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s1utspeare · 3 years

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DID SOMEONE SAY BODY LANGUAGE COMPARISON???

I heard the sweet, dulcet tones of acting meta on this post and could not resist her call, so @xcziel, @foxofninetales, this one is for you.

THE LIU CHANG DMBJ CHARACTER META: WANG CAN vs LIU SANG

So first of all lemme just say I love these bitches, and what’s interesting about Liu Chang is that he plays them on opposite ends. There’s not much he can do about the fact that, y’know, he’s the same-ass person, but there are some very distinct differences between Liu Sang and Wang Can, which we will be talking about now.

Liu Sang photo cred: @foxofninetales

Wang Can photo cred: @xcziel

Jiang Wu photo cred: me screenshotting @xia-xueyi’s Moonfall Echo subs (ep. 13)

PART ONE: BODY LINES

I’ve talked about body lines before! But now we get to look at it from the same actor in two different characters! As a recap, straight lines are strong, sturdy, confident, and straightforward; curved lines are weaker, but more interesting and more dynamic.

For example!!

We got our bitch Wang Can here!! This is our first look at this slimy man, and look! He’s like a square!!! All straight lines, all ups and downs. Him body a square!! The costume people also do a great job of boxing him up bc of the tailoring of his jacket, and the two neutral color palette. There’s no embellishments, no decor. This is a straightforward man!! He’s not hiding anything except exactly how much of a bitch he is

(Also notice that his hands are showing and in fists. This will be important in a minute.)

Next, we have our favorite boy Liu Sang, showing up for the first time (ignore the differences in angles):

Oho! He’s a curvy motherfucker!! Aside from the fact that his clothes are now tailored correctly to demonstrate his natural curves, this mans is also curving himself! His arms! Are loose! And bent!! His head and neck aren’t nearly as emphasized! And! AND!!!! His hands are in his fucjing POCKEEETTTSSS. That indicates FURTIVENESS! That indicates MYSTERY! We’re going to find some things OUT about this boy and we’re gonna like it!!!

In comparison, look at Jiang Wu:

LIU CHANG U BEAUTIFUL BITCH. He fucking BENT HIS ARM. He kept one straight and BENT THE OTHER!!! Oh joyous occasion!! We have a DYNAMIC BOY!! but not too dynamic—peep that hidden hand! Also I love this bc it was TWO DIFFERENT LIU CHANG CHARACTERS IN THE SAME SHOW!!! :D see!! Here’s Liu Sang again!

THIS IS A CONFIDENT LIU SANG!!!! He is CHANGED! He is capable of expressing emotions now! Look at just how much body language he has going on, while in comparison, Jiang Wu and Wang Can are like creepy Wood Baby Puppets. His body shape is boxy again, but that’s bc he’s the protagonist of this one. The plot hinges on him, he’s gotta be sturdy.

WHAT WE HAVE DETERMINED SO FAR:

Wang Can is straight lines, no hidden agenda (which is funny cause he’s a Bad Guy)

Liu Sang is dynamic lines and movement, and alludes to mysterious ✨secrets✨

Jiang Wu is a mix of the two and also a dumb dork (that’s not from the body language, I just think he’s funny)

PART TWO: HAIR, BABY!

Once again I owe my life to costuming people. Someday I’ll write that Mystic Nine costuming meta but today we’re focusing on Liu Chang and, specifically, his HAIR PEOPLE!!! I love them and would die for them literally

Once again, ladies and gentlemen and all my glorious they/thems, Wang Can:

OOOOOH I hate his slimy RAT FACE lemme AT EM. Ahem. Regardless, let’s take a look at this BITCH, shall we? We have: straight line face angles!! Very standard shape, BUT this is all accented by the fact that his hair is S C R A P E D back to within an inch of its life, like. Ahem. Sir. Please. Also this man’s got CONTOUR on. If u look at literally any pics/videos of Liu Chang out of character he is NOT this angular. His head is just as rectangular as his body, and the pulled back hair emphasizes his face, which is interesting as he doesn’t do a whole lot with it.

