The Biggest Mistake Every Artist Makes - Basics vs Fundamentals

hey guys heading in working from flip normals here in this video we are going to be talking about a very important topic this is as far as we can tell the single biggest mistake every artist makes throughout their learning journey yeah this mistake sort of there will always be a ceiling cap to the skill you can reach if you don't correct this and it's something hitting and I have both done it's something that you will continue to do some and some points throughout your career but there is an easy fix for it so let's get into it so what we're talking about in this video is basics vs. fundamentals this sounds like a topic which is about grammar where you're just talking about the word basics versus fundamentals the reason we're talking about it is because people assume that this is the same thing we keep talking about we're going back to basics who going back to fundamentals but this couldn't be further from the truth we are not going back to basics about fundamentals they're completely separate they're completely separate skill sets and it's really important that we define what these are so that you can really optimize your learning journey essentially these two words are what we've coined the concepts that we'll be talking about and like in broad terms a basic skill the way that we're defining it is a skill that you can master it's a finite skill it's you opening up a piece of software learning where all the buttons and what all the menu items do or whether it's you pick up a camera and you get familiar and learn what all the buttons on a camera do and what every little menu setting does then there's the fundamentals fundamentals is a skill that you can essentially never master it's a limitless ceiling it's something like color theory its cinematography it's the fundamentals of figure drawing like gaining a true understanding of these concepts that is what we're defining as fundamentals this is something we've seen essentially every single artists struggle with more tonight we come from a 3d background where we've been learning very technical software and you might come from completely different background but the skillset and the path is gonna be very much the same where you start to learn the software and you get better and better and better your art improves as you get better as you learn more features in the in the soft roar maybe it's a camera using regardless what it is the medium you're using you're getting a better understanding of how it works and your art gets better linearly with how better how much better yourself Frisco's becomes but then you reach a point where you get feedback on something that you don't understand suddenly it's not about oh just enable this feature and it just duplicate layer and do this wait trick the feature of the feedback you getting is you don't know how to compose the image and we start to realize that your issues have nothing to do with the software yeah a an example of this was when I was first getting into digital painting I had never really drawn much in my life you know I'd sketch it on paper when I was a kid but nothing really more than that so I started getting into the digital painting and I mean at that point I've been using Photoshop for I don't know I've eight years I think I was very familiar with Photoshop buttons like we talked about the UI I could I could find pretty much anything and I could follow any tutorial getting started on painting and I remember this clearly I followed a tutorial by an artist Richard Anderson a concept artist and I think it was called like the forest horseman or something where there was a guy on a horse and like this really strong composition with a log and like trees pointing towards him and I showed it to a friend of mine and at this point I really didn't have a grasp of any kinds of fundamentals just just the basics and he told me that it's really good painting and I loved the composition in this image I had no idea what he was talking about I just said thank you and and moved on and it wasn't until years later when I started digging into the concepts of color theory and Composition lighting mood that I really started to understand why it was he complimented me he wasn't complimenting me I had just replicated what Richard Anderson had that had done but it wasn't really anything to do with my skills at that point which is kind of interesting we both went into his trap of learning learning the basics I had a similar story where I was doing a 3d model and I was blocking it out and the text was looking nice and all that but I couldn't figure out the composition of it I was aware that composition was a thing I just had no tools on how to do it and this was this was right before I went to him to school this is where Morgan I met at an animation workshop and that focused heavily on the fundamentals but I didn't know any of it if I had progressed on on the path I was on I would have still I would have not known every single button off my 3ds offer and I wouldn't have known if my composition would have still remained the same maybe I would have had less noise in the render and in the render would have been faster but by only focusing on the basics you are only getting to the same result Oster yeah I think it's important for us to also mention that when we say basics we're not talking we're not necessarily talking about something simple like you can have as strange as a sound as it sounds advanced basics if if we take programming as in as an example right the basics of programming are the same four or like