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comicteaparty · 4 years

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January 25th-January 31st, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from January 25th, 2020 to January 31st, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

When dealing with criticism, how do you personally decide what is and isn’t legitimate criticism for your story?

Deo101 [Millennium]

For me, the only criticism i take from any critique (even professors) are the ones that I feel push me closer to my goals as an artist. I also only consider critique that comes with my consent and from a place of trying to help me grow. This second bit (trying to help) is something I can't really explain how to tell, you just kind of start to learn over time.

malverav

My philosophy regarding criticism is twofold: I don't take crit from people that I wouldn't take advice from, and I don't take unsolicited crit. I tend to seek out crit from people I know, respect, and trust who also get what I'm doing with my work and get what I'm aiming for. That, and after a certain level, crit is a matter of taste. Saying "this anatomy is squirrelly" or "push your contrast in values" is very useful and somewhat objective, but something like "you should shade like this, not like that" or "use a different colour" is simply a matter of taste in my opinion. It's why I don't take crit from everyone as everyone's tastes are different. I don't take crit from, say, @xX_roxas_fan_69_Xx saying 'your story sucks' with a three paragraph rundown of why. Random commenters? I don't listen to them if they're not paying my bills. Besides, a lot of those randos seem to enjoy tearing someone down and looking like the smartest person in the room, rather than doing something useful. It really speak to entitlement that someone thinks they can swan in and offer an artist their great and wise critique - who made you the boss of art, @xX_roxas_fan_69_Xx? There's a certain danger in listening to too much crit and advice, and after a certain point you just have to pay attention to your own instincts.

Tuyetnhi

Rip I usually don't take crit from folks on the internet or irl if I don't ask for it. Most of the time I often check with my peers to give advice because I know they'll help me push forward in my work. Though I'm thankful that I had advice from some industry folks but dang, that kind of stuff is uncommon.

I do have comments that really doesn't address the story at all and some superficial comparisons. Those I don't respond.(edited)

keii4ii

Everyone's brought up excellent points, many of which I personally employ as well. Here's one I haven't seen yet: If a criticism is extremely negative, to a point where "if this is correct, then my entire comic is garbage and I should start over" is the only logical conclusion, then I'm not going to consider it. Because yeah, I'm not going to start over. Doesn't matter how genuine their intentions at that point. Either they're right and I have an irredeemable pile of garbage -- which I'm not willing to throw out, so rip. Or they're "wrong" (as in, they got that negative because they are 10000% not my target audience) in which case, it'd be pointless trying to please them.

To clarify, "extremely negative" doesn't have to be a literal "your comic sucks at everything." Maybe they'll have some positive things to say, but with regards to my most important goals with the story, they'll have nothing but total negatives to say. e.g. "None of your jokes are even remotely funny, but hey, nice art" for a comedy comic.

DaemonDan (The Demon Archives)

I like to think I'm fairly opened minded with regards to most crit, as long as it feels well intentioned, and as long as I can see where they're coming from.

That doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to change anything on that given page (too expensive for me since I have to pay my artist for everything), but it's something to consider going forward

Especially if it is a concern/question about plot or something that I haven't explained well yet and didn't have planned to explain/show.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I can’t put into words exactly how I ‘tell’ if it’s legit or not. If it’s just ripping my work apart and delivered in an aggressive tone, I know that it’s ill-intended and not to pay it any mind. If it’s also from a serial nitpicker, I usually disregard it as well. If it’s polite and well thought out, I’m more likely to pay attention. Even then, I’m usually able to tell if it’s good, applicable advice or well-meaning, but subjective opinions that simply don’t apply. I’m usually pretty aware of the flaws in my work and can hold it at arms length to see if a crit really does have a good point. If I think it will genuinely help me improve, I’ll start incorporating the advice into my work. Because if a critique helps me get better at what I’m already trying to do, then I’m all ears. I’m always open to con crit, and I think carefully about what was pointed out, but I also take it with a grain of salt. Probably the biggest thing I learnt as an art student wasn’t about making art, but how to parse critique I received.(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

There's really only two types of criticism I completely disregard - 1) Something that shows the critiquer's vision of the comic is completely different from my own (e.g. "I liked the bad drawings better, you should have stuck with that"). 2) Some variation of "stop making the comic" (e.g. "you should stop posting art until you improve more") (both of which are real criticisms I've gotten. the latter one surprisingly recently.) Also, sometimes a criticism is... difficult to understand? Like I'll try to take "the dialogue doesn't pull me into the next page" into consideration, but... it's hard to nail down exactly what that means, y'know? Fortunately I haven't really gotten any bad faith criticism or un-asked for criticism, so, that's nice.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Luckily I haven't received too much critique/criticism on my comic work, and (so far!) certainly nothing harsh or insulting. In all honesty, I could use a bit more critique, and should probably actively seek it out, so I could keep learning and improving! As such, I've taken all the criticisms into account to varying degrees. If I can't easily go back and fix something, I can always keep that note in mind for future pages. I'm usually most concerned about clarity of plot/progression - aesthetic choices are a matter of preference, but if a reader just plain can't tell what's happening, that's my biggest concern. A comic can be many things, but it should at least be legible, both in words and in images. I take notes on legibility/clarity very seriously.(edited)

varethane

I liked deo's comment at the top about considering crit if it gets you closer to your goals... for me, that's often the most important aspect. Feedback from someone who understands what I'm trying to do is really valuable, because it can help me pin down things that I was already kind of aware weren't working but couldnt put into words. When it comes to unsolicited crit, honestly the most useful ones I've gotten were from readers who didnt even realize they were making a crit. When I start to see comments that appear to be misunderstanding what i intended to put into a page, then I know I need to make some changes.

AntiBunny

In a world of very quiet readers I've had to seek out criticism. Much of what I've gotten is pretty legitimate as a result. I find that legitimate criticism usually can back up its argument. You'll have examples of what's wrong, point out counterexamples, of have suggestions to how to make it better.

Illegitimate criticism is usually cases of personal insults or just saying "it's bad." However there are also cases of people attempting to give legitimate criticism, but missing the point. Usually those who didn't do their homework.

For instance in AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ one of the biggest failings I've seen at giving legitimate criticism was "I didn't finish it, but it seems incomplete." That's a good example of someone not doing the reading necessary to back up their comment.

And lastly those who just don't realize that the subject matter isn't for them, and confuse that with a judgment of quality such as "I don't like black and white comics," and "I don't like anthropomorphic animal comics."

More legitimate arguments I've gotten, that actually did help me improve were comments on the old site design, which was really stuck in my rather late 90's HTML coding skills, so I took the time to learn a bit of CSS, and improved upon it. Others were about the early art style, which I've grown and evolved from since then. And of course about the text being hard to read, so I moved away from hand written text, and tried several fonts before settling on a free and open font. Jr Hand if anyone is interested.

