Using Online Learning to Launch Your Creative Career

Using Online Learning to Launch Your Creative Career

I want to be creative and make money, but where do I start?

Whether you're a fresh college student, someone who's only poked around with a new skill, or you're ready for a complete career change. Here are some ways to learn and use what you've learned to work on exciting projects with interesting people.

It doesn't matter if you're working deep in the bowels of a SQL database, making short films in your backyard, or learning how to video edit by showing all of your friends your sick no-scope skills; there's always a way to expand, to learn more and to advance yourself and your life. 

Wait, can you learn stuff on the internet?

One benefit of the invention of the internet all those years back is the instant transmission of information to anyone interested.

What once was a niche skill only found in society's experts can now be learned by anyone with an internet connection, the proper setup, and a willingness to not only learn but fail and then learn some more.

The beautiful thing is that this is agnostic; anyone interested in anything can learn something new in mere heartbeats. There is more capacity to learn in the world than there ever has been in human history. 

An entire semester's worth of lectures is available online in any field. You can learn hardware and software skills from the most widely used industry standard to the most niche interest.

It is possible to learn, from the safety and comfort of your own home, things that are being used in the largest companies in the world. This should not be news to anyone, given the recent world event that may have kept us all inside. Yet, people's anxiety about creation, reaching out and just trying something still has a hold on them. 

Coursera is a platform that allows people from any background to learn data science, branding, 3D modelling, or anything else. Not only that, but actual educators also teach them in their respective fields.

The Open Textbook Library has many books, courses, and homework for anything taught in university. Pair the capacity for learning at home for free with the wealth of projects, not only looking for more team members but actively searching, and there's no stopping the amount of practice in your craft. 

You've got me – how do I get started? 

Take it from someone who teaches math for a living; you've got to take it slow. While it would be very cool to jump from completing the square on paper to calculating the energies of fast-moving, high-energy particles in your head, you must learn to walk before you can run.

Many people want to jump into everything whole-hog. While I appreciate and respect the initiative, burnout is always a spectre looming over the shoulders of creatives. A big thing you need to figure out, and it may not be as easy as you expect, is what your particular “thing” is. 

It is common to see someone working in a field unrelated to their undergraduate studies. While some may see this as a failure of the person, unable to break into the field that seems preordained for them, interests change, and people are complicated.

Let's say you went to school and learned signal analysis; who's to say your love of waves and their transformations can't help you understand subtractive synthesis and the road to being an electronic music producer?

Try not to forget that learning is as important as what you learned in the first place; the fact that you trained your brain to understand complicated concepts means that you can do it again and even relate things that seem unrelated. 

Attempt to keep yourself from being locked in a particular lane. As I said, if you can learn one thing, then who's stopping you from learning another? There are many stories of respected musicians, actors, and artists stepping away from the artistic grind to learn something different.

The inverse is also true; many people who feel stuck in the world of STEM find a way to break out and express themselves in their individual, unique way. When you're enthusiastic about something, it makes you want to become better at it.

Guess what happens when you become better and better at something – people become interested in your skills and want you on their teams. 

A brand new world – for learning and creating 

When it used to be that a student could teach guitar in their free time for some extra money and to have a good way to keep practising their interests at the same time, now, teenagers are learning the ins and outs of complete digital audio workstations.

We've seen someone who might be a complete unknown in previous times break into the mainstream with a hobby and turn it into their entire life and career – whether this be independent game developers finally having a game go viral, a band getting their demo tape heard through a DJ playing it in the mix online or a street graffiti artist exploding onto the scene because their work was seen at the right time and in the right place. 

This can be seen in the formal sense or casual—many students learn programming languages such as Python or C++ in their collegiate studies, but only the brave tread into the tumultuous waters of having a personal project out for the internet to see and judge.

Much like those lucky enough to go to an open mic night, perform, and then receive the attention of someone interested in furthering their work, the internet allows people to work on any project they find interesting and advance their lives, careers, and interests simultaneously. 