they change depending on the language it would be like the specific syntax of one language which variables to use how do I combine all of this you can read an encyclopedia of everything when you're programming in Python for example I know every single thing you can write in Python but the fundamentals of programming go deeper than that that is learning to think like a programmer problem-solving the different ways you can solve like programmatically programmatic issues like what is the most efficient way to loop through these things there isn't just one way to do it there are multiple ways to do it and the more of a fundamental understanding you gain of a subject like that the better faster and more efficient you become so what are some actual differences between them like one of the one of the bigger ones when it comes to basics versus fundamentals is that basics are basics change over time while fundamentals are timeless concepts your understanding of color theory in the 1500s are still valid today what your understanding of software from 1999 are absolutely not valid today it's just it's so important that you think about these as timeless concepts yeah where what we've talked a lot about like trying to trying to dissect this topic before recording this video was and we was very philosophical discussion of what are these things one of the things we talked about was as we mentioned these are names we've given to these two concepts you need to develop an understanding of the concept we could call it red and blue we could call it lamp and wall or basics and fundamentals it's two different concepts within learning you can't you can't have one without the other like you can't only understand fundamentals like if you only understood the fundamentals of let's say your digital artists right do you want to paint or something like that or a traditional artist if you only understand the fundamentals of color color mixing color temperature composition lighting so on so on but you don't have any basics the basics mean that you won't really know how to pick up a brush and know what to do with it like if you're if you're painting with a gouache or if you're painting with watercolor fundamentals kind of stay the same there are nuances in there but if you don't have the basic skills to actually paint if you haven't trained your hand-eye coordination yet the fundamentals don't mean anything and and vice versa it's not about which one is the most important they're both important it's about the balance of it and it's about learning the basics to a certain point where you're comfortable with the software or technique and then it's about focusing on the deeper fundamentals as you go along one of the ways of figuring out if it's an actual basic or fundamental skills well is it's asking if it's how or if it's a why this is something we have all the time we're talking about 3d which again is our background which is like how do I add a cube or they click on the cube and then you go into like how to add a life to it or you click on the light okay so now you can I'd like to the cube but then you're like why did I add the de life to the cube there well it's because you want to you want to get a certain mood across maybe wanted to feel scary why does darkness feel scary well let's go into if you you know stuck in the forest 2,000 years ago and it's pitch-black but why is that scary well because there might be something hiding there well why is that scary well cos can hurt you and now you're going into like into topics like biology psychology history anthropology all these kind of things where this is where you're getting into that basics is finite you have a finite amount of ways of doing a task there is there is a finite finite amount of ways of adding the cube you can have three ways of doing it but when it comes to the fundamental of why you're lighting it in a certain way you can literally write like all the books in the oxford library to get to the bottom of this and you're still not going to be satisfied of course you shouldn't but you could it really goes deep so it's how which is basic and why which is a fundamental yeah the fundamentals are interesting because I think for anyone starting out in especially a creative field most tutorials that you follow or find online or whatever it might be tend to be focusing on basics everything you learn in school tends to be focusing on basics it's I think it's just a societal thing we have we have taught we're being taught that basics is what we need in order to get ahead so we teach basics we seek out basics which is also why when you're getting started with the software you've just sort of learned that ok I just need to know this software and then I'll be great but no one really teaches fundamentals that much I mean obviously you find amazing tutorials by amazing artists or photographers or videographers whatever it might be that actually teach the fundamentals but I think a lot of people aren't really aware that there's a separation there so once they start getting into let's say something like figure sculpting Anatomy alright the basics of Anatomy would be you read through the Encyclopedia for for anatomy and you know every single muscle by name every single bone everything there is to know about Anatomy you know how to do it but if you wanted to do a sculpture you would have no idea where to start like no idea about the form no idea how to translate your reference into into the clay no idea about gesture no idea about the shape these are all concepts that on the fundamental side at least in my opinion can take a lot