In short, legitimate criticism helps you improve, illegitimate is either an attack, or just misses the point.

kayotics

I tend to seek out crit from people who I trust, first and foremost. Usually before I even start the work. Unsolicited critique, I think about it for a few days and then decide whether it’s appropriate or not. I do this because I’ve gotten critique before that HAS hurt me enough for me to stop a project. Other people’s opinions of me affects me a lot, and I have to mull on their words to decide whether or not they’re being honest or if they’re saying something to me in bad faith. Sometimes it’s hard to separate what’s legitimate criticism and what’s just entirely incorrect, so that’s why I take a few days to mull on it before acting on it.

keii4ii

Yeah, sometimes even a good faith critique can just... miss the point entirely, and it can demoralize me in a unique way. 'They're genuinely trying to be helpful, so they have to be right..........' kinda thing -- which is not always the case, I've had to remind myself.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Another thing about critique, is if it is truly in good faith and trying to help you grow... They won't mind if you don't take it.

kzuich

I've always said thanks no matter the feedback...but I've definitely gotten crappy critique that wasn't helpful before. One of the worst I've ever received when I was soliciting feedback was from someone who couldn't pinpoint what they didn't like about my comic, but said it was "wasted potential" and needed to be more serious. (Wut.) They then tried to tell me that they'd be willing to help me if I'd invite them on as a writer/editor, and now I'm thinking that person didn't even read my comic and was just trying to neg me into giving them a spot on my site so they'd have a project with their name attached to it or something xD(edited)

(For the record...my comic is a very lighthearted comedy. Like...way to miss the point! xD)

Cherryzombs

Oof. -_- Reminds me of an art teacher once putting "Not Creative Enough" on one of my works. I dunno what to do with that...

kzuich

Lol art teachers like that always got under my skin.

keii4ii

Yeah, critics missing the point is a big part of why I've become extremely selective about who to ask crits from!

kzuich

I don't really solicit feedback much anymore.

Not because I don't want critique

It's just...There are not a lot of people who actually know -how- to critique

keii4ii

Sometimes you can glean some good things from a critique that just missed the point -- like, sometimes it can help you see why they missed it and how you can maybe prevent that. But.... I don't have the spoons for that kinda gleaning anymore.

kzuich

I don't mind people reviewing my comic, because, well, hey exposure! But if I ask for feedback, I'm asking people who make comics. Because the best critique I've ever gotten was over on the SF discord. A user actually gave critique that was extremely helpful and on-point.

keii4ii

Even fellow comickers can be unhelpful, too. Every person whom I've asked for critique was making a comic, but the helpfulness has varied a lot.

kzuich

Yeah that's true

keii4ii

"I hate, hate, HATE your MC, so you should kill him off or otherwise get rid of him forever" was told to me by a fellow comic creator.... and I was already doing like, chapter 7, so yeah, removing the MC wasn't really an option X'D

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

YIKES WHAT

kzuich

You could always do a 180 and really trip out your readers

very ~experimental~

The critic who hated my comic would've loved that

I gotta dig up that critique because it was really funny. My husband and I will make jokes about it from time to time lol

keii4ii

XDD

kzuich

Like have I totally turned this on its head? I'm critiquing the critic

Cherryzombs

When someone asks me for feedback I tend to ask what specifically they want notes on.

Otherwise I don't really offer it. >.>

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I usually ask if they want critique first and then do the compliment sandwich if they say yes.

And try to really emphasise the things I like and feel are working.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

@Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) "compliment sandwich" I love that.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I didn’t come up with it, but thank you! XD

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

In regards to how I myself determine what critiques are worth my consideration... I like what @Deo101 [Millennium] and @varethane spoke about with the idea of our personal vision for our work. Whether or not someone gets what I'm trying to accomplish from my work or not plays a huge role in whether I'll take their critique seriously. An example of this is in my comic Whispers of the Past, there was a scene where a character had a flashback, and to show that it was a flashback, I made the background behind the panels black instead of white. A commenter told me I should make the background behind all the panels black because it adds more contrast. By itself, the critique wasn't that harmful or incorrect, but in the context of "this story is gonna have a bunch of flashbacks and I need a way to differentiate them from present time," it definitely was a critique that wasn't really helpful to me. The commenter clearly didn't understand that it was a flashback. Another type of critique I don't pay attention to are critiques where the critic is pointing out something that I can't really change. Or are being unintentionally rude, "It's too short." "I can't remember what happened in the past updates because of the infrequent postings." "I would rather you wait until you have X pages before posting." Um... I can't just simply draw FASTER. I'm not a GOD. And finally, critiques that have to do with taste and not quality. I had an art professor whose common critiques of my work included, "This is too illustrational," and "The colors are too saturated." To which my responses were: https://media.tenor.com/images/7dfa6d3d76a277b8c204945ae8fd3161/tenor.gif(edited)

renieplayerone

for me, I tend to ignore a lot of random critique, or at the very least put it aside and ask a friend later. What I do trust for critique is when the critique comes from other comic writers and artists who I know, and I seek out the critique on my own. I also tend to take more to critique when it's constructive or from a good-faith helpful place, like "hey this page could use some more clarity to get your point across" rather than "whut? Idk what this is". I also am in some writer groups where we do crit nights, which are very structured and from a "I want to see you succeed, lets help make that happen" standpoint, so Im much more likely to listen to them than a rando on the internet saying "draw it, but gud"

carcarchu

@keii4ii i once read a webcomic where the author killed the main love interest after 100 chapters and replaced him with a clone xD i really respect the author's boldness there

kzuich

lol what a legend

DanitheCarutor

Usually I try to put any criticism for anyone into consideration, sometimes a stranger might have more knowledge of what I'm trying to do than I do, and I have gotten really good advice for randos popping in with critique and suggestions. Although, due to my story being super tight, I usually end up weeding out whatever doesn't apply to what I'm currently trying to accomplish with it. This sucks because that's a lot of story critique, and it makes me look like some child who can't handle negative feedback. There has been comments that I should make more happy scenes or get rid of some heavy stuff, make the comic more like Breaking Bad (Never seen this show. ) because it's too boring, having romantic scenes to fit the title, make my MC Julian less "weird" and more likable. I can change small things, but big stuff that has an affect on the main plot would make me have to rework the entire story... which then it wouldn't really be TGtaHR. I can do some tweaking to the main stuff, but the person giving the critique would have to know the whole story, and what I'm trying to accomplish. At least in my extremely anal opinion.

