cool things. And you're really interested in how you might go about learning those things.

Because you'll see amazing things on Youtube, or you'll see amazing fanfics, and you only

see the end product, but you don't really know how they got there.

And there's kind of a process to it. Bronies make a lot of content. We have 1.6 billion

words of My Little Pony Fanfiction, there's just a lot. Staggering amounts of fanart,

and lots and lots of analysis videos. And there's even a subsection of YouTube for audio

fanfic readings. You have a lot of different people that read fan fiction out loud and

do a lot of audio recording stuff. That's not even saying PMVs where you have—Well,

you have simple PMVs you see on Equestria Daily which are just clips from the show.

And then you have the more detailed motion graphics art. Where people are moving things

around. And ponies are doing interesting things. That's also there.

And that's not to mention animation. Which is mostly the hardest one of all which really

does require a big group of people to work together for it.

So our big question: "How did they learn how to do that?" Because there's just so much

content and how did they figure that out? So this panel is for people that are non-creatives

or mildly creative that are interested in seeing kind of a glimpse of what other people

have done. And how they learned that process of how to do that.

And it's also to help you figure out what you don't know you don't know. Because until

you figure out what you don't know you don't know, you can't stop and Google it.

Also, for people that are just curious how some of this stuff is created.

So the biggest question is: "How do I Iearn how to do that?"

Because other people learned how to make it, and they're humans, and I'm also human so

I can also figure out how to do something. Because everything is learnable.

Let's kind of go through the agenda of the panel.

We're going to be going over Emotional Barriers to learning new skills. Because there's always

angst when learning how to draw for the first time and it looks terrible. And other skills

too. There's also writing, particularly writing

fan fiction. Though you'd be surprised by the amount of writing that happens in the

Brony fandom, even just comments on YouTube. And being able to praise other people for

the content they create. That's also something we'll be going over.

As well as drawing. And a subsection of drawing you may not have heard of called vectoring.

Which is another part of this fandom. As well as audio recording fanfic readings, as well

as video production, and kind of what goes in with that. And a little bit of animation.

I don't personally have experience with doing a full animation project. But I've watched

lots of tutorials enough to be like: "Wow! That's a lot of work."

I can at least point you in the right direction, and that's mostly what this panel is. It's

pointing you in the right direction for how to learn things if you would like to.

And tell me if I talk too fast. I always listen to things at doublespeed on YouTube and so

it affects my speech. So yeah... I can slow down if you want.

A thing to keep in mind. So a lot of you are probably used to going to school, and you'll

learn: "This is the War of 1812, this is what happened in the War of 1812." And I don't

know why I picked that example because I have no idea what happened in the War of 1812 besides

that it was a fight against the British... So school mostly focuses on Book knowledge,

but what we'll be delving into are skills. And skills are a little bit different. I think

the biggest difference you can see would probably be taking something like "wood shop" where

you'd have to learn something like carpentry. And focus, and hammer things together. That

is a skill. It is carpentry. But you need to separate those two different

categories. Because learning knowledge, you could learn it from a book. It's relatively

simple. But learning a skill, is something you do

have to get hands on and create things. Okay, I do have a caveat here: People are

different. Like, there's a big giant: "IT DEPENDS" over all of humanity. Because some

people may be better suited for certain things, and others may be better suited for other

things. Also, this panel focuses a lot on watching

and following along with YouTube tutorials. Perhaps that's not the best way for you to

learn, which I... well that's what I'll be showing because that's what helped me learn.

And being able to follow somebody else do something is a pretty good way to learn things.

So... overcoming emotional barriers. I had, like, the weirdest worldview in High School.

I had this thing where I thought people were born knowing how to draw.

Like, I'd see people that knew how to draw and I'd be like: "Wow, they are so good at

drawing! They're so good at what they do!" And I had no idea that: "Oh! That is because

they worked hard, they practiced, and they did it."

So among the emotional barriers to go over is to realize that: "Everything can be learned."

Everything you see around you was either designed or created by people. Like, take this room.

An architect designed it, and then you had groups of people working together to actually

build the materials and you have this whole global supply chain.

And you can learn all that if you really want to. And it's really cool that ALL of this

is learnable. I'm a big fan of learning random stuff.

And... realize that it's never "too late" to learn a skill. You can learn how to play

the piano at 70 if you want to. That's perfectly fine. Or you could learn how to draw something.

Sure there's some talent that might be innate, but that talent increases far more through

hard work. So, I think some of you may have heard of

this book: "Outliers." This is a really good book. It's all about the 10,000 hour rule—that

it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to reach world class performance.

This is said a lot. People talk about JanAnimations and I'm pretty sure he's put in his 10,000

hours of professional, amazing, fantastic work. And it shows.

However, for the purposes of this panel, we're not going into 10,000 hours of stuff because

we just want to have fun! "I just want to learn enough about writing to write my first

fanfic. And maybe see if it'd be fun." Or: "I just want to draw a little bit, to

just draw my OC." So that! How long does that take?

So based off of this book, I'd say about 20 hours. This is one of my favorite books. This

is: "The First 20 hours: How to Learn Anything Fast" by Josh Kaufman. Basically, it takes

20 hours of deliberate practice. Like, plan it out: "I'm going to learn this at this time,

and do this at this time." And it takes about that long to learn a new skill.

And that's enough just to have fun with it. You're not going to be a world class master

at it. But you'll know enough to have fun with it. And get your feet wet and understand

the process and maybe see: "Do I like this?" "Maybe not?"

It's all about overcoming that barrier in the beginning of: "This is too hard."