longer to learn you can never truly master it if it's a fundamental skill like we said there's like a limitless ceiling so you'll never master it you can get closer and closer to something but I think because fundamentals is so subjective just because you learn how to do figure sculpting really well and you can realistically replicate the human figure someone else might look at that piece and say I don't really like it I think why is that well because I'm more into stylized interpretations and because you haven't really explored the fundamentals of the stylized sculptures then you're not very good at that yet one one thing we see as well is that schools do not teach fundamentals schools teach basics forever like if you've got a 10 a 10 ease any portion review basically only learned the basics an example of this is let's say you have to you have to write an essay you have to write a book something like that but you you have problems with words you actually have problems with like formulate or like writing the correct word maybe you have dyslexia you have something like that but look now you would get a terrible grade because you're you you're not good at the basics you're not actually good at getting the pure words down in the correct way but you can be a fantastic writer you can have a writer who has extreme version of dyslexia you know they could use like like a speech to text today and that wouldn't be a problem at all because the basics of writing would be getting the words right we have software for that it's is using the text processor like word and you know having a fancy MacBook in a Starbucks you know all these things but the fundamentals of it is story structure it's creating appealing character creating worlds which feel alive like you can you can do that but if you're in school and you make the best world there is it feels so alive with so much richness but you have spelling mistakes and every single word you get trashed it's actually an interesting point it reminded me of my my mom she currently finished my mom loves writing she loves writing she's done it I guess all her life but she told me recently that in terms of grammar she is I mean she's terrible she doesn't know anything about grammar but she recently was a part of a project where I think it was like a collective of 20 people and they would write stories about a certain subject and you know they take her part of the story and then they send it to an editor she describes her experiences and I haven't you know they've met they might be very like emotive and and invoke certain feelings but that doesn't mean that just because the grammar isn't there that you don't understand the feeling she's trying to get across so you can still be in love with in an amazing writer even though you don't really understand the basics of grammar that way yeah you have a problem with it like yeah for whatever reason that can be it really just boils down why and how important the pure fundamentals because let's say that you you have you have an essay and it gets like a 10 out of 10 because it has perfect grammar and perfect spelling a lot but you have a end but the story is boring but on the other hand you have a story which is beautiful tons of errors fix all the errors you have a beautiful story yeah the other one is already perfect but it's terrible story like if the fundamentals just isn't there in that story making sure that your fundamentals are strong I definitely believe makes you more hireable and more versatile as an artist compared to someone who just knows the basics yeah we've seen this all the time when we worked in film for people who were new to our channel we worked in the film industry in London for some years and that's so that's a skill which is highly technical but it's it's highly technical but it's like tech technical stuff hiding over like deep deep fundamentals and what we were doing we were doing creature sculpting and for that there are a lot of technical things like you need strong basics for that you need to know what apology and all the technical fancy things but below that you need excellent understanding of shape and form so we saw a lot of people there who they they've been coming up through a system maybe you know through a runner and the junior modeler which is very reference based and then they've been promoted all the way across and they were in a very high position but they never really had to confront their own like insecurities as an artist so the moment there was a job which came in which required like you to concept something up and think think outside the box yeah and scope proper shapes and it wasn't just a reference replicate the reference but you had to actually make good shapes it was like they were back to like a like a university students because they never had to do that but the moment they had really strong technical things a support network around them they were fantastic and this is where they get scared because now they saw a lot of juniors coming out of school what excellent fundamentals the juniors they were they were struggling with the basics I mean like in terms of just for so many there are so many technical things in the business so they they were they had a bit of a hard time with some of them but they were so scared of them because they could sculpt so well and it's a lot easier to learn the technical thing since in CG and the pipeline there is to learn the pure fundamentals of it I mean you see that with something like traditional painters that are keeping up to date with technology like the the really accomplished painters it's