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The Death of Curiosity

Recently I was asked to help with a thread/document that wanted to provide a bunch of quick answers to common questions, a noble cause no doubt; however, on further reflection I think this sort of thing sometimes does more harm than good.

The problem with absolute rules, or explaining solutions to common problems with sound-bite type phrases, is that you almost never get the reason why. The root of the problem is rarely explained. For instance, in the not so distant past, artists used blue specular maps for skin. Many artists would tell others to do this or would see this and then copy it; yet few really understood why, so it’s a phenomena that carries on to this day even though the reason for doing it is typically outdated and irrelevant. What we end up with is this telephone game of people regurgitating information without understanding.

When I write tutorials, I try explaining why things happen rather than how to fix them. The waviness thread is a prime example of this. I could have wrote a list of common problems and solutions, but that would not have encouraged people to be creative, to experiment, to think, to understand the cause so that they will have a solid foundation on which to solve other problems in the future.

Even when I’m pretty sure what I write makes sense, I don’t think it should be taken as absolute. As soon as you take someone’s word as absolute, you turn off that part of your brain that is responsible for critical thinking. I’m constantly trying to learn, I am often proven wrong and generally, when I look back on my older work, whether it’s art or tutorials I’ve written, I find a lot of mistakes. If you really want to know how something works, find as many sources as possible to study, and perhaps most importantly, test the theories you read about and see how they apply in reality.

My advice to anyone looking for quick fixes, looking for simple rules to complex topics, is to find your curiosity. If people take anything from the articles/threads I write, or articles/tutorials written by anyone, I hope it is inspiration to learn more about the topic and the desire to experiment.

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  • eworc
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    eworc polycounter lvl 4
  • beefaroni
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    beefaroni sublime tool
    Great topic! I'd love to add a few things as well

    I've noticed that a lot of people just want to be spoon fed every piece of information and refuse to do any work/reading on their own to figure it out. There are dozens of threads where someone will ask for a question, someone will link an amazing article or two (which could be quickly found by searching the wiki/google). Then, instead of reading and trying to digest the article, that same poster will keep asking questions that are clearly answered. You could probably search through like 3 pages of technical talk and find a couple of them pretty easily.

    I think a small part of being a successful 3d artist is the willingness to search for information yourself. I think that learning how to "problem solve" by searching through old threads, the wiki, google, other forums is an incredibly important skill to learn. There have been many times at work where having a general idea of where to look or what forums to check for a problem can save you tons of time. 

    In a weird way, maybe it's kind of like doing homework in school. Sure, someone can give you the answers and the basic formula for a set of math problems, but next time you run into a problem, you won't have the background of knowing where to look or the approach to solve the problem. I guess this is more or less what you're saying though. 

    I'm not saying that it's bad to ask questions (I have done it many times), but there are plenty of topics that have been covered over and over and over again. If you can't take the time to search for the answer and understand those type of problems, how will you approach harder stuff? I think this goes into Joe's point about critical thinking.
  • Jeff Parrott
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    Jeff Parrott polycounter lvl 19
    Spot on EQ. Always ask yourself why? If you can't find the info ask someone. 
  • MrHobo
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    MrHobo polycounter lvl 13
    What makes a great artist, game or otherwise, isnt how pretty or cool something is.

    Its their ability to problem solve and that doesnt mean never asking for help.
    It means doing ones Due Diligence, before asking for help. It means sometimes banging you head against a wall, or in the 21st century banging your head against Google, and trying and failing to find the answer yourself (regardless of weather its a tutorial or a technique youre looking for) THEN turning to others.