Art wise I'm more open, there have been really good suggestions about me using more contrast and values to draw the audience's eyes to what I want them to see, I've been told to simplify my backgrounds or use less bold colors which is a problem for me since I'm REALLY into drawing detail, or that I need to make my speechbubbles more readable. These are valid critiques because these things do hinder the comic, and I have been trying to work on improving, although admittedly I do have a lot of trouble changing up my coloring and details. There have been a few interesting ones that I've kinda ignored since they don't really help? A couple people have said I should switch to drawing digitally because it looks more professional/polished, I've been told to stop drawing backgrounds entirely, someone said I should draw in a more aesthetically appealing style, and another one was that I drew too many dynamic angles. There is a critique I've gotten a few times in particular that I've kinda ignored, but I'm not sure if I should apply, which is that my shading is weird. As in my style of complementary shading looks bad, and while I really like that type of shading I'm not sure if I'm applying it correctly. The people who usually say this don't ever elaborate on what they mean, or how I can do better... except one person who said I should use a darker version of the same color or black for shading, which is kinda gross looking to me.

But yeah, I generally try really hard to take in criticism, but if I can't make it work for what I'm currently trying to do I move on.

varethane

Too...... many?? dynamic angles.....??

Tuyetnhi

wut omg there can't be too many dynamic angles

varethane

Yeah, uh, pretty sure you can disregard that one lmao

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Lol, I WISH I had that problem

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, that one totally caught me off guard, I've never heard of drawing too many angles. Usually the criticism is that you're not drawing enough. I told them I was practicing my perspective, which I am, but... yeah, didn't know what to say to that.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

God, what I wouldn't give to have more angles I guess too much detail can be an overload, but still, better too many than too few

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Actually, one of the most legitimate critiques I ever got was from a professional editor at a convention where he was doing portfolio reviews. And you know what he said? That I should have more interesting camera angles.

SAWHAND

Lol! I do think most people have to force themselves to think about the camera angles. I certainly do at least! I think the key to good critique is to understand that it's not really about liking or not liking something. It's not about preference at all. It's about letting the artist know what the audience is likely seeing or experiencing so that they know whether their intentions are coming across. And if you're getting that advice from other artists usually they can tell you why something feels a certain way. For example, a reader might say, "it seems really hectic", but an experienced artist might be able to say "I think having a lot of different camera angles so quickly is making the scene feel very hectic." (just using camera angles as an example, since it came up) And then as the artist, you can say oh great, that's exactly what I was going for, or you can think about changing it. But critique is just about helping an artist refine their vision, letting them know if the tools/techniques they're using are matching up well with their intentions.

RebelVampire

Yeah. Somewhat to the above, I could see a critic saying "too many dynamic angles" if they meant that there wasn't a good visual flow and it was hard to follow in that regard

It's always good to remember a lot of the people who have time to give critiques for a whole webcomic are actually not professional artists. So they can't always accurately describe in that realm what theyre seeing.(edited)

mariah (rainy day dreams)

This conversation reminded me of a Tumblr tutorial from m forever ago by one of the Adventure Time folks. It talks about a lot of things, but specifically I could see someone thinking the camera is "too dynamic" if a comic artist is breaking the 180° rule a lot in their panels or not following screen direction. Though screen direction is probably a little more forgiving in a non-animated format. Anyway, I'll put the link for that tutorial in #art_resources

Mei

Critique is a tough one. Because for the most part I accept critique from close friends that I trust and from my professors. Sometimes though, I personally feel like my art will be going one direction and will waylay the critique for another project. If that makes any sense. I guess what I mean is that sometimes you've already done so much on one piece or comic and when someone gives you critique it's like "okay thank you, I hear you, and I will implement it in the next thing I do, not this page that I am currently doing." I also tend to ask my friends if they don't mind critique? For things that are WIPs and shared. My friend once said "I mean what do you say to that... Can you even say no?" And I was like, "Yes you can completely say no and I wouldn't give critique it's as simple as that", but I guess when you're closer friends,it's less apprehension maybe. That being said, I haven't really run into the unsolicited critique category quite yet. I mean, I feel as if I'll run into that eventually, I've just been lucky enough not to. Plus, a lot of critique I get is actually about things I'm already aware that I need to improve on? I got some pretty fair critique from several people on several projects that I should work on backgrounds, layouts, and location. Which I know is a weakness I have, and honestly I avoid it a lot because I'm really scared of it? And I know that I have to just... work on it and do more visual studies if I ever want to improve. It's just a very daunting task, especially since I'm studying as a character animator, so the backgrounds are almost always secondary (I kept handing off backgrounds to friends to help do rip) And with what was said above about 'too many dynamic angles', I can see why that might be a critique for action sequences. Something like Boku Aca actually suffers visually from that! It's so dynamic that pages can end up looking clunky? I guess?!

DanitheCarutor

Urm to cover my ass, I do agree and see how too many dynamic angles can be a hindrance, but for out of the norm stuff like that I unfortunately need to be shown an example or elaboration on why that isn't working for me. I don't remember how far back the critique was, maybe around chapter 2 or 3. They never pointed anything out, but I believe they were responding to pages like these. Edit: DON'T actually read the contents of these pages, a couple of them might have some heavy stuff that could make you uncomfortable.(edited)

(I do agree that the circular perspective page is awful, it was my first attempt and I didn't have a drawing table at the time to make a larger circle. I might redraw that page at some point.) But it's really hard to know exactly what they mean. Should I do more eye level shots? More talking heads? I'm super thick in the head, and need a little hand-holding, when it comes to understanding critiques like that. I do agree, though. There are so comics that have so much going on that they can be really hard to read.

Mei

I think in terms of dynamism it's just important to keep in mind that if EVERYTHING is dynamic ALL THE TIME, then it ceases to be 'dynamic' and becomes the norm, and it can be as whip-lashy as a movie that uses far too many jump cuts in an action movie. Like you want to be able to follow that continuous string of motion and jumpcuts can disturb that? So similarly in comics it's something people will say to keep in mind

I mean I don't see anything particularly wrong with the angles you're using in the pages you've linked! And at the end of the day, if it works for you then it works? And it's also a personal taste thing i think

some people LOVE comics with tonnes of dynamic panelling and angles. Other people prefer things really grounded in reality and more gentle in terms of the cuts

So I guess to string this back to the critique stuff, it's things you can take note of and be more aware of but doesn't necessarily mean that what you've already made is 'bad' or whatever, because it definitely isn't. I always see Critique as just things that other people notice that you don't, and sometimes they're helpful and sometimes it's like "Okay thanks for pointing that out"

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Yeah, those pages look good to me.

I particularly love the lighting in the last page.

