that stuff and you re-draw this concept in the future. The biggest mistake an aspiring artist makes is trying to better their art through correction, specially when not all the concepts within their knowledge, sometimes you need to scrap it all and begin anew.

Good luck and I hope this helped!

PS: This is a really good book to understand the basic shapes of anatomy

I disagree with this answer. You do need to improve on your shading and proportion, but this isn't why your drawing looks flat.

When drawing anything, try to think in terms of it being a 3D form. Check out these images from legendary Disney animator Glen Keane. Something that will help you is to break things down into basic geometric shapes like cylinders (good for people and animals), spheres (basketballs, baseballs, bowling balls) cones, and cubes (mostly architectural structures). Here is a basic example of a cone on top of a cylinder.

Another thing that can help you to start thinking this way is to do some cross contour drawing. Google for examples, but this is what I mean. You don't even have to do two directions. Just draw around the forms, like this.

I don't know what you're into, but a book that may help you is How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way. Some of those old comic book artist had amazing skill in drawing an accurate figure in 3D space all kinds of angles.

Good luck, and remember that your paper is a window into a three dimensional world much like our own. You must sculpt things into existence!

I'd say your strongest point is your ability to convey action. The leaping on page 16 is particularly well executed. You also actually have a pretty good grasp of perspective drawing with the environments! It could use a little work, but I feel like every artist could do with more practice!!

The main suggestion I could give you is to start drawing from life. I know you are heavily influenced by Japanese comics, but trust me when I say that all professional manga artists are able to draw from life. What I mean is, take a figure drawing class, or at the very least pick up this book, or any other figure drawing book really. It will help you greatly with getting proportions correct, as well as help you with understanding the internal structure of the body. By skipping learning how to draw from life, and learning to draw from looking at Manga, you're really only taking the face value. Like, have you ever used a copy machine to make a copy of a copy? The original page looks crisp and clean, but that first copy has a few spots and scratches, and then the copy of that copy has big black splotches on it, and eventually the text is completely illegible. Not to say that your art is really bad! It's actually pretty decent for your first comics! I just believe that doing some observational studies will help your work greatly!

The next major thing you should work on is the writing. I get that his blindfold is what keeps his demons at bay, but by starting the comic off with the central character punching a guy's body in two, and then ripping another guy's arm off... it makes me not care about the character. I feel like if you would have shown the readers that he was a kind person, by like, helping the elderly, or defending his father or something, then I'd be like, "Why is this sweet kid suddenly a vicious murderer?" But since you didn't I was like, "Is this a violent comic for the sake of drawing a violent comic?" Therefore, when the dad was brought in to be killed, he started talking about how innocent the kid was, which is the exact opposite of my first impression. Also, why did they kill the dad? Why, then, did they let evil demon kid live, only to exile him? Wouldn't killing Kai solve all of their problems?

Anyway, I feel like you have potential, mainly because you were actually able to produce this much work! Do you have any idea how many people say they want to make comics but pale at the sight of how much work it is? You are a hard worker, and I know that you will be able to persevere and evolve into something so much better than you already are! On that note, buy Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. It will change your life. I'm being 100% serious here. McCloud is not only the go-to comics theorist, but he was also one of the first professional Americans to see the potential of drawing comics influenced by the Japanese! Once you have devoured this book, because you will want more, buy Making Comics, also by Scott McCloud. While Understanding dissects the medium and explains things you never would have thought about before, Making Comics applies those thoughts into a school-like setting.

tl;dr: It's good, but could be much better. Worship Scott McCloud.

I use the Light Meter app on my phone in lieu of a dedicated light meter. It works really well for anything that is moderately well lit, but can struggle in the dark. For that I use the Ultimate Exposure Computer which works well on the caveat that you can guess the EV level accurately. One of these days I'm going to get a Zone IV Pentax spotmeter so I can become a true zoner (or is it zoneist?) Luckily there is about a stop of latitude with B&W film and it is possible to print stuff that is pretty far gone--it is just significantly more difficult.

If you are shooting in the daylight, go with Sunny 16 all the way. It makes things easy and I've gotten really good results working only off of that.

As far as exposure goes, I've been concentrating on creatively working with the depth of field more than anything. Exposure is just a way for the subject to be properly captured. If you want a book, I found "Understanding Exposure' by Bryan Peterson to be very helpful even though I already had a good handle on the basics.

