I keep finding cool YouTube channels that are actually really helpful and don’t get too boring to watch. They also are very helpful with creative topics.
I’ll exclude any videos by Fire Emblem focused YouTube channels because you probably have seen them already. Though I might make a GBAFE-specific pixel art video at some point myself idk
As far as game design: I don’t get videos about game design very often if at all and I can’t be assed looking for them so I don’t have much to offer there. I also will not be linking videos on music since original music has a very high entry barrier/time cost and porting game rips is specific to GBA/sappy/etc. Sme and Agro have pretty much covered that.
Organized by topic:
Writing
LocalScriptMan - Breaks down a bunch of storytelling pitfalls in a constructive and easy to understand manner. Videos are also entertaining.
Character Sheets (which should be viewed alongside Oops No Soul)
The Illusion of “Bad Pacing”
Pixel Art
Brandon James Greer - This guy has a similar journey to many, many experienced pixel artists and has documented lots of it.
How to Start Pixel Art Not as digestible as I’d like, but it’s a start. It may not be as useful if you don’t intend to branch out with your pixel art too much.
Pixel Art Character Animation - It helps to see it in action; those animated infographics are nice for at-a-glance reference, but seeing it as it goes is helpful!
5 Pixel Art Proofreading Tips - The most relevant tips in this video for us are 1, 3, and 5.
Lines and Curves in Pixel Art - Busk’s thread has a segment for this, but it may be difficult to understand for some types of learners. This video lets the info sink in better, and it being a video means it can display more use cases than in a text tutorial without being annoying. To be clear, the annoying part is that in general tutorials can get bogged down if they keep showing different methods/use cases/hypotheticals.
Bonus: Ancient splicing tutorial - This is 15 years old… and is pretty much the exact method I started with. LOL. I’m not sure if anyone should follow this per se, but it’s interesting to go back and remember the pains of our forebears or something.
Art in General
pikatl - Art videos that don’t follow the Kooleen Method™ (which doesn’t teach anything). They’re also well-edited, in many cases from livestream footage; this ensures it’s somewhat engaging.
How to ACTUALLY Learn Anatomy - Most accomplished artists, I feel, use this… like, they proceed in this manner. I need to sleep I can’t words rn
What I Did When Art Wasn’t Fun - Outlines why and how, with personal anecdotal experience, and gives potential methods to get out of the pit. She’s a good speaker, too lol
Boxes - Boxes is the real hack for drawing. I think when it comes to active practice, I myself improved the most when implementing boxes. This isn’t super applicable to portraits etc unless you go for ambitious angles like Colm FE8 but whatever
Productivity
LocalScriptMan’s A Scriptwriter’s Hot Take On Productivity
How to Rest if You Have ADHD (Haley Honeyman) - This video is slightly boring but is helpfully timestamped and not everyone with issues caused by neurodivergence has broken down types of rest.
Game Design
Daryl Talks Games - Divergent Thinking - This isn’t particularly straightforward game design advice, but can help you think about how to approach your gameplay as far as puzzle solving vs. problem solving. Divergent thinking is, of course, something highly exercised by Fire Emblem players, or at the very least they like when a game lets them do it.
personal notes (kind of irrelevant)
I wanted to find something relating the pitfalls of League of Legend’s design re: armor/armor penetration and how lessons learned from that cluster🅱️uck could apply to numbers and statistics in video games in general but uh… YouTube just gives me LoL tutorials if I actively search for that, so I’ll just have to let something similar crop up organically.
Feel free to comment with your own links to videos you’ve found helpful - I’ll add them to this post if I decide they’re not garbage. Yeah, it’s at my mercy. Deal with it, I don’t wanna make a wiki thread, and a lot of people don’t even have wiki perms on their accounts.