    Yeah it can suck but in the end you'll learn more and the people you ask will be appreciative that you tried.
  • Palla
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    Palla polycounter lvl 7
    Just to pile on here, I'm finding that understanding your work becomes absolutely essential to production. Being able to troubleshoot/R&D on the fly and understanding how to poke at the right settings becomes crucial during a crunch. This simply can't always be done with a Google search.
  • weareape
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    weareape polycounter lvl 7
    Actually found this to be a really big problem when I started working at my first studio. A lot of older guys regardless of whether they did it intentionally or not saying "well we do it this way" and when I ask why because i am either trying to solve a previous issue or do something new to improve things they're honestly not sure anymore.
  • JoelStransky
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    JoelStransky polycounter lvl 4
    I think I stand as an example that exceptions are out there. I have a peculiar and annoying slow learning style. Mainly because until I understand the why, I can't seem to remember the what. The catch is, I have to first know the what and work backwards to the foundation. One bonus is that once I get there, the knowledge is part of me. So when I'm trying to grow as an artist, I actually do need the readers digest version. Too often teachers rely on what I call the "magician" method where they're so proud of the Prestige, I get lost in the build up.
    I'd prefer you just spit it out and if you care to, elaborate all you want.
    It's great that you want to your time spent teaching to get good milage but ultimately it's up to the learner.
  • Biomag
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    Biomag sublime tool
    I think I stand as an example that exceptions are out there. I have a peculiar and annoying slow learning style. Mainly because until I understand the why, I can't seem to remember the what. The catch is, I have to first know the what and work backwards to the foundation. One bonus is that once I get there, the knowledge is part of me. So when I'm trying to grow as an artist, I actually do need the readers digest version. Too often teachers rely on what I call the "magician" method where they're so proud of the Prestige, I get lost in the build up.
    I'd prefer you just spit it out and if you care to, elaborate all you want.
    It's great that you want to your time spent teaching to get good milage but ultimately it's up to the learner.

    This. I am very similar. I need to see the big picture first and then I can go back to the very basic ideas of it. Why? Not because of laziness, but if I don't start with the solution, I might miss the connecting dots and might give the wrong details too much attention while missing out on the really important stuff. That's why I paid for my lectures and went there to get the quick introduction. I don't leave it at that naturally, but without it I get lost in thousands of approaches and details and it takes me too long to even start because I can't evaluate the quality of information in front or me. Now on the other hand I can do my job and I am able to find the issues for most bugs/issues faster than most of my current colleagues although they have up to a decade more experience than I do.

    People learn differently. I know how I learn the most efficient way for myself and yet I would never encourage someone else to do it the same way - everybody has to find his own. You will never see me taking notes in a class, you won't see me happily working on my own exercise while the teacher is doing his stuff in front of a class and you can be sure that my first attempt will be a failure, but once I failed I can digest the information I was listing and watching to, rely it to my own approach, evaluate it and from that moment on I seldom need any more problem solving from others regarding this matter. Again this is what I've learned about myself while studying at university and later on in 3D classes and has nothing to say for others.

    But this approach isn't an excuse to ask everyone questions that google or search-functions give you by investing 2 minutes into it. I see just the WHAT you are doing as an introduction to your explanation WHY you are doing it. Its up to the students to do more with it and get the whole picture and don't stop at the WHAT.


    Edit: A small but to me extremely important addition - Thank you to all those people sharing their knowledge online (and especially for free). This is far from to be taken for granted in other fields and therefore highly appreciated. Without people like Earthquake and others it would be so much harder to learn and understand the stuff. So a big shout-out to all of you! Don't forget for every 'let me google it for you'-type question you see there are many people whose question you already answered so they don't even need to post and are far less visible ;)
  • Joao Sapiro
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    Joao Sapiro sublime tool
    i dont think that joe meant about different ways of learning , more as a "try for yourself , research , try to use common sense and dont expect to be spoon fed an end-all solution to all problems"
  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    I have a peculiar and annoying slow learning style. Mainly because until I understand the why, I can't seem to remember the what. 

    To be fair there is nothing really peculiar about that - as a matter of fact I'd say that this is pretty much the best way to learn. People going bruteforce/headfirst might get a head start but it usually doesn't go anywhere and the result is usually derivative work.

    That said, this did play tricks on me during schooldays (as in, not art school, but with things like science classes as a kid/teenager) as I had a tendency to spend too much time on lessons as opposed to practicing exercises.

    But as far as self-teaching is concerned, taking the time to understand the why is a pretty damn good thing !
  • eworc
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    eworc polycounter lvl 4

    "I think a small part of being a successful 3d artist is the willingness to search for information yourself. '

    This applies to every field of employment.  Those that put the effort in finding out how to do something they don't know versus sitting inside their box of ability are the ones that do well.  I work with a lot of people that simply are fine with the status quo of how things are done currently and don't try to improve upon anything.

  • ysalex
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    ysalex interpolator
    I saw Anothony Jones (robot pencil) speak at Anomaly in Vancouver last year, and he called this concept "Pain tolerance". 