One of the biggest elements to learning exposure from my personal experience is figuring how to see light. Next time you go outside look at where direct sunlight and the shadows fall and imagine how that will be translated to film. It takes a while to get used to, but eventually you will be able to make small adjustments to aperture or shutter speed based on the lighting conditions being faced. Hopefully this helped a bit--it's a bit late and there is a chance this didn't make a lick of sense.

Rather than trying to understand theory/progress yourself, you might want to consider having a conversation with your child's teacher to talk about progress, and with your child to talk about enjoyment.

If she is enjoying herself and the teacher is happy with her progress, then I think that's all you really need to know.

Here are two small things you can listen for as a layman

Is she learning the piece by trying it over and over and over again from the beginning and struggling through to the end, or is her teacher breaking it up into chunks for her, and she is practicing those smaller chunks? She should be doing the latter. The main part of learning is learning how to learn. Her teacher should be actively coaching her on how to have a successful practice session.

Also, is she simply playing what she knows over and over and over again, or is she working on new pieces, or new parts of a piece of music? It should be the latter.

A good way to very generally assess progress is to ask the teacher how many pieces she has learned. If she has only worked on 2 or 3 pieces in the entire first year, I would say that is a warning sign that she needs a new teacher. If she is progressing through a method book and has sampled a collection of many smaller pieces, that is a good sign.

If you do want to take a more active role and understand more of what she is learning, start learning your child's method book or pick up Alfred's All-In-One Level 1: https://www.amazon.com/Adult-All---One-Course-Lesson-Theory-Technic/dp/0882848186/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1473689244&sr=8-1&keywords=alfred%27s+all+in+one+adult+piano+course+level+1 . This book will teach you the notes, terminology, and will introduce you to the challenge of learning to play that your child may be encountering.

Best of luck!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB40B4FFED0CCB1FC

I created a video series, that's still unfinished(I promise I'll finish it before october!) but will give you a basic idea of how the art pipeline for low poly games works. It's not a howto(as there are really awesome tutorials for that online for whichever package you want, and I link to them in the description)

As far as traditional art goes. it really is just drawing a lot. Buy the book How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way , it's probably one of the best books on dynamic poses and sketching I've ever read. I went to an art school, I've read a lot of art books.

Art is really just about practice. Practice drawing from real still lifes until you get it down. You do this because it helps you develop the muscles in your hand, and your eyes so you can draw smooth lines and curves. Also stay away from a style for as long as you can. It just teaches you bad habits. I can always tell the difference between an artist drawing an anime style and one drawing an anime style but also having a background in traditional art. It's night and day.

To practice drawing characters:

Go to model websites, or porn websites. It sounds perverted, but really you need to practice drawing nudes so you can understand how the human body works. Once you get really good at drawing nudes, start drawing folds of cloth laid drapped over them. You'll need to study by using a real life blanket and pinching it at areas to see how it works. Once you get good at drawing folds of cloth, move onto clothes and such. Macy's catalogues are good for this.

To practice drawing environments:

You need to study proportion and perspective. It's a pretty deep subject. You need to at least understand why and how things work the way they do in 2d, then you can start doing paint overs in maya or blender. You build a scene in blender using cubes, and what not, render out the angle you want, then draw over it. This way you can just focus on shape. But seriously, for reals, study proportion and perspective, and do it by hand first before doing the 3d mockup. The 3d mockup is just to speed the process along when you are in a professional setting. You still need to understand perspective to add details.

tl;dr DRAW A LOT

I have two different pieces of advice but I am no professional by any means, I've only done scriptwriting properly for 3 years now and still learning a lot as I go.

Firstly, I would just say write, keep writing and as you write, you learn and develop your skills, but don't neglect the essential parts of what creates a script: Logline, outlines, character description profiles, beat sheets and so on that help hone and give your script depth.

Another is to start working on smaller-length scripts first before pursuing any feature length script and practice the different narrative structures, but this in a way contradicts what I previously said about just writing. I'm writing my first feature length this year after 3 years of short pieces and glad I took that time, but at the same time, nothing helps than to just write over and over.

One thing I would say is to definitely develop the story you want to create with the planning stages before writing (unless you have scenes in mind that you can write down, then go for it), but everyone has a different process and I take bits from everything I have mentioned here.

It's entirely up to you and what helps you at the end of the day, and if you're new to the scene I would recommend a couple of books:


Save the cat and Screenplay are both useful books for all levels and have helped me when it comes to writing. Both fairly popular books so should be easy to purchase/access depending on your region.

​

Good luck with your writing journey!