like let's pretend like the Hudson River School painters for example existed today and I mean their fundamentals and their basics were off the chart Google some other paintings you'll see what I'm talking about if they were to pick up Photoshop or any other digital painting software right they would struggle in the beginning with figuring out the brushes getting used to a new basic skill which would be okay if things move a little bit differently I have a tablet that interprets my my input but because they have that whole framework around them that are their fundamentals they will be able to pick that up like this we saw that with when we were learning 3d you know that was we've been learning 3d for many many years and I think for the past 15 years and we started out with studio max modo Maya ZBrush so we've been developing our basic 3d skills 3d software's for many many years but also our fundamentals which meant that recently be picked up blender oh like six months ago like a year ago that's a year six months what time it needs time but it meant that when we picked up blender a year ago apparently I mean we were able to pick it up fairly well I would say within a month we were fairly comfortable and then over the next year obviously we've become more and more comfortable but that's because of the fundamental knowledge of 3d like knowing how to create a cube in Maya or max or whatever we know that function exists in blender so we just need to search for it we know kind of where to look it's the same thing with a traditional painter transitioning over to digital yeah the way the way I was kind of thinking about it when I was learning a new software like blender you know we've been learning doing this a few times so there's there is kind of like a method madness it's kind of like you you have like a workshop you know where everything is you know understand how all of it works and then somebody comes into your workshop they take all your tools they throw them around and now you just kind of have to pick them up or to replace them or like slightly different tools for you it doesn't matter the hammer it's like now green and it like you have to hit it twice instead of once so there are little squirt to the specific hammer but it's still fundamentally the same task you're doing that was us going from Maya to blender where we we knew we knew where we knew what all the tools had to do we knew that the extrude tool had to live somewhere we knew that it was gonna be polygon based we knew that you know you had to navigate the viewport we also had an interesting example like prepping for this video where we're talking about it's a skill a basic or fundamental within 3d and it's like if let's say you have a person who's never touched 3d before and you were to teach to you were to teach himself recalled Maya and they're navigating in Maya now they're there two concepts here first it's the being aware of 3d space you know that's a tricky one in the beginning you have to actually be aware of how it works the second one is how do you navigate this skill so one of them is a basic one of them is a fundamental you move into another software you move into blender the person now has no idea how to navigate they actually don't know they don't know the the hotkeys or the mouse clicks that they need to actually navigate or move 3d objects anymore they are aware of the concept of 3d space which means the moment you were to teach them how to navigate in 3d space they are now up to up to speed on how to use it which means that one of them is a basic and wonder mr. fandom is a fundamental the concept of 3d space is a fundamental that doesn't change between software like all the software will have the same fundamentals in that regard but they have different ways of interacting with them like one thing you mentioned for example was your dad when he got into photography like any that takes this many pictures a very prolific photographer and in the beginning like everyone just starting out you get into what you can see and feel and touch you know it's like okay here's my camera I'm gonna go through every single menu okay now everything every single thing I know what every single button does and you just point and you click your camera that doesn't mean your your pictures gonna turn out any good but then once you're past that point it's like at that point there will always be a cap and that's the problem with basics your pictures will never really get any better if you only know the basics then queuing his son and he goes like hey dad let me teach you some fundamentals of not just necessarily photography but composition and and and lighting and slowly those concepts are too you know run around in your brain and you slowly start to grabs grasp some of them and slowly that sort of translates into I guess more and more skills and your photography starts to get better I don't know a thing about photography like I don't know how cameras work I have like a general sense of it but I you know I I couldn't teach a photography class so when I was feedback in his photos I just I was just drawing like thumbnails on post-it notes and simplifying stuff into into like the pure fundamentals into shape and all that but it was also interesting this is kind like a segue into next one which is it was also introduction into the basics because he was grading JPEGs and that is a big no-no don't grade your JPEGs so it was like a lot of you dude posted thumbs just to like improve their composition but then also you should grade the raw and now he his photos improved dramatically just know that as