    Basically his point was that successful game/tech artists have the ability to sit down and feel the pain of learning something new or exploring a topic, without giving up. Software, skills, etc. Its like a muscle, its an ability that only grows as you exercise it. He's basically describing being disciplined, but in a way that incorporates how specifically technical/game/digital artists feel when they're beginning their journey. 

     


  • pior
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    pior grand marshal polycounter
    Ha ! This point about pain tolerance is excellent. Oddly enough after a while this pain almost becomes something to look forward to, because it is synonym of learning something new.

    I'd go a little further by adding that it needs to be coupled with a good bullshit detector. What I mean by that is, an ability and a willingness to identify time-wasting and/or straight up unfit workflows and being proactive enough to get rid of them and find something better regardless of the time investment it requires. Many artists seem to proudly "force through" stuff by just repeating inefficient practices over and over again, and zero progress ever comes from that.

    In other words ... learning being painful and confusing is a good thing ; but sticking to painful processes is to be avoided at all costs, in favor of fluid and responsive practices.
  • skyline5gtr
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    skyline5gtr polycounter lvl 9
    Great topic, but I do think you need to be able to draw a line. A lot of tutorials do teach concepts and techniques which without them I would have no idea how to accomplish half of my job. We don't get a lot of time to learn anymore either, companies expect us youngings to hit the ground running
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    One issue I've been running into while teaching; was getting students to understand principals based on technology that are no longer widely used.

    Case in Point:
    An F-Stop makes no sense to someone, who has no recollection of what a manual analog camera is.

    Without the knowledge of an F-Stop, they don't understand Aperture. So they don't understand Tone Mapping.
    So they won't understand Gamma Correction, or Linear Space.

    All they're left with is  "Leave sRGB checked for Albedo, and Spec Colour Textures", as an absolute rule they have to follow, just because that's the way it's done.

    A couple of others I've come across:
    - Why we normalize Normal Maps.
    - Why we angle our bevels for baking onto straight surfaces for Normal maps (and handpainted textures), and generally understanding what will bake and what won't.




  • ZacD
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    ZacD ngon master
    Learning that you aren't modeling a high poly model to be completely realistic or accurate, but instead modeling one that will bake well and have a good clean low poly model helps a lot. And it's a harder concept to explain.
  • JacqueChoi
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    JacqueChoi polycounter
    ZacD said:
    Learning that you aren't modeling a high poly model to be completely realistic or accurate, but instead modeling one that will bake well and have a good clean low poly model helps a lot. And it's a harder concept to explain.
    Heh, Scott Eaton would often come down on me with crit bombs for 'overmodelling' in his Zbrush course.

    And The only thing I could think of was..  but..  that would..   bake better....
  • EarthQuake
    So the learning styles thing is interesting, but I don't think it's really an either or thing.

    For instance, let's take a hypothetical tutorial on how to make 3 point lighting. I could write the condensed version:

    1. Add a key light to the upper left of the character
    2. Add a rim light behind, and to the right of the character
    3. Add a fill light to the lower right of the character

    Okay now you know how to make a 3 point lighting setup. Assuming you don't know much about lighting: you don't know why you want 3 point lighting, you don't know why the lights are position where you are, and you don't know what the different types of lights are and why that is important. You probably don't know how to apply these concepts to other situations either.

    Now, let's present the same information, but also the why:

    1. Add a key light to the upper left of the character. A key light is your primary light source and will control the major shadow direction. Adding it above and to the left creates a nice sense of depth and helps to define the features of the face. If the light is centered in front of the characters face you'll get that deer in the headlights, cheap on-camera flash look.
    2. Add a rim light behind, and to the right of the character. A rim light is typically a strong light you place behind or to the sides of your subject to highlight the silhouette.
    3. Add a fill light to the lower right of the character. A fill light is generally a soft, ambient light, and the main purpose is to fill in shadows. You can use a fill light to balance the shadows from the your key light. If you want a harsh, dramatic look, you would want less fill, and for something softer and more natural, more fill. Image based lighting can also be used to control ambient lighting and work as sort of a fill light.

    Okay, now I'm explaining not only what you should do, but why, and hopefully giving you some examples and theories that apply to any lighting setup you wish to come up with. I didn't explain the entire history of photography to get this point, but rather the essentials for understanding these concepts.