> If there is literature/links/methods that you find especially effective (particularly for a newbie with 0 experience) I would be grateful. %)

Michael Hampton is my favourite anatomy artist

All of Andrew Loomis's books are available at that link, they are completely invaluable - I particularly recommend "fun with a pencil" for newbies

learn to paint with Reilly's Papers absolutely invaluable for digital painting.

Posemaniacs is my favourite site for practicing gesture drawing and poses, the pose timer is fantastic.

James Gurney is the king of imaginative realism, follow his blog and buy his books they will serve you very well.

linesandcolours is a wonderful art blog

Most importantly - read and keep a record of artists you enjoy, don't be afraid to try out their styles and techniques and copy your favourite paintings - "mastercopying" is a legitimate technique for learning how to improve your own work - as they say "all art is theft".

And the best advice I can give you - have fun with what you do. Keep multiple projects on the go, big and small. If you aren't in the mood to do a big painting, make something shitty and hilarious in MS paint. Find someone to art-trade with (hell, I'll art trade with you anytime - I'm always looking for people to collab and share with). Don't be scared to make absolute crap because being loose and free with your work at any level of complexity teaches you not be precious and will ultimately make you a more relaxed artist.

If you're just doing this for fun and not for fame and fortune: I have good news for you. Webcomics are extremely easy to get in to. You start a website or an account on Webtoons or Tapastic and you upload pages. Done.

I'd recommend something like just do it. You say you've been thinking about it for a long time now. I get it. I'm a thinker as well. I roll ideas over and over (and over and over) in my head until I think I've found the perfect solution.

The point is, you always learn the most by doing. Some people write a script, some people write a book. Some just jot down notes and write the dialogue as they're drawing. You won't know what works for you until you start applying different methods and learning what you like and what you don't. Even if you have the perfect method, you still need to apply it to learn how to use it well. This goes both for drawing and writing.

As for some resources to get you started.

For story writing: Understanding Comics, any or all the books by Brian McDonald on writing.

For drawing: have you joined r/ArtFundamentals? Great resources for people starting from scratch.

Also, look up cintematography. Choice of shots makes a great impact on how well your comic reads (and how fun it is for you to draw).

So, my advice is just to get cracking. Have fun, and if it's hard to start at first, plan in some time to practice your drawing/writing. Produce pages as soon as possible so you learn about pacing and the process of setting up a page. Write a short story to begin with. You don't have to publish them now. It's all for you to begin with.

Everyone is right about getting a teacher, particularly for the basics and more advanced concepts as well. I personally started playing through a high school class for a semester then was taught all over again by a guy from my church.

Since then however I have been playing on my own (with books) and learning by ear as well. Here are my recommendations

• get a teacher, even if its for three months
  
• get a good book. Ive used three beginner piano books and my top recommendation goes to the elder beginners piano book, which I used in high school. It is nice because it teaches at a good pace, it doesnt assume youre amazing or a genius and there is a good amount of practice before new topics
  
• second is Alfreds piano book, my current book. Which I love and personally prefer, as someone that has been instructed before. I just feel it moves at too quickly a pace for an abject beginner. there isnt as much practice as I'd like and I'd be left behind if my foundations werent already decent
  
• third, while still a good book.....I honestly can't remember the book right now. I'll update when I get it. It is a great book long term but it skips through topics really quickly. Much better as a supplement to one of the others
  
• failing to get a teacher, youtube and particularly Lypyur/Furmanzyck is a great resource for much of what you'd need to learn as far as theory. He is a great teacher and I highly recommend his stuff
  
• Have a goal, a otpic or song that you aspire to and can work towards tangibly. Thats up to you but people here can help you as far as breaking it down and being able to get there
  
• and an extra tip, a shameless plug for r/PianoNewbies, where you can learn and improve with other beginners

Not totally sure about requiring a massive budget. You would for the full realization of your dream, but there are many intermediate steps that can be turned into games. Have you played Pandemic? It could be something like that, where there are a ton of choices, but in a very manageable manner. It has a sophisticated yet elegant underlying ruleset that makes it workable.

It all depends on how you want the player to interact with the game. 3rd person action? Implausable. Top-down city sim? Mid-core budget. (Think Tropico). Text-based adventure? Inde game.

As I said, the text-based can evolve. Even if it was simply a choose-your-own-adventure style game, it would be entertaining. Remember the lense of a toy (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965). First, you create a toy. See if the toy is fun. If it is fun, then you can create a game using the toy.

I've been playing for a long time now, and have never experienced this thing which you term 'piano culture'. Of course there are competitive people in every field—from music to lawn-mowing, probably—, but do you have to associate with them? Absolutely not.

