Then it finally happens, you feel excited, with energy, the desire to explore the unknown and finally learn a new skill, you've been waiting for this desire for days and finally it's right there!!! Then the program opens, it loads, and a WILD WALL OF ICONS APPEARS!!!
It sounds complicated, and it is! And after hours of tutorial videos and several trials and errors you think about trying again the next day, then......you don't remember anything else about the program, so you think:
-Geez, I'll see that tomorrow
/Last opened 32158151 days ago/
Heh, jokes aside, I'm a lot like that, I get lost a lot in extremely complex software, see, I like learning, and complicated things generally, but very rarely have I managed to learn very complex new software, does this have to do with anxiety? Most likely, but I'm not a psychologist to guarantee anything here, what I can do, and i will in the next lines, is share how I got around this rock in my path, eliminating all the complexity and bringing the good old LIMITATION, I will separate here into 4 themes that I like to study and the changes I made to learn, which are: Pixel Art, 3D, Music and Programming.
So come with me on this great journey of not going crazy amid so many possibilities!
PIXEL ART
Well, as you can see here, this site has a tab just for that so it's something I really enjoy doing hehehe. But it wasn't always like that, I probably started doing pixel art MANY years ago using the incredible MS paint. Nah, the truth is that I didn't even know what pixel art was back there but I loved taking the sprites from the game Little Fighters 2 or Pokemon and modifying the characters and creating some new ones by putting them together, but it was something that I let go of very quickly and started doing again only in Photoshop. Where I took the opportunity to make some pixel arts of night scenes, but as the PS always had many options I deviated too much from the basic principle of pixel art which is EVERY PIXEL MATTERS, so in the end a lot of things were unrecognizable or with very little to none contrast.
Then, a while later, a very simple and well-stylized interface caught my attention, and since then I haven't abandoned the great Aseprite to make my block designs, yes, it is limited, yes there are others that do more things, etc., but that's the point (pun aside) the limitations, I'm not going to go into the subject now that the pixel art we know today has nothing to do with the ones that were made to appear on old CRT TVs, but the limitations are what does pixel magic, where a point in a place can be an eye, or a mouth, or just a point, and these limitations were great for me, I just open the file, I choose a cool palette or create one with a maximum of 4 colors, and draw until the pixels start to make sense! Yes, slowly at times, but the simple fact of becoming a block pusher makes me much more eager to make my pixel art than thinking about the various blending and color modes that I can use in other more “complex” tools.
3D
This topic has always been complicated for me, the first time I used 3D software was a few years ago and I gave up very quickly. So, because of the university I'm attending, I was forced to do 3D for some subjects, mainly using Blender, and boy, its interface, options and shortcuts still haunt my dreams to this day, IT'S A LOT OF OPTIONS, it's a lot of shortcuts, it's lots of stuff! As much as I understand myself with it, if I go 3 days without using it, I've already forgotten half the process, and very rarely do I get any satisfactory results, and that's not a criticism of the platform, it's just the way my head works.
Because of this frustration I started looking for references, I always loved the low poly style, of games like Megaman Legends or DR Slump for PS1, I love those graphics, simple and very square. And that's when I found the infamous Blockbench, and the first time I modelled it I was already a completely happy person, it doesn't have more than 6 tools and that was perfect for me, I managed to make a little pot in ¼ of the time it took me to even learn the other software! Of course, it doesn't have MANY options that others offer, lighting, texture and and I don't know what else, but the point is, I don't need that, I just need my “ugly” squares and models from the PS1 era, and I'm very happy with that.
MÚSICA
From here we're going to go into areas that I'm not so familiar with (not like I'm familiar with 3D...) so for start, I've never been a musician, I never knew how to play anything, in fact I only knew how to play songs by Scott Pilgrim and some punk songs on a bass, so, I don’t know how to play anything ʕ ꆤ ᴥ ꆤʔ
But that never stopped me from liking music, and I really like it, I've always tried to do something, whether on a cell phone app or the more professional ones like FL Studio, and boy, how complicated are these apps for those who don't understand anything about it. I swear I tried it several times, starting from the most basic, or trying to make some samples with songs I like, and it turned out incredibly horrible. Until I decided to buy a Kalimba (aka one of the most depressing instruments in the world, I love it ) and incredibly I can play something on it, especially the Zelda’s storm song that I want to play every day when the sun is extremely strong here.
I was almost giving up on trying to make some songs until I came across the simple and charming web program called BeepBox, and wow how this was made for dumb people like me, it's simple, SUPER limited, and best of all, it is intuitive. After a few hours of trying, I managed to make several background sounds for my game prototypes or animated scenes, look, I'm no musician and I'll never become one, but for a person like me to make two notes works is something to celebrate!
PROGRAMMING
And here we enter the thicket that I'm most afraid of, but one I most wanted to know, I'm horrible with programming logic ok, an amoeba basically, I don't even have two neurons for that, and boy, did I try. Because of college, I need to do several projects in Unity, and even though I always get a final result (often not good), I never feel like I understand it, much less i feel comfortable in the lines of code, without saying that My notebook is a potato, and it crashes a lot, each click on an asset is a different loading screen. ʕ ´•̥̥̥ ᴥ•̥̥̥`ʔ
I think you can already tell here that I like old things, so it wouldn't be much of a surprise if I stumbled upon GB Studio at some point!
-oh, but it was very difficult to program for the game boy! (you may say)
And you're not wrong! I never wanted to be in the shoes of any of these programmers (my congratulations to everyone involved) but GB Studio is much simpler, and like all the tips on this list, LIMITED, but even with its limitations I think the alternatives that it offers are incredible. Programmers are finding ways to use this program, I've even seen even rhythm games! Something I would never imagine on a Game Boy, and limitation is a word here, whether in the color palette, the number of tilesets, the sprites, the music, everything! I even threw an entire project away because I drew all the sprites with 4 colors and forgot that transparent is considered a color! But that didn't discourage me the slightest because it only happened because I wasn't paying attention and I already have another project lined up.
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Anyway, I know that for many people it is very easy to learn those software’s that I suffered a lot, but I hope that this text reaches people who don't get along with great complexity and end up giving up on creating something because of it.
Limitation have an incredible side, it tests your creativity in a very strong way, it's not for nothing that we all grew up with incredible works that perhaps only appeared thanks to the limitations imposed at the time, I'm not saying that you should abandon complexity or something like, do what works for you, as long as you don't stop creating!
WOW! I wrote too much today! But this is a topic that has been popping up in my head for a while now and I needed to talk about it, and maybe it will help someone, never know, so continue your projects, and don't be afraid of the infinite (or finite) possibilities.
ʕノ•ᴥ•ʔノ*:・ﾟ
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