Desnik

Oh this is a good creator question. So, for me, legitimate critique is when a person labels specific things in the story and proves that they actually read it, whether they do or don't like it. I might not take that person's suggestions but I do think about how the story's coming across. For instance one of my writing group friends hounded me over explaining each and every little thing in my story...but honestly I'm not going to infodump upfront. But her feedback is terribly important because if she's asking this kind of question about what's going on, she can't possibly be the only person who will be a bit lost(edited)

even though I'm not implementing her suggestion specifically the way she wants it (big simple infodump), at least I'm thinking about what information is clear and what's waiting to be explained later

There's also observing people because that can give me bigger clues than what they say. If they trip over a sentence when reading aloud, then I definitely check it out and see if I can make the prose easier to read. Little stuff like that.

DanitheCarutor

@Mei Sorry, haven't been online much this week. Oh yeah, that is totally understandable, and I have seen how too many odd camera angles or jump cuts can be jarring! I just thought it was an interesting critique since they never elaborated on what they meant, plus even though I've heard of certain angles ruining a scene, I've never actually heard about having too many dynamic angles so it just surprised me. A good chunk of webcomic creators default to more standard angles since perspective can be such a pain in the ass, and takes up extra time, so the feedback I usually see is to have more variety. Sorry if any of this came off like I was complaining! I really wasn't, I just wanted to answer the question with some examples of different types of criticism I've received. Talking about some of the ones that were odd, or I couldn't take for one reason or another. Didn't mean to draw so much attention to myself. xD That is true, though. It might have been personal taste, who knows, we can always improve more.

@Cronaj (Whispers of the Past) Thank you! I was really satisfied with how that page turned out!

Mei

@DanitheCarutor Oh no I never thought you were complaining at all! I was just responding haha sorry if that made you think I was being overly critical or anything. But yeah, I mean some people have different tastes or they point out different things that may or may not be problems. I think having a lot of critique can be a double edges sword anyway. On the one hand, it's great to hear outside opinions. On the other hand, they can give such varying advice that's all based on personal taste that it could not even apply to you. So it's like... take what you can and leave the rest or something?!

RebelVampire

While I normally don't participate in these, I will this week as a fiction writer and as someone who used to do webcomic reviews. For me, when it comes to dealing with criticism and critiques and deciding what's legit is to look for trends - which is the advice I generally give for anybody who doesn't know what to look for. Creativity is not an exact science, and as such, critiquing creative projects is not an exact science. While there are certainly foundations, in the bigger scheme of things, every critique is going to be different and unique. Every critic/reviewer/etc. has their own personal tastes, their own personal goals and aims when giving the criticism, their own personal style for giving a critique, and so on. This is why you can have two reviews that are completely opposite from each other in opinion, because each person is not only influenced by what they think makes a work good, but just their own personal focuses no matter how objective a critic tries to be. But, to me, this is why when you get several people all saying the same thing, that's the time to get concerned and consider changing something. Cause again, every critic is coming from a different place, and if people coming from different places are reaching the same approximate conclusion, they're actually probably on to something. So, I play the patience game, gather multiple critiques, and look for trends before putting stock into any one piece of criticism.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

But what do you do when a bunch of people all say the same thing, but fixing that issue would take a ton of time and effort? A lot of people have said that my font is too small and hard to read. Is it worth it to spend a day just changing a bunch of letters on 70+ pages and saving and resizing them again? Despite all the people telling me it's an issue, I still don't really think it's that bad. I'm used to reading page format comics, and my font size is comparable to other page format comics. I think a big part of why people are complaining is because I'm a page-format comic on webtoons. But also I'm using a custom font which is my own handwriting. Obviously I'm used to reading my own handwriting and find it very legible, but other people aren't and so might find it more difficult to read. Maybe I can't look at the font objectively because of that : /

Kabocha

I think font issues and readability are... A different issue. One thing I noticed as I got older is that the small fonts I used to tend towards got harder and harder to read. So finding a balance between page legibility on the web and print is... Challenging. But it can be done. If you have a small screen with a high resolution (more than a cell phone), might be worth seeing how much you have to zoom in or focus to read it

Granted, I'm not yet 35, but my eyesight hasn't improved...;;!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'm not sure about updating the old stuff, but if it's something that's been repeatedly brought up I would definitely increase the size on pages going forward and see if that helps. I can see the value in also updating the old pages if people are dropping off because the type is too small, but also I feel like 70 pages is like right on the board for me of not worth it for the time it would take. The value of your time is a personal decision though.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Even when taking critique, I almost never apply that to old pages. Webcomic readers generally expect a level of improvement, so they can understand if early pages have issues that are fixed later on.

Kabocha

Agreed, though if you have a way to batch process files for export, that might not be bad? It really depends on how much of a barrier to readability it is.

But in the context of critique? Eh, worth knowing for future projects at minimum!

Kabocha

Anyway, to answer the question I suppose... How do I determine what's legitimate and what's not... I guess it depends -- I saw a few people mentioning whether the interests of the critique align with your growth (or I think I saw that; admittedly, I'm not really inclined to scroll up too far right now), or whether or not you trust the person giving the critique. I think those are two good things look at, for sure! I also think it's worth considering whether or not you care. Like, at the end of the day, if it's not a show-stopper or making the work unreadable or unenjoyable, then... Meh? Make a note of it for the future, see if it's something you can incorporate if you solicited the critique. If it's entirely unsolicited... bigger meh.

DanitheCarutor

@Mei Nooo you didn't make me feel that way, I just know it can come off that way to a lot of people and wanted to clarify. Differentiating critique based on personal taste from you doing something objectively bad can be really hard to do sometimes! I usually do what Rebel Vampire said and collect them until I see a trend, but sometimes I wonder if that single critique is someone noticing a flaw no one else does. Although that might be me over-thinking things. @RebelVampire That is a good reminder of how different people are, and how variety there is in how they view things. Man, I wish I knew about your reviews back when you still did them... and I also magically had a decent chunk of my comic finished, I really liked your style. For the most part I try to apply the idea of going off trends. Unfortunately there is one I do tend to ignore since it feels like ends up fitting with my intentions, which are critiques about making my story less sad/uncomfortable/heavy. It probably is a legit flaw, and I might be executing my story poorly for all I know, but I did want to make a comic that could be really sad and/or uncomfortable. Due to that I kind of ignore those critiques... even though I probably shouldn't, it's hard to tell for those ones specifically. But yeah, hoarding critiques like they're playing cards, then finding patterns to see what needs to be improved is a good way to find a quality in your work that might be objectively bad.

keii4ii

@DanitheCarutor I think that's a great point, especially for those of us making very niche stories. Even if you get 99 people telling you they don't like your work because of X, sometimes it is the 100th person that you're writing for, the one who LOVES that (very intentional and pivotal) X in your work.

