This week I received an email from Max Bretherton titled “The Never-ending Tutorial Chase”. Max finds himself overwhelmed by the abundance of tutorials available on the web and asked the following questions:
“How do you see these attractive and well devised ‘tutorial’ sites fitting into an artists work flow? Do they at all or are they just a detour – like watching a movie – that eats into valuable time? Or could we be wise and use them for the advancement of our own creative lives, work and knowledge? I struggle to find the best balance of watching great tutorials and getting work done.”
My approach
I’d love to watch more tutorials but I don’t have the time. So I don’t fight it. Paying work always takes priority over study, so my approach is to allocate a short time each day for tutorials, usually watching about 30 minutes of training each morning before work.
Being a great motionographer doesn’t necessarily mean knowing all the techniques by heart. Often you’ll watch a tutorial and have no use for that particular technique at that time, only to find yourself re-watching the tutorial to refresh your memory later anyway.
So for the majority of tutorials I keep a reference and watch them when they are relevant to the current project. Bookmarks in your browser or an RSS Reader such as Google Reader is great for filing tutorials and other inspirational posts for later reference. There are also numerous tutorial lists that make it easier to search tutorials across multiple sites. Check out this list of 1001 After Effects tutorials over at Filmmaker IQ for example.
What do you think?
How do you feel about the abundance of tutorials available from sites such as Motionworks? Does it overwhelm you? Does it frustrate you not being able to keep up? Do you find yourself spending too much time watching tutorials at the expense of other things? Let’s talk.
26 Responses to this post
August 15, 2009 at 3:24 am |
Hey JD. I have the exact same feeling. I find myself watching more tutorials than working on my own projects. I can’t help it as I know I’ll learn a trick or two when following along some great tutors such as yourself. I find it extremely difficult to balance the two. Discipline plays a big part I suppose. I use/learn After Effects on a daily basis and still find new things EVERY DAY and I do incorporate my findings into mt projects…this is a difficult one…let’s find out what others think…
August 15, 2009 at 1:40 pm |
Hi Hussin, I agree that one must be disciplined, finding a balance between work and study. The new techniques learned from tutorials enhance productivity and creativity and that equals employability.
August 15, 2009 at 4:36 am |
i also watch loads of tutorials. to me the most valuable part is not how to achive a certain effect, because that usually never fits the project you’re curently working on, but it’s the workflows. i think that is, in any tutorial, the real value – how to get results faster, using features for stuff they are not originally intended for and things like that. a. rabinowitz or nick campbell have some great tutorials on workflows, that really helped me when i started with AE. if i need a certain effect i usually try to find the specific tutorial for that or something similar.
August 15, 2009 at 1:42 pm |
Hi Gref, I agree that workflow is a vital area to understand. The Making It Look Great series and the majority of free tutorials on this site are based around workflow techniques.
August 18, 2009 at 4:43 am |
Yup… lots of great workflows here, too. sorry, i forgot to mention
August 15, 2009 at 6:50 am |
Like you, John, I work full time in television. I am the Creative Services Producer for a CBS affiliated station in South Florida.
While I do enjoy watching tutorials in my spare time, and have learned quite a lot from them, I find that many are not specifically geared to my industry. So I tend to pick and choose which ones I watch.
I work in 1080, being careful not to exceed the 4:3 title safe region, and primarily create :10, :15 or :30 second spots. I work in After Effects, while others I work with prefer Motion.
It seems to me that many tutorials are geared to independent filmmakers making a sci-fi movie, or producers of corporate videos.
Even so, I feel that we in the After Effects community are all better off with more tuts, not less. There will always be something new to learn, no matter what industry you work in.
My take-away of tutorials: knowledge and networking with other great motion graphics artists. And that’s a beautiful thing!
August 15, 2009 at 1:46 pm |
Hey Jim, what a difference a few months make. It’s great to hear how you’ve now positioned yourself in the industry. More tutorials is great as long as they are quality. I watched a Cinema 4D tutorial recently that was showing how to do a technique “the long, long way”…
August 15, 2009 at 7:10 am |
There is no such thing as too much available knowledge. The tutorials are essential, so what is needed is a standardized method for searching for the right one. A database with snapshots of before and after images (when appropriate), keywords, and a brief description of what the tutorial covers is the next step.
I like your A-Z series, btw. It’s a feature that Adobe should have thought of.
August 15, 2009 at 1:51 pm |
Hi David, The adobe online help goes some way towards this. Doing a search in CS4 opens the Community Help, with a list of available resources for that topic. Tutorial authors such as myself also leave comments on various topics in the help, pointing to our content. They are also now linking to the new A-Z series
August 15, 2009 at 8:27 am |
I think abundance is always better than too little. No one is MAKING you watch tutorials, but you do it to learn those little tricks. I love the fact that you can search for almost anything and find a tut on it.
Kinda the reason I started my site, to make it a little easier for everyone to find the tutorial they need.
August 16, 2009 at 2:28 am |
Hi Topher, thanks for your input and for your site.
August 15, 2009 at 11:03 am |
Agreed, I usually set aside an hour or so in the evenings, or on Sat. afternoon, to catch up, and organize:)
August 16, 2009 at 2:29 am |
Hi Izzy, I have no time on the weekend, my tutorial time is usually Monday to Friday 9 to 9.30am
August 15, 2009 at 1:15 pm |
John
Firstly, thank you. Your site is tremendous, i find gems in it everyday. Abundance of tutorials can be a good thing, however quality is more important. I find there are a handful of tut sites i subscribe to both here in Australia and international. I usually flag them and go through them when time permits. It has been especially useful of late, since we are about to finish production on our debut film.
