Mod Post: Tutorial Content
Hi gang,
I would like to renew everyone's acquaintance with the content rules.
A WHOLE LOT of you have gotten this message from me in the last week or two:
Tutorials need to be "how" and "why" centric, and not just recipes.
http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/10168057.html
Unfortunately, even several posters who have been reminded of this still don't quite seem to know what that means. So let me clarify.
A how-centric tutorial would be one that really explains a process. Instead of saying, "crop your image," a how-centric tutorial would say, "The crop tool is the one that looks like this [image]. You can give it a certain setting by putting in a fixed ratio here [image]," and so on.
A why-centric tutorial would be one that gives you detailed reasons for doing things. Instead of saying, "crop your image," a why-centric tutorial would say, "Even though the maximum image size that LJ allows for icons is 100x100 pixels, this is actually going to be 'widescreen'. So we're going to use the crop tool to bring it down to 80x100."
A true tutorial is both how- and why- focused. We are here so people can learn about graphics programs and how to create graphics (not just icons). We are not here so people can learn a sequence of numbers to use with a single tool in a single program.
Kindly consider yourselves reminded.
Thanks!
[ETA August 2009]: Many people ask for an example of a good tutorial. Now I have one. You should be striving to be this thorough.[/ETA]
I would like to renew everyone's acquaintance with the content rules.
A WHOLE LOT of you have gotten this message from me in the last week or two:
Tutorials need to be "how" and "why" centric, and not just recipes.
http://community.livejournal.com/icon_tutorial/10168057.html
Unfortunately, even several posters who have been reminded of this still don't quite seem to know what that means. So let me clarify.
A how-centric tutorial would be one that really explains a process. Instead of saying, "crop your image," a how-centric tutorial would say, "The crop tool is the one that looks like this [image]. You can give it a certain setting by putting in a fixed ratio here [image]," and so on.
A why-centric tutorial would be one that gives you detailed reasons for doing things. Instead of saying, "crop your image," a why-centric tutorial would say, "Even though the maximum image size that LJ allows for icons is 100x100 pixels, this is actually going to be 'widescreen'. So we're going to use the crop tool to bring it down to 80x100."
A true tutorial is both how- and why- focused. We are here so people can learn about graphics programs and how to create graphics (not just icons). We are not here so people can learn a sequence of numbers to use with a single tool in a single program.
Kindly consider yourselves reminded.
Thanks!
[ETA August 2009]: Many people ask for an example of a good tutorial. Now I have one. You should be striving to be this thorough.[/ETA]