Alternatively, Liu Sang:

This is a nice boy!!! This is a nice soft boy!!! Look his face has CURVES that are emphasized by the glasses (which also draw attention to his eyes, which is good bc that’s where he does the most work, which we’ll get to later) and the HAIR!!! His hair is soft!! It’s flowy! It’s curvy! He conditions!!! This boy is approachable and will Not shoot you One Million Times with a Machine Gun. This also works with the Liu Sang Signature Ponytail, as he leaves thick-enough bang pieces out to also give the illusion of curves around his face. Also his nose and cheekbones are NOT as strongly contoured, so the angularity of his face is softened as well

WHAT WE HAVE DETERMINED SO FAR

dmbj hair and makeup people were doing the absolute most

Wang Can’s hair gives us the most access to The Face, giving him a slick, straight look, and also something else which we will discuss next

Liu Sang is Soft and Curved bc of the hair and glasses, primarily

Oh speaking of fucking which you know who else is soft??? Huang Junjie. That’s the softest man I have ever seen. His xiaoge is my favorite bc it’s perfectly believable that he’s Butter Inside based solely on his Cheeks (again, it’s the hair people doing the Lord’s work)

PART THREE: IT’S ALL IN THE FACE

The face is the actor’s best friend, and Liu Chang definitely uses his well. We know him as being sort of stoic, more on the Xiao-Ge end of things than the Wu Xie side, but if u compare Liu Sang to Wang Can, LS is going HAM with the facials.

Let’s take a look!

Fuck me UP!!!!!! Look at him!! This is one of the earlier episodes too so we haven’t even gotten to the real good stuff but!!!! Look at his eyebrows!!! Look at how wide his eyes get (once again, the glasses are jumbotroning the peepers)! Look at his unhappy lil mouth!! That’s a whole REALM of facial expression, and so early on in our journey!

Meanwhile, Fuckboy Prime:

(Pardon the garbage screencap, my laptop broke on me this week and I am Suffering)

This is at the very end of Wang Can’s time with us; he’s fighting and he’s going to die and he KNOWS it, but this bitch doesn’t even draw his eyebrows together. Mcwhomst???? Bitch u GOTTA give us more than that I’m BEGGING u

The other interesting thing about their differing facial expressions is that Liu Sang emotes mostly with his eyes, and Wang Can emotes mostly with his mouth. This is very obvious in the clip @xcziel posted, esp when he starts doing the whole gesturing-with-his-chin thing, but it’s prominent throughout.

These two screenshots were taken like fifteen seconds apart. He does a whole face journey, but only with his mouth. His eyes stay fixed; they move, sure, but they don’t get any wider or anything like that.

Liu Sang, however is always doing stuff with his eyes. For example (I couldn’t find an image of it quick enough but I know that @kholran has this gifset), the sacrifice scene where he looks up at Wu Xie with the biggest, most pleading and questioning eyes imaginable?? Kills me. The DEPTH in those bad boys. Fuck me UP.

This also checks out when we remember the glasses. Since they emphasize the eyes, we’re drawn to that part of Liu Sang’s face, so it makes sense that the majority of his expression would happen there. This is also prominent with his hearing abilities; whenever he’s trying to focus them (or get us to focus on him), he not only turns his eyes away, he SHUTS THEM, which means we as the audience know that there’s something going on underneath the surface, and really highlights the fact that this is an unusual and cool power!

With Wang Can, however, the structure of his face and absence of Hair Curves directs the eye to his mouth, so we watch that to tell what’s going on in his head. It’s all about directing the eye, and Liu Chang is very good at knowing where people are going to be looking!

SO: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

Liu Sang, Wang Can, and Jiang Wu are all very distinctly characterized through their body language

The same actor becomes different characters by using their toolkit (the body) to its full potential

Hair and makeup people are Wizards

Wang Can is a Whole-Ass Ho and I do not miss him even a little bit

Liu Sang’s body dynamics change over time and I love that for him!!