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

ESPECIALLY if those 99 critiques are not aligned with your artistic vision to begin with.

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, the hardest thing about making something niche is a lot of people aren't going to like it no matter how well you pull it off, also getting feedback that works with what you're trying to accomplish is kinda hard. I went into my comic know it wouldn't get a whole lot of people who would understand or enjoy it, so I decided it would be for myself to vent and whoever does like the story can tag along. That seemed like the best plan to keep from getting discouraged. It IS really nice when that 100th person comes along who loves that weird stuff as much as I do.

RebelVampire

@Eightfish (Puppeteer) To add my own two cents to previous replies about fixing old pages, I think this depends first off, what others have said, how you value your own personal time and whether you think its worth the effort. Second, though, I think is to consider what the issue is that needs to be fixed. Some issues are definitely more minor than others, and ppl accept if you fix them later. However, then there's issues like readability, too much front-loading of information, etc. that can be a bit more major because its effecting readers' ability to understand your comic. It's at that point I personally believe that it'd be better to fix earlier pages. Cause the average new reader isn't going to show up to the comic and go "Maybe this will improve with this major issue later." The average new reader is going to give your comic 20 pages at most and then leave if the issues are still there and they can't follow the comic. In other words, always remember readers still have to read the beginning pages in order to get to the improved pages. So the question is, do you think the issue is something that will make readers drop the comic before they even get to that point? Again, though, emphasis, this is a personal decision. There are people who would put in the effort, and people who wouldn't. And both are right because what you do with criticism is ultimately your business.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #comic tea party #ctp #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble

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falcon6 · 5 years

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Learning to Create

It’s really difficult for me to admit that I’m an artist of any capacity. A lot of times, I consider that sort of term to be dedicated only to the working artist. You know, the ones who actually get paid for their work. The ones who end up creating things for everyone. The ones I admire greatly, to the point that I consider them to be living on Mt. Olympus while I’m stuck at a temple waiting for a chariot up a very steep road.

The place I work at now is a place where I don’t get to really create for myself. I create for other people. When I’m done there, I seldom get to make things for myself at home. There is an effort, of course, when I’m able to do so, but it’s hard to be that focused after toiling a retail job for 7 hours a day. You end up taking the opportunity to decompress and that ends up becoming an 8-hour decompress and you need to go to bed. That’s how it is for an adult, I guess. Don’t recommend growing up.

And that “9-5 Job, Now Do Nothing For Hours” mindset is something I need to work on, to be sure. In my mind, I see myself as someone who needs to be able to do something. I can’t make art to decompress, because art is supposed to be something important. I toil and toil, thinking about the process I need to decide on doing. “How do I become an artist like my favorite artists?” “What is the correct methods of learning it?”

How do I climb the mountain and join the greats?

In my monthly stint of introspection, I was watching a friend play Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. To this day, it may still be my favorite game. Watching it again brings back a lot of genuinely good memories, both inside and outside of the game. The charm that filled the game’s varied and interesting world and cast has still yet to be matched for my personal tastes. And for years, it was the game I played whenever I needed a good pick-me-up.

Watching him play it for the first time and getting to hear the same sort of reactions I had to it 14 years ago ended up bringing an...odd memory back to me. And it involves this image.

Low-Quality Vivian For The Low-Quality Needs

Perhaps not this specific image in particular - the internet could have phased out that one- but something similar to it.

See, back in 2004 I was just getting in on the whole Internet thing. This was back when people used what was called an “internet forum”. This was a place where people can post their thoughts on a wide range of topics, such as: “How do you jump in Metroid?”, “This game sucks”, and “Do you think Kingdom Hearts 2 will be on Gamecube?”.

I was part of one forum for a good part of my teenage life. I started at around January of 2004, in fact. I suppose I consider that a turning point in my life if I remember it to that degree.

I was fairly active in that forum. And as I began to make my posts, I began to notice something. At the bottom of every post was what you called a signature.

They were a cute little way to signify that you were the one who was making the post. It was one of the small creative outlets this particular forum had given users, though you still needed it to be both 45-ish pixels tall and kept at a low file size to help those with 56k modems.

Typing that out makes me feel really old.

There were people who were making these small images underneath their posts and the cool, hip guy I was as a teenager was like “OH BOY I WANNA DO THAT TOO!”. Of course, in order to create this sort of stuff I had to be...sneaky.

Back then, I found a pirated copy of Paint Shop Pro 7. It worked decently enough for me, but as I was a young lad with strong moral values - I didn’t even curse until well into my later teens, the frickin’ twit - I felt extremely guilty doing this. So for my birthday that year, I ended up getting a legit copy of Paint Shop Pro 8. It was at that point, I suppose, that my desire to create stuff was ignited. I was thrown into the wide world of graphic design, making sigs for myself and others.

I eventually upgraded to Photoshop 7 - after throwing away all of those moral values and growing the confidence to say the fuck-word - walking even further into this new world for me. I started making signatures for people in flashier ways, abused lens flare to the point of blinding half of Nintendo fanboys, and even dabbled in creating wallpapers for people to use. This was back when 1024x768 was the norm, if you can believe that.

I talk about this because when my friend was playing TTYD, I decided to look up art of some characters again, and found Vivian - one of the party members in the game - once more. Only, this time, in a way higher fidelity than I had 14 years ago.

Best Girl in A Good Resolution.

In general, I’d consider TTYD as the game that first got me encroaching into graphic design. This was not due to the game’s art, which is still fantastic, but because of so many people suddenly wanting signatures of their favorite new party members in that restrictive 48 pixel height.

I would get private messages in the forum asking for sigs with Mario, Goombella, Koops, Yoshi, Vivian, Bobbery, the X-Nauts, Bowser, Peach...Rawk Hawk a few times...even had Zess T. the cook in there. It was wild.

So imagine my surprise going through Google Image Search for a post about Vivian and finding an image of her that was extremely close to the kind of art I had to work with back then. I worked for a long time trying to figure out how to deal with the blur of the pisspoor scan with its low resolution and JPEG artifacts. Back then, finding official art was pretty difficult alone, and official art that actually looked like it was scanned with proper care? You were basically stuck with what you had and needed to figure out how to hide it. The people who could find clean concept art became our dealer providing the good shit while we provided our services to others.

Otherwise, you just worked with what you had. This was problem solving. Back then, you didn’t have access to as many tutorials as you do now. You absolutely didn’t have as much access to tablets. Those were from Wacom only and they were expensive. So you were essentially on your own, only getting help from the occasional artist who decided to make small tutorials on the forum.

Thankfully most of the people for signature requests were also teenagers as well, who just thought you were amazing for doing this for them.

