The Awesome Power of Wabbit Holes
The learning and creative processes have many twists and turns, but having a clear goal will help you find your way.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn in June of 2022. I’m reposting it here as part of moving my writing to my own platform…
I left my full-time job with LinkedIn 4 weeks ago and I’ve spent nearly all day every day of that time watching tutorials and experimenting. There are so many incredible artistic or software techniques to learn and there are sooooooooooo many incredible artists sharing what they know. It’s been exhilarating and humbling.
So.... What do you have to show for all that time?
Honestly, snarky voice in my head, I don’t have much to show at all. I’m in a place where it feels like I’m wasting my time. Burning money out of my savings at a shocking rate and not making any progress. Even though in the back of my head I know I’m slowly building momentum, most days it seems like I’m not accomplishing anything.
You might want to cut yourself some slack…
No shit, right? The world tries hard enough to make me feel inadequate without me piling on. We live in a society almost purpose built to instill FOMO and inadequacy that drives us to “live our best lives” on the socials. All those beautiful smiling faces and incredible works of art or badass music performances make it seem like “success” always happens “overnight”. We know it’s bullshit, but we keep coming back for more.
That’s why this period of momentum building has been a real struggle. I’ve been trying desperately NOT to keep score during this time. Keep my head down… Watch, learn, experiment.
But Roooooooob, you should be posting amazing shizzle on Instagram daily!!
Uhhhhhh… did you read the last couple paragraphs Snarky? The whole point is that I’m learning right now. Amazing shizzle doesn’t just happen, you have to learn how to create it. In my case I need to re-learn. That re-learning means watching a buttload of YouTube tutorials and tinkering around in software with not a lot to show.
OK smarty pants, what DID you learn?
Throughout my career, I’ve spent A LOT of time thinking about how other people learn. From teaching one on one Photoshop lessons in the mid 90s to teaching motion design using After Effects, C4D, and Final Cut at Art Center throughout the early 2000s and then as a Content Manager with Lynda dot com and LinkedIn Learning. In almost 30 years, I’ve learned how to break things down and communicate with people so I can meet them where they're at.
Now though, my only explicit goal is “learning” and this time has given me the space to ask the question “How do I learn?”. I never really gave it much thought because it wasn't something I’d had room to think about until now.
When I was a kid, adults told me how I was supposed to learn. Then as a young adult I was in full scramble mode, learning exactly what I needed to know in the moment on a job to get a project done to try and pay the rent each month. Now though, I can just learn. And the thing I’ve discovered in the last month about myself is that I kinda like diving down wabbit holes. (Hence the title)
For example, this week I wanted to learn about a set of procedural modeling…
Ohhhh crap here comes the jargon…
Dude, relax and roll with me for a moment, I promise to keep this “non-technical”.
Like I was saying... I wanted to learn a new set of 3D modeling tools that were introduced since the last time I was really using any of this stuff and I ended up on a week long journey…
First I watched a tutorial from the software company where the instructor built this really cool crystal formation… It was fun and sparked an idea for my next animation project.
Next, I spent some time on Pinterest building a board of reference images showing different kinds of crystal and mineral formations.
The level of detail in these images was fascinating and led me to make some crappy sketches for this animation project. Nothing concrete, just thumbnails of the kinds of shots I’d need to create.
Then, the sketches informed me of the kinds of techniques I’d need for this project. Clusters of stone, crystal fragments growing and moving organically. Metallic and translucent surfaces side by side. There isn’t one tutorial to create exactly what I had in my head, so I looked for tutorials that had bits and pieces of what I’d need.
Then, armed with these techniques, I started to do some experiments. The experiments taught me that I really wasn’t ready to try to do this idea justice LOL and I needed to learn more. Then an interesting thing happened…
While searching for an answer to one problem, I stumbled across a completely unrelated technique for creating these cool looking map-like 3D topology shapes, and while watching that tutorial I discovered that there was something about the technique that I just didn’t understand and I asked this question out loud to my office…
Why the F did that just work?
I spent an entire day farting around with the idea… going back to that specific step in the tutorial and actually busting open the online manual to read about the object he used. It was a revelation. I had used that tool on a bunch of projects back in the day and even taught others how to use it, but I was just able to use it… I didn’t fully understand what was happening. Suddenly, I did.
Not only did I learn something new about Cinema 4D that I never really knew before, I learned something about myself that I never really knew before.
I love diving down wabbit holes.
I also learned that even at the tender young age of 56, I’m pretty good at learning new things. I’d been stuck in a rut for so long that I really wasn’t sure I could learn something new, let alone have such a fundamental revelation. LOL, The guy who made the tutorial that inspired me was literally a baby when I started using Cinema 4D, but he’s an incredible artist sharing what he knows.
And now we’re back full circle. Remember at the top of this article where I said these few weeks have been exhilarating and humbling? Well, they have been both of those things. The one thing they have NOT been is a waste of time.
How do YOU like to learn? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Oh… #C4D nerds hit me up below or on messaging and I’ll gladly share what I learned. With or without jargon.