well yeah which listed into printed Hillhurst category here which is basics are still essential it's really not a all but now you should I only focus on the fundamentals no you need you need a balance of it otherwise you have no idea how to interact with the tool yeah you could be super knowledge you'll spiritually you understand everything and you're enlightened but you can't actually do anything actionable with those with that knowledge I think there's also like an interesting one just like the word like spiritual because this is something we talked a bit about before we we recorded we're basics is very very tangible it's very clear what it is this tool has six ways of doing it but it's but fundamentals it's very philosophical and this is where I see when I see this a lot when artists get more more advanced into their field they become a lot more philosophical in general it's more about why do I do it do it the way I do it yeah it's like you can't when you talk about a vote invoking emotions through a piece of art that you've created you're not a moke evoking those emotions so the basic skill in the 3d software or in in Photoshop or whatever it is I mean this extends to everything whether you're like you design logos you design cars you a programmer even like if you're an engineer you're a machinist whatever it may be these concepts sort of like transcend I think all fields obviously we're talking about it from our artists perspective because that's what we know but I do believe that this is something that everyone can really benefit from yeah we when we went to art school our teacher he he kept pushing one concept all the time and that was the most important thing in art is what it makes you feel or how it makes you feel and that sounds weird in the beginning it's a little bit like art school BS but that's because he's cutting straight to the chase he's just cutting straight to the fundamentals it's not about what brush he use and all that and if you approach it from its what it makes you feel then all your choices they kind of go towards one thing now we get your basics out of the way and then make all your creative choices go towards this deeper fundamental thing and the more you do art the more you realize that you can simplify and simplify it down into different fields or entered into into like almost like truth statements like yeah it's like if you were to write the basics for background painting and and sculpting in ZBrush you would kind of get into some of the same ones it's about good shape you know making sure that the details are not just scattered all across the focus on a simple air good gesture in it you leading the eye and you can apply these rules to all that logo design like background painting Sieber sculpting photography you're kind of going back to like a like truth statements so I guess to wrap everything up the basics of basics and fundamentals basics and fundamentals right you have basics which is I guess the primary skill that everyone kind of starts out with it has a finite cap there is a way to master basic skills basic skills don't necessarily need to be easy they can be very advanced but basic skills are skills that will have a limit and if you only focus on basic skills there will be a cap both career-wise but also skill wise emotion wise what you'll be able to create with your pieces whether it be photography logo design videos and so on there is a there is a skill cap basically when you have fundamentals on the other hand fundamentals are limitless you need the basics to complement the fundamentals because you need to be able to create something that evokes something fundamentals are infinite fundamentals can never really be mastered they are very subjective there's something that your understanding or my understanding of a certain fundamental skill let's say composition is different from Hennings it's it's different from yours and and that's what makes it tricky and by focusing on fundamentals you will improve your art significantly you will be ready for the change which happens in industry whether you get fancy machine learning tools or whatever it might be you will be ready to weather the storm off of time if you only have basic skills you're in much more danger of losing your job versus if you have basic and fundamental skills because the fundamental skills like we said kind of transcend time Bernini sculptures from the 15th century 1500s I don't know is like they still look good today they look good back then they will look good in a thousand years because there are good fundamentals so if you want to see more content like this in the future make sure to LIKE comment and subscribe and we also I believe we have our playlist about fundamental skills as well we do we talk a lot about like observation and like or color theory and all that and those are skills that are not gonna be obsolete by a new patch of Maya coming out so yeah thank you guys so much for watching thanks guys you

Channel: FlippedNormals

Views: 31,277

Keywords: 3d, sculpting, zbrush, concept, maya, tutorial, autodesk, vfx, animation, flippednormals, henning sanden, morten jaeger, creature, character, texturing, substance painter, substance designer, foundry, pixologic, art, fundamentals, art fundamentals, art school, art tutorials, blender, 3d tutorial, learning 3d, learning ZBrush, 3ds max, cube brush, marvelous designer, photoshop, mari, blender guru, cgi, blender 2.8, blender 3d, b3d, Blender tutorial, blender tutorials, learning blender

Id: 7SHNll8Pl7k

Length: 28min 32sec (1712 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020