It should not be at all challenging to find a teacher who is willing to teach away from the exams. You may find that you want to take them down the line, or see how well you're progressing by practicing material from the grades. This is fine, as is staying away from them altogether.

At the end of the day, if you want to learn: learn. Self-teaching is not frowned upon at all, it's just more of a challenge and, on average, you probably won't progress anywhere near as quickly as with guided instruction. If your enjoyment motivates you to learn solo, then do that. Lots of great musicians have, and will continue to.
***

Edit**: If teaching yourself is your favourite option, I recommend the Alfred's Basic Piano Course series! Best of luck :)

Classical pianist for 15 years, and I'm going on 3 years as a self-taught jazz pianist. I can honestly say that the book I have used the most is The Jazz Piano Book. Learning modes, memorizing the circle of 5ths, 3-note voicings, left hand voicings (a la Bill Evans and others) are all things included in the book. It will teach you how to interpret lead sheets, taking basic "scale/chord" theory knowledge and applying it to improvisation, and it also will teach you a variety of tricks used by the professionals. Mark Levine, the author, writes in a cohesive, down-to-earth voice (although sometimes a little corny), and it makes it really easy to understand what he's talking about. Other books you may want to look into are A Creative Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony, A Classical Approach To Jazz Piano, and of course, LISTEN TO GREAT PLAYERS! There's a saying in jazz - probably the most true of them all - the textbooks are the records!

Hope this helps get you started.
Remember, knowing the fundamentals is the key to learning the complexities of jazz. Seriously, I can't stress this enough. Always pay attention to your technique, and always play with the best possible sound. And more than anything - enjoy the process of learning. Have fun!

Cheers.

Please bear in mind, that the fundamental skills of good drawing are universal and when you learn a consistent approach in how to draw the human form well, it doesn't matter what the size, shape, or skin colour of your model is. That's one of the reassuring things about human anatomy: despite differences between individuals, you can learn to find consistencies in structure that will always be there.

Having said that, allow me to share with you my 3 favourite life drawing books, each of which include references for models of various ethnicities.

A book you definitely want to check out is Sarah Simblet's "Anatomy for the Artist" Her drawings are immaculate, but what I really like is that the photos are if equally high quality.

Another example of high quality work is Henry Yan's Figure Drawing Techniques and Tips. These images will blow your mind, he has total mastery of charcoal. This book includes a good range of young and old models, male and female, white, black, and asian.

You might also like Michael Hampton's "Figure Drawing: Design and Invention. Probably the best book I know for showing a progressive approach to skill building using geometry and the best examples of gesture drawings.

Even though I'm white, I share your frustration. I'm always trying to find resources for drawing different ethnicities and find that they are lacking. The books I've recommended are the best I've found yet.

I like well-drawn comics, but that doesn't mean they have to be intricate and detailed - just that they match the content very well. For example, I think John Campbell (Pictures for Sad Children) is great because he can get the emotion of scenes across really well with his simple drawings. (Though I equally love artists like David Hellman.)

I like funny comics as well as serious comics. I dislike comics that aren't even remotely funny (but are trying to be). I dislike comics that could have been funny, but they ruined themselves by either going on too long (Ctrl Alt Delete) or by explaining their punchline ((Ctrl Alt Delete) again).

I love comics that are consistently good, or at least only foul occasionally.

I dislike comics that are nothing but essays with pictures added. (I'm looking at you, 50% of Subnormality.) I think the comic form is a unique medium in itself and should not be treated in such a manner.

I like comics that are self-contained to a certain extent, in that either each comic is a unique situation (SMBC) or they only have particular story arcs (Dr. McNinja) and don't just go on forever with no resolution (Megatokyo). This is why, when I go to comics stores, I buy comic books (like Blankets) rather than serials (like X-Men). (There are exceptions to this rule, when a comic book is finished and the entire collection is sold as one, like Watchmen or Marvel 1602.)

I'm sure there's more, these are just my thoughts for now.