Keep up the awesome work that you do, and know that you have a fan for life here
Cheers mate !
August 16, 2009 at 2:31 am |
Hi Robert, I’m glad you’re finding value here. What is your film?
August 17, 2009 at 12:42 am |
Hi J, This is a very interesting topic you have here. I would say its always good to have alot of tuts but the problem is time separetion. Usualy i would start with one tut but since most of the tuts have references to some other sites, i end getting lost and watching something totaly different from what i intended.
My approach is simple, i am trying by almeans to avoid watching tuts online. If am looking for one particuler topic, i would search for video tuts and just download them. That way i can watch them anytime that am free or if i need some references.
One thing i enjoy about motionworks is the ability to download tuts in other formats unlike the *.fla formats that i are mostly found on other sites. Keep up the good work
August 17, 2009 at 4:09 pm |
Thanks for sharing Bennie. Motionworks has just switched to .flv format but you can still download movies by right-clicking and choosing download.
August 20, 2009 at 2:05 am |
I’m a tutorial junkie I`m afraid (which is why I found you!), because I`m just a beginner in AE and am addicted to it. The more the merrier, though not all tuts are created equal… some are just badly produced/explained or just hard to understand. Video CoPilot, Maltaanon and yourself have the best ones, and Creative Cow the worst (in my opinion).
Another thing I`ve found is that most of the tutorials online are focusing on the same or similar subjects. I’d like a little more variation (I found it hard to find a decent motion-tracking tutorial where the person has an object floating along with their head for instance, even though it’s a commonly seen technique). Here’s a tutorial idea for you: close-up of a girls face singing (video, not still), and you ‘etch’ animated tattoos etc on it, with the camera zooming and panning at certain points.
August 20, 2009 at 3:28 pm |
Hi Storm, thanks for joining the conversation. What is it about the Creative Cow tutorials that doesn’t work for you? As far as motion tracking goes, there are a lot of motion tracking techniques demonstrated on Andrew Kramer’s Video Copilot tutorials. Nice idea about the tattoos, how about giving it a try and showing us your progress? Best, JD
April 8, 2010 at 11:17 pm |
One thing that strikes me sometimes is some peoples inability to adapt or develop techniques learnt from tutorials. I remember reading responses to video contributions at greyscale gorilla requesting tutorials for what they’d done when it was apparent the techniques used where combinations of tutorials from his site.. (I’m not picking on you btw)
Anyway, when it comes to motiontracking, take a look at myleniums video presentation of his mocha import script.
Searching for Mathias Möhl mocha import vimeo should give you a result.
August 20, 2009 at 6:49 pm |
Creative Cow: the bad audio, indecipherable accents.
I meant that particular technique of attaching animated objects to people, not just general motion-tracking. I`m just a newbie
August 24, 2009 at 12:44 pm |
This is certainly an interesting topic, John. First time commenter here, and admirer of all the contributions you’ve been making to the world of graphics and VFX.
As a professional in the industry, I find myself enjoying the plethora of tutorials that come out when a new version of a piece of software comes out. It’s insanely helpful in order to keep up in our fast-paced techy world. But yes, at the same time I find myself watching countless hours of tutorials and wondering at what point this time spent has diminishing returns. I agree that paying work takes priority, but being a movie watcher in my down time, I find that watching a good tutorial can be just as relaxing, if not even a more inspiring experience at times. For me, watching tutorials is a two-fold service. One, it allows me to watch someone working with certain techniques, which leaves my mind free to wander about the creative possibilities I could take it in regards to my own work. And the second thing that tutorials afford me, especially those showing a new version of software or a plugin, is to quickly know what can be done with a technique, and even if I don’t use it immediately, it’s in the back of my head when I talk to a client about creative solutions. It gives me the confidence of knowing I can create an effect, without having ever done it before.
Best,
-Robert
September 9, 2009 at 4:54 am |
How about this . . .
would being able to recreate projects in tutorials, be enough to land you a job?
Thanks guys
Aidan
September 9, 2009 at 2:53 pm |
I definitely wouldn’t recommend recreating tutorials as a way of landing a job. In this small industry, tutorials are recognisable by many of the people you might be approaching for work. Check out part 2 of the Unplugged Andrew Kramer interview later this week, we touch on this subject.
April 8, 2010 at 8:01 pm |
I too have been overwhelmed by the amount of tutorials that are out there and need to structure the way I use them. I constantly have tabs open on my browser with tutorials to catch up with. Since I’m still a beginner, I wonder what’s expected from me, should I “know everything” before hand or once I need a certain technique learn it then? Will I have time to learn the necessary technique when I have a job that requires it? Paradoxical, since without the skill it will take double time.
Sometimes I find the tutorials might not bring anything new. Some time ago I looked at 3d tutorials and saw various for modelling. Modelling a man, a woman, a child etc. And I’m thinking it must be the same technique just the shape differs!!
Personally I think I have to change my way of thinking about tutorials, and just solve things the way I know to do them. The time I might save doing it some other way I spend watching a tutorial or stressing about all the ones I haven’t seen!
April 11, 2010 at 5:15 am |
Hey Anders, I think the key is knowing what’s out there so you can watch it when you have a project that needs it. Best wishes, John.
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