I have found satisfaction from tutoring my fellow man in the ancient secrets of mathematics. It is interesting; the interconnection of logic and rules that make up our universe and the act of talking about it and teaching it to another person helps me retain the knowledge in my increasingly greying head.

My parents' generation did not benefit from learning any math level from anywhere with a working internet connection, and I feel that way for them. Not only do teaching and tutoring help me pay the bills and give me human interaction in a world that seems much more closed off, but it also helps my skills stay sharp. 

If there's one thing to take from this, it's that it does not matter what your “thing” is – if you're able to put in the time and effort and put yourself out there, you will see returns.

There is not much difference in my retaining and perhaps understanding math more thoroughly through teaching it compared to someone learning and expanding their graphic design skills by signing up for a project and giving it their best shot. While the goal is to make money, try not to lose sight of the value of learning.  

Learning how to learn – with yourself and others!

It's never been easier to learn any skill or hobby you've ever been interested in online – and sometimes for free. Anyone who has spent time browsing through YouTube knows that every field and every interest has been covered by at least one person online.

There is an understandable anxiety that comes with trying something new – but no matter the criticism about your project, there is never anything wrong with someone trying to better themselves and try something outside their comfort zone. 

Want to learn how to develop your video games? You can watch any of the countless Unreal Engine, Unity, or Godot tutorials and learn from real people who have released engaging games, all waiting for you to tune in and take some notes.

Want to learn how to edit your videos? Luckily, you can work through hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of free Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro tutorials. Even learning data visualisation is within the reach of anyone with a working internet connection.

It is a limitless well of knowledge we have amassed, and it would be silly not to take advantage of it.

The big leap that stokes the fires of anxiety is breaking out of your shell and reaching out to work with people outside of your usual routine. I'm here to tell you that it doesn't require one large leap; let's start with baby steps.

Say you've been working in Python and want to branch out to work on new projects with new people. Instead of reinventing the wheel, why throw your two cents in and see if you can help the machine work from the smallest cog?

Find some projects that interest you work with them, and fumble around with some spaghetti code until you've satiated your curiosity.

Tying it all together

Staying in your bedroom programming your next masterpiece is the first step on this cobblestone trail. Ask any time-tested musician, developer, or Jack of all trades. They'll tell you the best way to improve – at an instrument, at a skill, at a language, is to do it with other people who are more skilled than you and have different backgrounds.

Budding game developers have Game Jams – humble to massive multiple-team competitions to make a game within a set amount of time, usually involving some set theme.

Audio producers and sound engineers can enter remix contests or songwriting contests, with the potential to branch out beyond your bedroom studio into the wider world. The best way to get better at a new skill is to be enveloped in that world as much as possible and use pure repetition until your brain and work are synch. 

A quick look at the calendar of upcoming game jams will confront you with a few jams, not just a handful, but a seemingly unending list of game jams. One of the great things about working in multimedia spheres like the gaming world or the programming space is that many different aspects of a project need work.

A game jam will need a writer for the script, a coder, modellers and textures, gameplay testers, and a composer for the music – and that's just the surface level.

A coding project could have a combination of people needing to touch up the front end with the GUI and make the product easier to use; the back end could require database management, and even advertisers and copywriters will be involved. Someone's got to sell this thing, after all! 

The trick with this is a trope but a useful one: Rome was not built in a day. Without a plan, you do not learn new skills by jumping into the deep end. Of course, some strive to excel under pressure, but there is no need.

Start small, and have patience with yourself. Take it from an educator; people learn at their rates and ways. As long as you keep the creative process going, as long as you keep those synapses firing – you're making progress. 

All right, I've made something. What's next?

You keep making things. Small things, big things. Practice makes perfect. This is not something that will always flow freely like you're a virtuoso on the cello, born to write the next masterpiece.

Writing blocks, burnout, and losing interest are real—they're just part of life's big game. When you hit a wall, instead of trying to pick at the scab until it's raw – why not look at things from a different perspective?