The only advice you need right now is to improve your draftsmanship. You need to understand anatomy to be able to draw people, no matter what level of detail/realism you wish to achieve. Animators and cartoonists who who draw all varieties of cartoon characters are always masters of drawing the human form. Even drawing characters like Fred Flinstone requires you to understand anatomy, such as the way joints bend, or hands and fingers function. Having a grasp on anatomy will help your story telling, no matter how you choose to exercise (or disregard) the knowledge. The best place to start learning is a very well known book authored by Andrew Loomis: Figure Drawing for What its Worth (this is one of the most well known peices of instructional drawing literature) Buy this book and study. You already have ideas that you want to draw, and thats great, and improving your draftsmanship will help you be able to get your ideas out. In addition to anatomy, You will also need to learn some basics of perspective, to be able to convincingly draw your stage for example, or how to set up characters around the stage and make them appear to all be on the same plane. Scott Robertson has a great book that teaches fundamentals of perspective, worth looking in to How to Draw Good Luck!

Design and style are highly subjective. There are elements and rules that make things "look good" (contrast, alignment, proximity, repetition, etc.), but people can come up with many different things that are all good.

Usability is the same way. There are elements and rules that make things "usable" (Flow, Fitts' Law, Kinesthesia, affordance, etc.), but people can create radically different interactions that allow for the same goals.

Our role, is to act as a mediator. As Bill Buxton said, "design is compromise." You take all these grey areas and moving parts, and create a solution that gives the end user the best experience. You'll know its the best, because you can observe and measure it through usability testing.

If you want to make things look prettier, start by reading The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams.

If you want to make things that work better, start by reading The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

Edit: Grammar

Hey that's awesome!

I'm currently in school to be a professional animator and I strongly recommend The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams:

http://www.amazon.ca/Animators-Survival-Kit-Richard-Williams/dp/0571202284

It might be a little beyond what you're trying to achieve but it's super helpful in technique and theory to help make the animation process easier.

In terms of programs there are lots of tutorials online and on YouTube that can help you with functionality. In our program we use designated drawing tablets with screens (Cintiq5) but for personal animation at home I use my Intuos4, both by Wacom.

If you're thinking of getting a tablet you might consider the cheaper Bamboo by Wacom but I personally recommend the Intuos line as the screens are larger and much more sensitive, as well as have shortcut buttons on the side as well as an adjustable touch zoom wheel.

Feel free to ask if you have any more questions.

I used to hate math, too. Rest assured, you don't hate math, you hate the way you've been taught math. Math is beautiful and wonderful and every bit as lovely as the most eloquent of sonnets. There's true beauty in Euclid's proof that there are infinitely many primes, and in Cantor's proof that the infinity of the real numbers is greater than the infinity of the integers, or in any proof of the Pythagorean theorem. Math isn't about numbers, or equations, or multiplication tables, it's about seeing the beauty that comes from exploring a set of rules, be that algebra or calculus or geometry.

If you want to make video games, you've come to the right place. If you want to try it out, Ludum Dare, a 48 hour game jam, is coming up soon, and you can make something very simple for it to see if coding is for you. More than math, computer science is about problem solving and logic. The math is there, but that stuff can be done with calculators and Wolfram|Alpha. Even if you don't like code, you may like designing games, and if you do, you can make simpler games with less coding knowledge in GameMaker or Twine or Stencyl until you've built up enough of a portfolio to justify working with coders to make your designs become reality. (GameMaker, Twine, and Stencyl are all really mature tools at this point. GameMaker was used to make Hotline Miami, and Twine was used to make Depression Quest)

Note, however, that game design is not just being an "idea guy". Game design is real work involving real problem solving, playtesting, and a lot of study of the greats of the past, like any artistic endeavor. You'll want to play and dissect the great works of the past and see how they tick and why they're still memorable all these years later, read things like Jesse Schell's "The Art of Game Design", or Steve Swink's "Game Feel" to understand what games are and what they can be, so you can push those boundaries in new and exciting directions.

I can definitely help you with this.


How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

This is the best book on perspective you can buy. Perspective is the number one thing you need to have a grasp on if you want to draw, especially from imagination. Practice this until it clicks for you.

For setting up scenes I recommend Andrew Loomis books, Creative Illustration in particular. Loomis has several books out and they're all amazing. Many artists have learned to draw from Loomis.

Burne Hogarth is another master of the craft and you can learn a lot about musculature and anatomy from his books. These are generally a step up from Loomis so you could move on to these once you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals to take your work to the next level. Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Figure Drawing, Drawing the Human Head.

For people and anatomy, Proko (http://www.proko.com/library/) has good free youtube videos. He uses a lot of Loomis and Hogarth methods (which are pretty much the standard) and presents them in a way that is easy to digest. He's constantly updating his channel and adding new videos.

If you can only get a few books, I would get the How to Draw perspective book first, then go through the Proko material, then move onto the Loomis and Hogarth stuff. These learning materials will take you pretty much as far as you want to go.