I suppose all this reminiscing got me thinking about that mountain again. The paths up the mountain are long but they’re rarely ever getting longer or shorter, just easier to traverse. Nowadays, tablets are so much easier to acquire and art programs have gotten a lot more manageable. Art you want to look at or study or even use for your small projects are readily available, with services that makes buying personalized art easy and supporting artists even easier.

The knowledge about art programs and processes is nigh-infinite at this point. You can get a young artist’s commentary about their own virtues of art in a single tweet at lunch and get an experienced artist’s commentary at dinner. You can get atelier-level art lessons for free on Youtube.

Almost anything you want to learn is feasible now. Climbing the mountain is easier than ever.

So naturally, with my inferiority complex in full swing, I always have to ask myself why I haven’t started climbing the mountain yet. Why haven’t I just started the trek up the mountain pass already towards becoming a technically-skilled artist?

And the answer is, I am.

It’s just at my pace.

When I was a kid playing make-believe with others in the playground, I was making steps. Throughout all my teenage years of making signatures for people, making wallpapers for others, and even making a properly-awful sprite comic, I was making steps. When I was getting people stealing my sketchbook and making marks over my drawing of a Sonic character at lunch in high school, I was still making steps. When I was being critiqued by people for my skills in ways I felt were unfair or spiteful, I was still making steps. Every time I open Photoshop or SAI and stare at a blank canvas and will myself into making a mark on there, I’m still making a step.

Every step further from the start point, which is far and away from where I am now.

In my mind, I still can’t help but feel like where I should be is as some sort of master of art, but it’s really not fair to me. In hindsight, if I had drawn something every single day with intent, I could be a technical genius with knowledge of all the principles of design lodged firmly in my mind. It sounds amazing, but that’s not something I did.

Considering “what could have been” ignores what I am now. I am someone with knowledge in these various programs for over 14 years. I’ve dabbled in multiple projects, some in my own design. I can consider those things invariably shit, but the stuff I did there was stuff I did on my own terms, which I learned from. I wrote fanfics, did signatures for people, made wallpapers and webcomics, designed websites, did roleplaying, made a storyline based on friends’ characters in an MMO, and played tabletop games creating characters that became some of my favorite creations in my lifetime.

I would never want to trade that away for some sort of technical skill level-up. I’ve made too many great friends because of all of this. I am who I am because of how I’ve gotten here.

Learning how to create is all about taking the opportunities as they come along. Even this post is, essentially, me seeing one image online after a game session with friends and getting a nostalgia blast for something completely unrelated to the game itself.

The act of creating is simply doing. If you do, you create. If you create, you create art.

If you create art, you are an artist.

Don’t let your inner thoughts dissuade you from that fact, ever.

Thanks for reading.

#falcon's inner ramblings #text post #art talk #bobbery is also pretty cool too

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kendrixtermina · 7 years

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INFP vs. INTP - Another potential distinguisher in the form of “Venting Behavior”

So I read this post recently where the person observed that “Vent Songs” that sorta aim to rile you up or get you to join in are a Fe thing as is “venting” in general, even in lower Fe users.

Heck, I’m working on an entire Vent- Book at the moment

Of course one person saying it doesn’t mean anything but I’ve thought it over and I though I’m still observing for more data it does seem consistent with my experience so far. In particular it jives with my previous observation that “Hate Songs” & “Musical Pause for Shock value” seem to be lower Fe things.

Come to think of I saw some other distinguishing writeups mentioning “venting” as a distinction (during those embarassing 3 days a while ago where I briefly considered that I might be xNFP) but the full structure of the statement didn’t stand out to me at the time-

Some of these writeups weren’t exactly correct either (nor is the socionics conception of the inferior and how it would come in here... on the other hand, one concept from there that might or might not be relevant here is ‘role functions are a thing, especially with contact subtypes’), since most INTPs are enneagram 5s (5s generally prefer to process their feelings on their own or with some distance to the situation) - perhaps its different with the 9s (who’d have their own hangups tho) but it would probably not be accurate to say that “You prefer to talk out your feelings with others rather than be left alone” as the ore general Fe description goes.

So it’s more nuanced, complex & varied (as it often is with the inferior - because of its nature individual biographical factors matter a lot) and I daresay a great percentage of INTP’s aren’t going to be down for sharing (the 5 tendency would be to compartementalize/ have it on your own terms somehow - say, tell the whole thing to strangers on 4chan in all gross detail - indeed it seems to be a commonthing for ppl to dislike it if someone calls attention to their involuntary reactions to stuff. ) but there’s something to be said about “venting” being present as a general tendency even if it presents mostly as a “fuck you too” attitude.

This also reminds me of this socionics article where - as you may know they tend to conceptualize Fe as being about “changing & influencing the emotions of oneself & others” & in that contexts well Fe doms are very persuasive & good at cheering ppl up (or withering their souls away with judgemental glares, depending, presumably, on their mood and alignment) & at the other end you get “Can’t really change/regulate mood very well & may treat it as “fixed””( also “might benefit from having a lovely ESFJ to fix that & animate them” because socionics is the crackships fangirl of typology. Or you know, maybe thats my natural state of existing and there’s nothing to “fix” about it only to manage & read the instruction manual so to speak)

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So in that sense you could classify both INFPs and INTP (though there’s excetions) as largely fitting the “melancholic” temperament in its “slow but sustained arousal” definition (”Hard to get thm into a particular mood, hard to get them out of it”) - the INFPs because they’re largely doing their own thing independent from the rest of the room & tend to have long-term reactions, the INTPs because there’s a higher threshold to reacting and if they do they may be “stuck” with the reaction for a while

In hindsight I say that a lot like “Hey they can’t turn it off like a button, sometimes this shit dont make sense, what matters is wether they act on it” [= try to listen to rationality regardless]

I guess part of why this distinction isn’t really out there is that that the genereal gist of how our type’s emotional expression “Well they’re not very expressive at all”, which I suppose might be what some outside perspective might notice, but from a First Person pov this is a tad useless, after all you react when you feel a reaction is merited, same as everyone else.

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This isn’t really something I picked up on before reading that because I interpreted things from my own minset were “people obviously do that” & perhaps saw venting as more universal than it is, but in hindsight it seems overwhelmingly true that Fi doms don’t exactly vent or at least not start conversations like “Ughh this thing that happened” - Usually their emotional state is quite apparent, but it’s more indirect like you’ll notice in the kinds of comments they make & how they make it, sure they might talk to you further if you ask without too much pushing.

Even when they express it indirectly (art & sad blog posts) it’s more of an enclosed, just-for-myself thing telling very specific stories, like all those INFPs post their stuff with no thought that someone (like some Fe user (tertiaries included) who thinks they’re the police or something) may aprroach it and go “Wait do you mean to imply...?!” when that’s not the purpose of their statement.