I’m a giant nerd the end

#this is a long boy but I’m a nerd and enjoy drawing Arrows #liu sang #wang can #liu chang #dmbj #dmetabj #my meta #acting meta #tomb of the sea #the lost tomb reboot #moonfall echo

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kapitan5o · 6 years

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no offense, but why do you like naruto? i heard it is disgustingly sexist; the only main female character is super over-sexualized and is only a plot point for the male characters. also it's homophobic; there was an intimate scene between two male characters in the comics that was removed from the series. so, what did you see in it? i respect you and look up to you but i admit i'm a little confused about this 😕

Okay, dude, I think you missed some key points: “used to like” and “when I was 12”. But I find your accusations pretty unfair and here is why (it’s gonna be a very long one because there is a lot to untangle in your question and I honestly don’t recommend this read to anyone except this anon):

let’s make some things clear first: naruto has at least 20 main female characters because it is a manga with more than 700 chapters, the first of which started being published in 1997 which explains a lot of issues people might have with it like not enough representation (people are still struggling with this today 20 years later even with much newer shows). So I’m just here to tell you that there is not one main female character, there are a bunch, they’re all different, they’re all ninjas just like male characters and some are much stronger too and some of them also have high leadership roles (which we don’t even have enough in real life to this day, amazing I know). Is there sexism in naruto? Yes, much like in every other anime i’ve ever watched. In fact, much like in almost everything I’ve ever watched? With anime and manga specifically though there are some types of characters and tropes that are almost traditional to japanese culture and they can be seen as absolutely unacceptable for a westerner reader/viewer especially now (things were different in early 2000s) but you really can’t blame naruto for having one over-sexualized female character from what “you’ve heard” since this sexualization you’re talking about comes from the fandom not the original manga so for instance if you look up “female naruto characters” you’ll get “ToP 1o hOtTEst NAruTo CHARacTeRs” with “hot” or inappropriate fanart instead of a list of strong female characters that would highlight their strengths and actual ninja powers - so can’t really blame the original manga for that either. Bare in mind that the genre of naruto is shonen which is focused on action, adventure, friendship and fighting so there is no place for sexualization. Are some female characters still written poorly? Yes, but I could blame the entire Hollywood for that as well as this one manga artist.

- here is that main female character you’re referring to in the original manga: dressed like a normal human, fighting, shouting, doing her ninja stuff (oh and her special ninja power? super strength, i know, very over-sexualized)

Now onto the “intimate scene between two male characters that was in the manga but was removed from the cartoon” - the only scene you could be referring to was actually an illusion created by one of the other characters (he has the power to create illusions or clones from thin air and he did so for two other male characters) - was this actual gay representation to begin with? No. Was it an actual intimate scene between two male characters? No. Is it a double standard that the cartoon still included female characters in the same illusion/clone technique but didn’t include a scene that would be considered gay? Yes. Is it homophobic? In the manga it was purely a “fan service” situation, maybe even a slight mockery of yaoi fans, but why the producers of the actual anime decided not to include it is beyond me - it is probably for the same reasons voltron producers only hinted to a gay relationship and never actually shown anything animated between two male characters, like a kiss. Seeing how in naruto unlike voltron it wasn’t even meant to be actual representation I don’t personally consider this homophobic.