Another emotional barrier is: "Knowing what you want to do."

Have a goal in mind. Like, if you wanna write a fanfic, a drawing. If you wanna make an

animated gif—those are really simple to make. If you Google "Gyazo Gif," it allows

you to make Gifs really easily. It's great. I'll have a link in these presentation show

notes. Basically, the more you understand what you

want to make, the better chance you have to succeed.

And my big problem with this was: "I saw all these Bronies making content, making these

animations and videos and all this other stuff. And I was like: 'What do I wanna do?' 'EVERYTHING!'"

Let's rephrase that question. Instead of: "What do you want to do," "What do you want

to do first." Because if you can answer that question you can do a lot more things with

your time. Rather than being trapped in a dazed state like: "What do I wanna do~?" But

if you can set what you want to do first, it can be really helpful.

And this is one of my favorite sayings for this kind of stuff: "A problem well stated,

is a problem half solved." So if you can figure out: "Here is my problem, I don't know how

to do THIS. I don't know the process for THIS." You can expand that out. Let's say you're

having a problem with... Well... when you understand the vocabulary

for motion graphics you can be like: "Okay, how do I make a clipping mask in After Effects

to achieve this effect?" Like, the more you can narrow down your problem, it can be really

helpful. Let's see, another emotional barrier is not

giving up immediately. The CMC are a really funny example of this. Because they try something

once and they're like: "Well! Not for me!" The cutie mark algorithm analysis thing didn't

work. So they didn't get their cutie marks, so: "Obviously this isn't for me."

But that isn't really how it works in the real world. It does take effort, because no

one is good at it immediately. So I would say to really understand if this is your thing

or not your thing, to give it at least 20 hours of consistent, deliberate, practice

before just shoving it away. And I know that drawing at first feels painful because it's

just like: "AAAH! This does NOT look good at all." But it's okay.

Just give yourself some time. Learn to forgive yourself enough to at least overcome that

frustration barrier. And remember: "If it was easy, it wouldn't be fun."

Another aspect of this is: "Breaking down the skill."

So you have these big giant skills like animation. That is actually made up of a ton of different

component skills. So earlier in the day we had M. A. Larson talking about the writing

aspect of animation. And that's it's own, like, writing skill.

And then you have the actual drawing skills that people have. Of sitting down and learning

how to draw and doing that a bunch of different ways.

And so, being able to break down these skills into their component parts, you can put them

into bite sized portions you can use to actually learn things.

So... other things I have a problem with. I have a problem figuring out time management.

Like, that is the bane of my existence. So if you want to read a big business book about

it. "Getting Things Done." I recommend it if you can handle business books. It could

be boring. I dunno, it depends. Basically, just write things down. And the

more you write it down, it gives your brain permission to let it go, flip to it later

and realize: "Oh! I wanted to learn this thing." As you write things down you'll notice: "Oh!

This is coming up more often. Perhaps I should do this thing because my brain is constantly

reminding me to do this task." And other things I've found useful. Putting

my phone in airplane mode, and turning off the Wi-Fi.

If I'm trying to write, let's turn off all the distractions and get into "Deep Work"

and work on something. That's not going to work at first for some

of this, because you'll be watching a YouTube tutorial while doing something else.

And remember to set apart time per day. And another really good book that I like...

this is one of my favorites! It's: "The War of Art"

It is a punch in the face. It is really, really painful because it outlines this enemy towards

creativity called: "The Resistance." And how hard it is to get things done. Because any

time you are trying to do a creative endeavor, everything is going to go against you. Whether

it be to learn it, or to do it in the first place.

Some drama will happen. Or you'll have six finals. Which... do your finals first. But...

it can be a problem. I highly recommend this book if you want a

punch in the face, but in book form. To tell you to do art.

Another aspect that I've had a problem with was: "focusing too much on the tool."

So... let's take the carpentry example. No one stops and says: "I'm going to learn how

to use a hammer." No, they're goal is: "I want to make a birdhouse." And the tool happens

to be a hammer. And I'm going to use a hammer and a nail to create this birdhouse.

That is also how to treat the things we're learning. If you're learning drawing, you're

learning drawing, not Photoshop. Though that may be an aspect of it that may improve your

drawing because it's a tool you use. So... you want to learn novel writing, not

specifically the program: Scrivener. While that is a good program that helps you write

novels, it is just a tool in your toolbox. So separating the skill itself from the tool

can be helpful. And something that I needed to keep in mind

as I was trying out lots and lots of different software. I dunno, I started learning Adobe

Illustrator before I realized: "I have to learn how to draw to use this?" And it was

very funny experience to realize that and so I kind of learned all these tools in different

orders. Okay, so let's go to our first thing we're

learning about, which is: "Writing." I have a soft spot for this. One of the first

things I made for the Brony fandom was a fanfic. It was really exhilarating from start to finish.

And also really angsty. And all sorts of stuff. But it's fun. I recommend it.

"What are the barriers to entry for Fanfiction?" Luckily, the cost is free. If you have a pencil

and paper, you can write fanfic, you can write things.

And this is one of my favorite comics, I don't know if you've seen this before.

It's Derpy lying on the ground and Pinkie goes up and says: "PONY! PONY! PONY!"

And Derpy's like: "Yes but... WHY do we pony?" I think that's beautiful because I think that's

so much of writing fan fiction. The frustration barrier for that is just like: "What am I

doing!?" I'm writing stories about horses having fun... and yeah... it's a strange.

The frustration barrier is pretty high. And also that feeling of "What am I doing?"

But it's a lot of fun when you give it a chance. And yeah... I would recommend this for you