(And I was aware of this tendency but I see it in a different light in the realization of how it’s really a different purpose. Also, I always though the subset of FJs who nonstop talk shit about people are the worst kind of FJs. Gotta be careful in the future that I don’t sound like that)

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I’m not 100% sure especially in how the TJs fit into this. Some of them can have little tolerance for “drama” or just read it as weakness (8), negativity (1w9) or ingratitude (1w2) though to some extent they’rejust not comfortable to people blowing reactions into the air. That might be enneagram based to some degree the one 5w(cp)6 INTJ I know drips dark sarcasm though more as a way to critique things than personal venting. Still reserving judgement

Or perhaps the difference is more in how the ‘feels discharge’ is supposed to happen - In that Fi users come from a PoV where one person tells their life & the other kinda sits there & absorbs whereas with Fe there’s an expectation of “reaction noises” which the Fi peeps may be annoyed at or...

I’ve had the situation where I tell a joke and my Fi dom sister stays quiet and I’m like “Sorry was that joke bad?” and she explained that she was just reacting inwardly but totally listening.

Another thing I’ve observed is Fi users getting worried when their favorite TP is having a sucky day and goes “AAGHH EVERYTHING ALWAYS SUCKS!” and just voicing that kinda discharged the battery and snaps you bad to SenseMakingMode where they’re able to put the local little annoyance in context, but the Fi user will be all worried because they assume it’s a long-term thing that’s always under the surface because that’s what their feels are generally like.

#mbti #intp #infp #fi vs fe

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pricelessmomentblog · 6 years

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How Successful Was the MIT Challenge?

By far the most popular project I’ve done publicly has been the MIT Challenge. Starting nearly seven years ago, in the fall of 2011, the idea was to learn the curriculum of MIT’s four year computer science undergrad, evaluate myself by trying to pass the final exams, complete the programming projects and finish in one year.

In simple terms, the project was a success. I did what I set out to do, under the constraints I had imposed upon myself, within my original time limit.

However, behind those simple terms rested a lot of implicit assumptions. Now that I’ve had more time (and hopefully wisdom) between me and the project’s completion, I’d like to dig into some of those assumptions and see how well they’ve held up over time.

Whenever you set a goal in life, there’s a certain simplification of reality. Say you set a goal to lose 15lbs. Implicit, although maybe not articulated, behind that goal are a whole host of assumptions: that you’ll be healthier, look better, that the lost weight will be fat. Even behind those are deeper assumptions you may not even be aware of, such as that being fit is an important value in life.

Therefore, I think any project can be simultaneously evaluated at multiple levels. There is the explicit level of what you stated you were trying to achieve. But beneath that, are many other ideas of success and achievement, some of which you may only realize long after the project has finished.

I believe doing this kind of postmortem (however belatedly) is useful because, while highlighting one’s successes is fun and easy, it’s by looking at how our ideas differed from reality that we get true growth. I also believe that by digging deep and looking at some of my mistakes, I might be able to offer a more comprehensive picture for those who want to do better than I did in the future.

Side note: This is an incredibly self-indulgent post. If you’re not that interested in hearing me rant about myself and my past projects for 2000+ words, you should definitely skip it.

How to Evaluate?

I can think of a couple ways to evaluate the project, beyond simply whether or not I matched my explicit standards and constraints:

Knowledge and skill. How did the knowledge and skill I acquired during my project compare with an MIT student. Did my choice of constraints/standards lead to missing things that were important?

Rigor and difficulty. How well did my constraints match those of an MIT student? In particular, did my choice of constraints/standards make some things much easier than they should have been, or some of the accomplishments less comparable to the “official” setting?

Outside impact. Did my ideas about what the MIT Challenge would mean for other students hold up?

On these three bases, I think the first holds up best, the second is debatable and the third was probably the biggest failure of the project.

How Successful Was The MIT Challenge for Learning Stuff?

The most obvious basis for evaluating the Challenge was to look at how it worked for actually learning the material, and perhaps secondly, how those skills extended beyond the scope of final exams and programming projects of the coursework.

In this sense, I believe the project was mostly a success. There were departures from the normal computer science curriculum. However, these were normally done because to follow the original program strictly would have been impossible. This included things like not having a thesis programming project, doing economics instead of humanities classes and substituting classes which depended on lab work for more theory-based classes.

These deviations likely made my experience different in some ways from an actual MIT student. However, I think for the most part, they didn’t substantially detract from the experience. I still learned roughly the same volume of material, it was just shifted in some ways to make the project practical.

More critically, however, I think are how ways I did the challenge might have impacted my learning of computer science outside of what could easily be measured via my system of doing final exams and programming projects.

I can see a few places where I think my approach to this issue may have created problems:

Spacing. By compressing the challenge into one year, it’s likely that I did some damage to my ability to retain the material long term, versus, say, a more traditional four-year schedule. I did my best to mitigate this during the challenge by taking multiple classes simultaneously. However, I think, knowing what I now know about the typical half-life of knowledge learned in formal schooling, I would have been more serious about planning a long-term retention plan, the way I did with my language learning project which had a similar weakness.

Lack of peer interaction. During the challenge, I was mostly dismissive of the importance of peers/teachers. I felt this way, rightly or wrongly, because I didn’t find those resources very helpful when I did my actual undergrad. However, I think, owing to the extremely theoretical nature of MIT’s CS program, the peer effects likely are an important part of the education process at a top school, since they allow students to find out about practical projects, tools and opportunities that aren’t taught in classes.

Insufficient overlearning of core calculations. I believe my ability to do advanced mathematical calculation and symbol manipulation (algebra, calculus, etc.) was probably weaker than it should have been. Some of this showed up on the exams, with such classes being my worst performing. However, some of it was hidden from that perspective because I was aiming for moderate performance, not overlearning beyond sufficient performance. An actual MIT student, by means of doing assignments, past what is necessary, would likely have better abilities and better long-term retention of those types of abilities than I did.

These critiques don’t mean that I think I could have necessarily done much better, had I to do it all over again. Rather they’re useful to think about in case you wanted to attempt something similar. In my own situation, I think these trade-offs were mostly warranted, however someone learning for a different purpose might disagree.

Trent Fowler recently did his own year-long engineer/computer science program. While it differed from mine in many regards, an interesting way it did so was a much larger emphasis on practical projects. I’m not quite sure how to compare the two, but it does indicate that the space of possibilities for learning is vast.

How Successful Was the MIT Challenge for Matching the Rigor and Difficulty of the Real Thing?

Here my project and the actual degree start to differ substantially. I used a much more limited set of evaluation criteria. I focused on getting a pass (50%+) rather than getting as high a GPA as possible. I graded my own exams, using a solution key, rather than wait for an independent grader to go over them.