Also I highly recommend sticking to traditional materials (pencil and paper) while you're learning. Once you have the fundamentals down then you can move on to digital. You're going to make things much easier on yourself if you stick with traditional while you nail these fundamentals down.

I think it's a bit difficult and unfair for me to comment based on one painting alone. Do you have any sketches (line drawing, preferably) of this painting, or anything that showcase what you can do so far? Almost everyone will suggest we start designing anything in line sketches, especially if learning, so I'm interested to see what you got :D

Edit: Since you're looking for advice on how to start, I'll just say a few things that might be able to help you start.

(1) Drawing, imo, is the very foundation of all art. I think before you start painting, you should start drawing first! Here are a few links that may help you start with drawing:

• Art Fundamentals (Free, and pretty good)
  
• Foundation Group (Paid, but pretty good)
  
• Ctrl+Paint (Free and Paid. Both are pretty good)
  
  (2) I suggest you follow an art school's course outline so you can progress pretty well. Feng Zhu Design School has an outline that they use for their students to learn how to do concept art in 1 year (16 hours per day). You can also download a detailed version of what they offer in their course, then you can have an idea on what each component means.
  
  
• FZD Course Outline
  
  (3) There are also a few books that would be really useful to you when learning how to draw and render. These are supposedly the best on the internet (I only have two, the first two books in the list) Here they are:
  
  
• How to Draw
  
• How to Render
  
• Figure Drawing
  
• Color and Light
  
• Imaginative Realism
  
  I think those are all I have for you now. I'm not in any way a professional artist (I'm currently studying Industrial Design), but I think the above things I've mentioned should prove useful to you. If you have any questions, you can send me a PM :D Work hard and practise every day!

I'm relatively new to the mixing game, started a few years ago in college and started back up now that I have a house and room to mix again, and those two resources were my favorites especially when I started learning.

First, you might not need all the info, but I highly recommend Mike Seniors book "Mixing secrets for the small studio". It's around $20, but totally worth it:

https://www.amazon.com/Mixing-Secrets-Small-Studio-Presents/dp/0240815807

The most important parts are:

A. he helps you get started on getting a good sounding room and speakers, which you need at least some of or you won't know what sounds good.

B. he goes through a mix step by step. Pros probably don't need that rigid of a format for going through a mix, but as a beginner, it's a great way to know what you should be listening for. It also keeps you from spending hours just messing around with no idea where you're headed, which is what I wasted too much time on early on.

One other resources helpful for beginners, if you wanna watch a lot of videos, is the Recording Revolution youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/user/recordingrevolution Most of his content is aimed towards new mixers, and he routinely does new series where he'll go through a mix step by step and show you how he does it, often using just stock plugins. While you might not follow everything he does (Sometimes he gets a little mix bus heavy, which I don't think is the best way to start for beginners) but his explanations on how plugins work is usually sound.

Anyway, lots of other great tips on this already, just thought I'd add my 2 cents.

YES!!! this is the book you have right?

My boyfriend and our friends do the same thing every sunday!

For the season premier we made onions in gravy, Roasted Aurochs with Leeks, and turnips in butter- for dessert we did frozen blueberries with the creme bastard! lol

Last night we cooked the beef and bacon pie. SO delicious. Definitely one of my favorite cookbooks. However there were a few spices that i still have found that I couldnt include in certain recipes.. like Grains of Paradise. I went to 5 different markets...3 of them had never even heard of grains of paradise. =(

edit- wow! I had no idea that I can use cardamom. I read that GoP was a mixture of different kinds of pepper with citrus notes. I was using a mixed pepper mill and a tiny bit of orange zest. But if I can use cardamom- then it makes things a lot easier! THANKS EVERYONE !!!!!!!

This is an excellent response above, and I'd like to add to this. I'm a senior at Auburn University for ID and I second that you should become familiar with sketching and, if given the opportunity, CAD software.

I've read through Scott Robertsons How to Draw book and it's a good resource for learning how to sketch.

Autodesk will often have free downloads for AutoCAD, Fusion 360, and Inventor for students. I'd recommend getting AutoCAD of the three, but I feel like Fusion is a bit more beginner friendly.

Even if you choose to go into engineering for school, sketching and CAD will help out a lot when you start your classes.

Also, if your high school has any public speaking classes, it wouldn't hurt to look into taking one. At least in my program we have pretty regular presentations, and it really helps to be able to communicate your ideas fluently when presenting a final product/end of the semester project.

Feel free to DM me as well!