As most of you have probably seen by now, I’m working on plenty of VFX tutorials that I plan on doing far into the foreseeable future.
An issue came up with creating a tutorial just a bit ago. As I do my tutorials, I typically create an effect beforehand just for practice to make sure I’ve got it right, and then I record me doing it again from scratch so that you see the ENTIRE process.
During this most recent tutorial, I messed up numerous times without noticing and didn’t notice until about 45 minutes in. Some of the mistakes were great opportunities to learn about what was actually going on and why things weren’t working as intended. In the end, everything came out fantastic.
I’m thinking of just placing some comment blips throughout a tutorial where I make mistakes and let you see them before I do/did.
So here’s a poll that’s relevant to this:
Let us see your mistakes to learn from them
Edit the mistakes out, or re-record the tutorial until you get it right.
0voters
Any other feedback you may have on what I’ve created so far, please let me know here too!
I think if they were edited out for time, but while you were working you explained where you hit snags and how you solved them. That way we can learn from you, while still keeping the videos as concise as possible. Like if you recorded your run through without mistakes but did a VO where you explain what you’re doing, along with your previous mistakes and their solutions.
you post these tutorials on internet yes? imo it unfortunately does (yourself in terms of popularity) people a disservice showcasing mistakes/process
people copy verbatim, skim or do not even speak English… adjustments/corrections can confuse and frustrate viewers as well as contribute to ostensibly bloat.
I think it’s better to do things ‘perfectly’ quickly and nearly idiot-proof
let the viewer make their mistakes and internalize their process
Fantastic! You make mistakes?! Hey! Me too. This is a problem solving profession, so seeing someone solve a problem in real time!! That’s like… like… chocolate sauce on gold! … Why is that the first thing I thought of? … Whatever. ¯\ (ツ)/¯ Heh. Well… I guess what I’m trying to say is its all good. LOL. One good thing on top of another good thing, I guess.
Anywho, all I ask is that you note it for those of us following along your actions step by step. It is important to make clear the mistake. I expect you don’t want us to inadvertently learn the error, but the lessons from the error. Depending on the error, I may just do it anyway just to see the errors result myself, or hold off. Ultimately I think it’s important to learn…
…and I look forward to seeing it. There are already too many glossy “tutorials”, that are unrealistic in their perfection. Please, show me your method of solving problems.
So I’ve gone ahead and figured that I’ll practice the tutorial through a few times just to ensure that I’ve got something good for each stage. Then record the tutorials in stages and highlight mistakes I may have made through out my practice runs. After my 3rd attempt at this latest tutorial, I was able to cut the tutorial down from a little over an hour to about 45 minutes.
Thanks everyone for your votes. It’s hard to keep the tutorials short due to what it is I’m teaching, but I do want to try to keep them as concise and speedy as possible while mentioning some issues I may have ran to in the past. Still trying to find a good balance between “exact replication” of what I’ve done in my practice runs and still being organic enough to explain things thoroughly.
… Whatever. ¯\ (ツ)/¯ Heh. Well… I guess what I’m trying to say is its all good. LOL. One good thing on top of another good thing, I guess. 