Maybe you've been working in graphic design for so long. Still, you enjoy editing and rendering video for a wider audience – give it a shot. Maybe you've been developing 2D video games for so long that you've become bored. Who knows what a brand new dimension could add to your creative process? 

Again, this will not be easy. Part of being creative is having the constitution to continue despite all the voices telling you it's not worth it.

A prominent theme in many creative works is that their creators have untold treasure troves of unreleased work, and most of them stay in the vault forever, collecting digital dust on some long-forgotten hard drive.

You need to keep making things, no matter how big or small. Make it so you train your brain to think about the next creation, improvement, and project. 

Do not fear rejection or criticism; it is all part of the growing process. Some people have this habit of looking only at the negatives of their journeys, not considering what it took to get there.

Going from university to working online with like-minded people and then trying your hand at something bigger does not make you a failure if you don't knock it out of the park on your first try. You still made it further than everyone who never even started in the first place. 

On the shoulders of giants

Many great examples exist if you want some shining examples to daydream about. Balatro was made by one guy essentially as a fun project to share with his friends; now his work is talked about in the same discussions as triple-a games for what will be considered Game of the Year.

Joji – a gentleman formerly known as a guy who made some pretty weird YouTube videos occasionally- has become so well known from humble beginnings that you'll hear his dulcet tones while walking through the withering corpse of your favourite local abandoned shopping mall.

Though we reflect on those who made it, let's not forget that it's not an A to B story – there's a lot of in-between.

 Madeon is known now as an electronic music producer who has cooperated with Porter Robinson, among others – but I recall a time when he was in his bedroom, recording a very impressive mashup using a Novation Push midi controller and getting his first taste of virality and fame.

He did not go from there to immediately selling out shows in cities worldwide. No one can say that he didn't impress many people and get his foot firmly planted in the door of the music world. 

Perhaps a niche example, but one I found very entertaining, is the game Gunpoint from 2013. A killer little 2D indie title from who was once a humble writer for PC Gamer UK, Tom Francis used his downtime to learn a new skill. Luckily for me and many other puzzle-based platformer/stealth game users, his side project was a lot of fun.

Gunpoint won various awards in the aftermath of its release and is still held as an underrated classic on Steam and elsewhere. He also wisely chose to reach out to other people to fill in the gaps in his strengths, ensuring that the game looked and sounded as good as it played.

Did this first project completely change his life? Well, no, but it sure did give him the freedom and finances to continue making games even into 2024. His most current game is Tactical Breach Wizards, which seems to take much of Gunpoint's spirit into a much more polished end product. 

Conclusion

Being a creative person is never an easy path to take. Aside from the internal strife you may have, thinking you're not good enough, your creations not good enough, and projects not interesting enough, there are always others in your same boat.

You can be creative with any field, whether strictly in the arts and humanities or working in the wide world of STEM. While many people feel the anxiety of creating something and putting it out there, many others are ready to take on that mantle.

There are so many resources at the fingertips of people of all backgrounds, just waiting for someone to give it a shot. The important thing is always to try to keep creating and learning. 

Saying there is a set path through this would be untrue; we all figure it out in our ways. The biggest problem is taking the initial step, the step after that – and the step after that.

There are incredible lighting-in-a-bottle projects that are the first thing someone has ever made – and it completely changes their life. Everyone is capable of that, but due to the stinging truths of mathematics, not everyone will experience that.

That's okay! Just keep making, if not for some future audience or consumer base, at least for your own sake. 

There are limitless examples of the little guy making it to the big times. There are countless more little guys not making it to the highest highs but making it to a point where they can live comfortably, all while engaging in their favourite thing.

Here's another trope: take or leave it, but comparison is the thief of joy. You are not anyone but yourself, and you have things to say and creations to bring into the world that are wholly yours.

I look forward to whatever you want to make, from the most minor GitHub project to the most significant multimedia production. Just try not to lose sight of why you're doing it because you want to create something for not only you to see but for everyone else.