    But tutorial writing style is only a portion of what this thread is about. Even if presented with the shortened version of the above tutorial, the curious artist will try out the concepts, experiment, look up external resources, and likely come to understand much of what I have written in the extended version through the natural progression of learning.

    On the other hand, where things can get damaging is when you have the shortened version, and people implement these workflows without understanding why, and worse yet parrot this information to others. Then we end up with 3 point lighting being the "correct" lighting and nobody really knows why.


  • Biomag
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    Biomag sublime tool
    @Earthquake:
    Yes, but increasing size of industry and things that need to be learned that is something that can't be avoided. There will always be a high number of people just copying what others tell them. This happens everywhere.

    You will always have this things happening and in absolute numbers this will happen more and more often. As a couple of people mentioned here you need to master a lot of things just to start working. When I started back in 2013 Maya/Max and Photoshop added by ZBrush was carrying you a long way. Now applying for a character artist job Substance Painter and Marvelous are also expected. I at least had the time to get some experience with the first 3 (still far from mastering them) and now I have to learn just two, but newcomers are facing 5 programs within a short period of time - and its not just 2 more programs, but with them come several workflows, techniques - aaaand the history of 'why?'.

    In my opinion you have a great way of explaining things - and looking around this board you and others reached a very big base of artists that understand all the things you explain. But this won't prevent the 'feed-me!-questions/attitudes' and this should not dishearten/discourage people who are doing the tutorials. Let's face it enough people don't have the will to do more than necessary and until s*** hits the fan they don't care about the 'why'... but they are not those all this is for and they are not those the manage to do the stuff that inspires us.
  • Eric Chadwick
  • xvampire
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    xvampire polycounter lvl 14
    I m quite active in my local Unreal Engine facebook forum, 

    it is quite sadden me when people choose to private message me asking for  solution for their layers of issues. 
    I told them , to post in the  group page, so at least everybody can have equal  problem and solution  proper database , instead of asking it privately , 


    there is couple of good way to ask 3d question, this kind of question i think will likely to get accurate and satysfying answer : 
    - hi I tried this and this,  but somehow  it gave me this error, or this is what happen
     instead of what i expected from the tutorial I saw. 
    - hi I managed to follow the tutorial until this stage , however I still have no clue on how to make it move .  my goal is to  make this thing works.*explain

     it shows you that you are really trying,  taking some note on your problem, and make question by stages/steps
  • EarthQuake
    tl;dr
    Sorry, here's the condensed version:

    If u give the man a fish, he eat for a day. If u teach a man to fish, now he has all sorts of expensive fishing lures to buy and goes bankrupt. If u turn a man into a fish, now whenever he takes a bath he has an abundant supply of fish sauce.
  • Eric Chadwick
    lol, sorry couldn't help myself!

    It's so true though. The tinkerers inherit the earth. Great thread.
  • EarthQuake
    lol, sorry couldn't help myself!

    It's so true though. The tinkerers inherit the earth. Great thread.
    It's cool, it was getting too serious anyway.
  • RyanB
    tl;dr
    Sorry, here's the condensed version:

    If u give the man a fish, he eat for a day. If u teach a man to fish, now he has all sorts of expensive fishing lures to buy and goes bankrupt. If u turn a man into a fish, now whenever he takes a bath he has an abundant supply of fish sauce.
    Ron Swanson says ‘Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Don’t teach a man to fish…and feed yourself. He’s a grown man. And fishing’s not that hard’
  • JoelStransky
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    JoelStransky polycounter lvl 4
    For instance, let's take a hypothetical tutorial on how to make 3 point lighting. I could write the condensed version:

    1. Add a key light to the upper left of the character
    2. Add a rim light behind, and to the right of the character
    3. Add a fill light to the lower right of the character

    Okay now you know how to make a 3 point lighting setup. Assuming you don't know much about lighting: you don't know why you want 3 point lighting, you don't know why the lights are position where you are, and you don't know what the different types of lights are and why that is important. You probably don't know how to apply these concepts to other situations either.