If the goal of the Challenge had been to replicate the difficulty of an MIT degree, or to perfectly match the standards of evaluation MIT used, then the project was doomed from the start. This was clearly not my intention, so evaluating it on this basis seems unfair (although, perhaps, probably worth pointing out to many people who casually observed my project and might have been misled to think that I did everything an MIT student would do, and got a degree to go with it!).

However, even within the intention of the project, my goal wasn’t to substantially reduce the difficulty where that was intended to measure my performance on the stuff I had learned. My original idea was that, should I clearly fail an exam according to MIT’s standards, I should have to retake it. I shouldn’t be giving myself an easier time, just because the material was hard.

From this basis, I think I did fairly well, although there are some points of contention. The most major one is how I did grading. While, in almost all cases, I only wrote exams with solution keys I could use to grade later, there often wasn’t clear instructions for how to handle grading. This, like many aspects of the challenge, required assumptions to be made about the proper way to do something.

Generally, my approach with exams was that any instructions provided (say explaining the amount of marks provided for a particular answer, or allowable materials, etc.) must be followed exactly. If information wasn’t provided, I did my best to devise what I thought was an acceptable approach (say docking a certain amount of marks for making a mistake in algebra, let’s say).

For most of the classes, this judgement call wouldn’t have made a difference. However, in some of the classes, particularly those which required long, drawn-out calculations, it could pose a challenge. If an exam had a question worth ten marks, how many points should be deducted because a minus sign wasn’t carried over?

Here opinions vary. In my own undergraduate experience, partial marks were common. Others, however, prefer stricter grading. In that view, any mistake, how matter slight, and all marks should be forfeit (including any follow-up questions that rely on the original result). This was not how I graded myself during the MIT Challenge, nor the basis I used for deciding whether I passed.

In the interest of curiosity, however, I decided recently to go back and see what the outcome would be if I applied the extremely strict grading. No part marks, no carry-forward of mistakes from multi-part questions from one part to the other. Under this new, ultra-strict, grading scheme, my exams passed went from 33/33, to 27/33.

I don’t think that the “correct” answer is the ultra-strict approach, and I still think the original way I evaluated the exams was fair (even if it may not have been exactly the same as another grader would have marked it). However, I think it’s worth noting the extent to which these assumptions might change the outcome of certain things.

An interesting, if perhaps unfortunate, consequence of the MIT Challenge was that many people focused on the presumed “impressiveness” of it, rather than (as my original hope) the idea of learning a lot of material, in a short time, with low cost and some benchmark to university standards. If that impressiveness is grounded in the idea that I did something equivalently difficult to a “real” MIT degree, irrespective of the knowledge acquired, I think the project doesn’t really work. This isn’t so much a critique of how I did the project, but perhaps what other people make of it.

How Successful Was the Idea of the MIT Challenge?

My original hope with the Challenge wasn’t to gain fame as the guy who did this strange project. Rather, I sincerely believed that it was only a matter of time until there were many people doing projects like this and I really wanted to be the first.

In retrospect, this is the biggest area where my thinking was at odds with reality. In the time since the MIT Challenge, I’ve met a handful of people who have done vaguely similar projects in terms of scope and ambition. However, this is a far cry from being a stable and recognized alternative to the formal education system.

Technology isn’t the problem. When I did the Challenge, that was before MOOCs, before the wave of online courseware and certificates from real institutions. Indeed, many of the deficiencies of my project were a result of the patchwork way I had to do it. Most classes had only a fraction of the full material available to an MIT student, so I had to make do. Today, doing something like the MIT Challenge is even easier.

I’ll admit, I was an education optimist. I believed that the purpose of school was learning, and if one could get the learning for a fraction of the cost, it would only be a matter of time for institutions and students to follow.

I’m now much more of an education skeptic. I largely agree with Bryan Caplan’s view that formal education is mostly signalling. This is the view that school doesn’t so much teach you valuable skills, but helps filter society by which people are smart, conscientious and conformist enough to put up with it. This filtering can explain why schools seem to teach so much useless stuff, yet are nonetheless a requirement for almost any good job.

That view took a long time for me to come around to, mostly because I really love learning the kinds of things they teach in school. This was particularly true during the MIT Challenge itself. Although it may sound strange to say it, I genuinely enjoyed most of the project. It was an intellectual puzzle talking about big ideas I could do at my own pace and with my own process. My actual university classes I did during my undergrad, I enjoyed a lot less.

However, this signalling explanation seems to fit the data, and my post-experiment experience, much better than any other I’ve heard.

This doesn’t mean I think learning isn’t valuable. It just means that a lot of education isn’t really about learning. The kind of learning which is valuable, both professionally and personally, is often at odds with how school curricula are designed. This is a bittersweet realization because it both affirms the idea of the Challenge (that big gains in potential learning are possible, in principle) and undermines it (because such gains rarely happen because, institutionally, we mostly pay lip-service to the ideals of learning while we really care mostly about filtering people).

As I wrote, shortly after the Challenge, if my goal had solely to acquire computer science knowledge and become a better programmer, I might have taken a radically different approach. Much more programming. Way less theory. Especially less of the abstruse mathematical sub-fields of which I did more than a few classes on.

However, if I had taken the Challenge and optimized it solely for acquiring computer science knowledge, it might not have attracted as much attention as it did. In that sense, it may be that elements that caused it to fail at my stated purpose, ended up allowing it to succeed in my career as a writer. Projects which succeed, not in spite of their flaws, but because of them, are a feature I’ve found in many of the things I’ve done in life, even though their paradoxical nature makes them impossible to plan in advance.

What Should You Think About the Challenge?

One thing I learned early about writing is that people rarely read the words you write, as you intended them. They read themselves in between the lines, and fill it in with their own imagined realities. This can often be frustrating, because people want you to be accountable, not only to what you said, but also to the hidden ideas they had of you.

In that sense, there’s nothing to be done. For some people, they’ll like the idea of learning without going to school. Others see a possibility of doing a lot more by rethinking their methods and constraints for taking on a project. Maybe other people just admire the boldness and strangeness of someone who would push himself to grind through classwork and exams full-time for a year without any credentials at the end.

For myself, I think the Challenge offered me many opportunities, both in my profession as a writer, and personally, in changing how I think about accomplishing big goals and learning new things. However, despite the unambiguously good things that came from the Challenge, I think there’s a lot of things that I was wrong about, or could have done better.

In that sense, I hope not that people get inspired by a project I’ve done or article I’ve written and try to do something similar, but that they can also learn from my mistakes and strive to do better than I could have done.

How Successful Was the MIT Challenge? syndicated from https://pricelessmomentweb.wordpress.com/

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