    Now, let's present the same information, but also the why:

    1. Add a key light to the upper left of the character. A key light is your primary light source and will control the major shadow direction. Adding it above and to the left creates a nice sense of depth and helps to define the features of the face. If the light is centered in front of the characters face you'll get that deer in the headlights, cheap on-camera flash look.
    2. Add a rim light behind, and to the right of the character. A rim light is typically a strong light you place behind or to the sides of your subject to highlight the silhouette.
    3. Add a fill light to the lower right of the character. A fill light is generally a soft, ambient light, and the main purpose is to fill in shadows. You can use a fill light to balance the shadows from the your key light. If you want a harsh, dramatic look, you would want less fill, and for something softer and more natural, more fill. Image based lighting can also be used to control ambient lighting and work as sort of a fill light.
    The answer for which one to provide is BOTH.
    I'm a seasoned programmer, I understand some vast concepts so when I need to implement a 3rd party tool, I typically only need a code snippet. But it's always nice to see the snippet broken down afterwards just in case.
  • Eric Chadwick
    They're impatient. They want the answer without spending the time working to get it.

    The mindset is generally "Well, you already figured it out, why don't you just tell me the answer? I don't have time for all that figuring-out business."

    But they just don't understand the answer is not a simple 1-sentence thing. It's the journey itself.
  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    Pretty much: There has to be some level of discovery on the artist part, or they will never learn. Lately it seems the goal for many is just to get to the final product and skip all the steps in the middle. Just want the end result, screw the journey. You will never learn, only become a master of pushing buttons in a specific sequence to get X result for Y circumstance.  

    Learn, get cut, fall, fail, get up and repeat till it's done. Then when that's done, do it again... and again. The bruises and cuts turn into scars, a reminder of what you did and what to do and what not to do. You take those experiences and call on them. You become more fluid and able to adapt because you learned the steps and struggled.

    You do that one thing... what was it? Damn it's on the tip of my tongue... that thing you do when you investigate or study something to reach a conclusion... Reverps? Spleesterch? Research!!! That's it!! Research!! You do researching!!

    (so awesome that the new forum saves drafts, I've been meaning to post this for like 3 weeks).
  • MiAlx
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    MiAlx polycounter lvl 10
    Just to add my thoughts after reading this thread:

    I still have a long journey of learning in front of me. With that being said, I realized that some mistakes I did in the beginning are basically what you guys are talking about. When I was watching animation tutorials, I would follow those and do more or less exactly what the guy in the tutorial did. The issue was that because I was so focused on following this guy's "rules" and workflow, I pretty much cornered myself and found that I was not really improving. Only after I stopped stubbornly follow their workflows and started animating (and sometimes rigging) by myself and trying different things, I realized what worked and what didn't work. 

    Basically, something wouldn't work and I would sit there and try and find out why and how I can avoid it in the future. That is something that really helped me learn many things and improve overall.

    It's a combination of feedback, tips and mostly learning from your mistakes. Trying to get a workflow for something from someone and then taking that as the true and only way to do it, without analyzing it and trying things out on your own will just hinder you from going deeper into the material.

    Also funny thing, what @perna said:

    perna said:
     People still to this day believe meshes must be all-quads, as some "rule". It doesn't make the slightest bit of sense but they heard the "rule" somewhere and people are generally rule-followers. 
    I am not a modeller, but I kinda still thought that n-gons are a no-no, because that is what I was constantly being told in the beginning. 
    Which proves your point, I guess.
  • Chimp
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    Chimp interpolator
    the death of curiosity? this has been moaned about since the greek philosophers and no doubt before -- 'oh nobody wants to seek knowledge, they're in the cave staring at shadows a wall' - its the same argument. It would seem that the majority of humans simply arent artists (or philosophers). its a particular mindset that not everyone wants :/ Pretty long death if it is one, i'd say its more that most people arent inclined to this, but a lot of people would like to do it cos 'lol its fun making FPS games'
  • Chimp
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    Chimp interpolator
    IT DOESNT WORKS I DUNNO WHATS BROKEN I HAVE MADE A   GAMES BUT jUMP NOT PICTURE ON MY LEVELS LOILOLLOL srs

    -versus-

    Hello, I'm having a problem with [thing]. I need to achieve [this] but am having [that] problem. I searched and found [some articles] but I do not know what they mean by [term] or what they did at this [bit]. Thanks very much in advance, I look forward to working this out with your help.

    Thanks again, User.

  • Shiv
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    Shiv polycounter lvl 15
    Great thread! 
    It rings so true for me at work. 
    I have found just getting some people to google things for themselves can be a pain, they always retort with "but you are here, and you know the answer" -_-... but they fail to understand the wider band of knowledge you can get from the google, the journey to your answer can teach you new things on the borders of your question. Or show you an answer you didn't even know existed simply because it popped up in some search response, or as part of a thread you found on your search journey.
    Long live curiosity! Long live tinkering!
  • Bhrazz
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    Bhrazz polycounter lvl 17

    Recently I was asked to help with a thread/document that wanted to provide a bunch of quick answers to common questions, a noble cause no doubt; however, on further reflection I think this sort of thing sometimes does more harm than good.

    The problem with absolute rules, or explaining solutions to common problems with sound-bite type phrases, is that you almost never get the reason why. The root of the problem is rarely explained. For instance, in the not so distant past, artists used blue specular maps for skin. Many artists would tell others to do this or would see this and then copy it; yet few really understood why, so it’s a phenomena that carries on to this day even though the reason for doing it is typically outdated and irrelevant. What we end up with is this telephone game of people regurgitating information without understanding.

    When I write tutorials, I try explaining why things happen rather than how to fix them. The waviness thread is a prime example of this. I could have wrote a list of common problems and solutions, but that would not have encouraged people to be creative, to experiment, to think, to understand the cause so that they will have a solid foundation on which to solve other problems in the future.

    Even when I’m pretty sure what I write makes sense, I don’t think it should be taken as absolute. As soon as you take someone’s word as absolute, you turn off that part of your brain that is responsible for critical thinking. I’m constantly trying to learn, I am often proven wrong and generally, when I look back on my older work, whether it’s art or tutorials I’ve written, I find a lot of mistakes. If you really want to know how something works, find as many sources as possible to study, and perhaps most importantly, test the theories you read about and see how they apply in reality.

    My advice to anyone looking for quick fixes, looking for simple rules to complex topics, is to find your curiosity. If people take anything from the articles/threads I write, or articles/tutorials written by anyone, I hope it is inspiration to learn more about the topic and the desire to experiment.

    Exactly what I learned 2-3 years ago. I stopped and start thinking. And just for that, I became better at my work. I realized this while doing a normalmap. 

    I would say 4/5 people don't even know how it work and use it everyday. And I'm talking about people with 5-10years experience as artist. Is it important? In most case, no. When is time to do some magic however, it come in handy.

    Also, I noticed that the best talents I came accros know's how a game is rendered, how is processed inside a computer ( GPU, CPU etc... )

    Most of us, including me at some level, don't really know the process of it, and is a shame.


    That being said, I think EarthQuake is 100% right.


  • DavidCruz
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    DavidCruz interpolator
    Your posted comment above.
    So there are no people in the middle of that road? 1.5 utilizing both? Like a time restricted situation where to make the deadline you would have to cut corners, is what I mean. :( Anyone can chime in on this question not just the op of the comment quoted.
  • shubham kumar
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    shubham kumar polycounter lvl 9
    beefaroni said:
    Great topic! I'd love to add a few things as well

    I've noticed that a lot of people just want to be spoon fed every piece of information and refuse to do any work/reading on their own to figure it out. There are dozens of threads where someone will ask for a question, someone will link an amazing article or two (which could be quickly found by searching the wiki/google). Then, instead of reading and trying to digest the article, that same poster will keep asking questions that are clearly answered. You could probably search through like 3 pages of technical talk and find a couple of them pretty easily.

    I think a small part of being a successful 3d artist is the willingness to search for information yourself. I think that learning how to "problem solve" by searching through old threads, the wiki, google, other forums is an incredibly important skill to learn. There have been many times at work where having a general idea of where to look or what forums to check for a problem can save you tons of time. 

    In a weird way, maybe it's kind of like doing homework in school. Sure, someone can give you the answers and the basic formula for a set of math problems, but next time you run into a problem, you won't have the background of knowing where to look or the approach to solve the problem. I guess this is more or less what you're saying though. 

    I'm not saying that it's bad to ask questions (I have done it many times), but there are plenty of topics that have been covered over and over and over again. If you can't take the time to search for the answer and understand those type of problems, how will you approach harder stuff? I think this goes into Joe's point about critical thinking.
    You are right , this problem of spoon feeding of information is mostly found in newer artists and students and i think this happens because newer artists are filled with curiosity and they want answers straight forward they don't care about Why they care about How , when i was in senior year at Art institute junior students instead of googling articles and wiki just want someone to takeover mouse and keyboard and show them how to do it and i did it a lot at Art institute for juniors and sometimes it made me angry .
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