And now onto your question - how could I possibly like something that had sexist elements in it in 2006 when I was 12? I’ll tell you how and bare in mind kids at 12 now are nothing like when I was 12 - we had little to no access to the internet but we had one huge computer that took an hour to turn on and 2 hours to load a 12 minute video on youtube and you guessed it, there was not a lot to watch, but we did find clips of naruto here and there and we put them on to load before school and then we came back and watched them and it was like our second anime ever and it was exciting. Here are the things I liked about naruto as a 12 year old (and I’m talking about the earlier seasons where they’re all kids because that’s all I watched) - the main character is an orphan boy who is different from everyone and desperately wants to have friends and prove his ninja skills to the entire village, everyone thinks he’s annoying and too loud and stupid but episode after episode he proves to be the kindest kid who wants to protect the people in his life because he doesn’t have any family (so his teachers who take care of him and his group that he studies ninja stuff with) there are loads of characters who grow and become friends along the way while competing against each other in ninja exams all with different special powers and there is adventure and missions and really bad comdey - so all your accusations seem a bit like you’ve never watched or read any of the manga or anime yourself but you still have an opinion that you want to embark on my childhood memories of this cartoon? And don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it has issues (especially further along the way) and it is problematic in more than one way but I used to like it when I was 12, so more than ten years ago, my whole entire view on life changed since then and I can now see sexism and homophobia and plain “wrong” when I didn’t used to before because (spoiler alert) I was an actual child? And as a society we’ve become much more aware of it?

Could I watch naruto now and still like it? No. In fact I find most anime really problematic this way or the other which is why I honestly can’t watch it anymore (much like I see sexism in korean dramas which always makes me cringe). So I understand where your concern is coming from but I don’t appreciate when people come with an opinion they heard somewhere (and haven’t really formed themselves) and don’t really know the details of any of it?

If you still have any other concerns or questions I wouldn’t mind talking about them in dms instead of spamming everyone’s feed with naruto related novels when you’re on anon.

#i need a hiatus from social media i think #please guys form your own opinions on things #never knew i'd spend half of my day trying to defend naruto #especially to someone who hasn't even seen/read any of it #especially when i'm 24 #i did some freaking research for you #why do i even bother

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eremji · 6 years

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Thoughts on Infinity War, and Thanos' Motivation

Disclaimer: I'm not a Marvel expert. Some of my information on comic plots was collected from wikis and secondary articles, due to a lack of access to a primary source or the simple inaccuracy of my own memory. I also mostly enjoyed Infinity War, and any criticism herein should not be taken as decrying the whole.

Spoilers behind the cut. Please close your eyes and scroll super fast, block tags, duck and cover, etc. if you’re on mobile, because, seriously, spoilers.

An extremely simplified version of movie production:

From a production standpoint, Iron Man was a huge risk for the studios fronting the money for it. After critical and box office flops from 90s Batman films and other various superhero action flicks, studios typically found comic book movies to underperform in comparison to budgetary requirements for good visuals, making them unattractive. Marvel has taken a large step away from making comic book movies, to making comic book adaptations, because what works on the page doesn’t work in a moving picture.

Marvel Studios’ cinematic success has almost nothing to do with how compelling the source material is – because some of Marvel’s library is pretty much slush pile garbage. This was before your average artist or consumer realized you can get pretty literary while still having cool pictures on a page. They’re valuable because they propelled the comic industry to widespread success, but the source is best examined with a critical eye towards tone deaf and anachronistic viewpoints on race, sexuality, gender, and pretty much everything else. Marvel Studios has done a fairly consistent job of divorcing the cinematic canon from the original medium’s baggage, to which I attribute a large portion of the films’ success in comparison to very lukewarm iterations of DC or X-Men.

As media consumers, we’re accustomed to having a finished product to hold and analyze. When considering story, in terms of plotting and pacing, I personally believe it’s most helpful to compare the scope of the MCU production to be similar to that of a television show, rather than a traditional movie or movie series. It may be startling to know that even very successful television shows, like Breaking Bad or Stranger Things, often don’t even have all the episodes completely written out prior to beginning filming of a season.

Marvel Studios’ movies have been in production for ten years, with many, many different hands in the pot, and earlier scripts don’t always set up the best planting and payoff of character or plot elements later in the continuity. (For visual learners, Lindsay Ellis has a very layman-friendly example using clips from Mad Max: Fury Road.)

You can see where this might start to cause some consistency issues.

Crossover event comics and the necessary sacrifice of emotional development:

For anyone walking in to expecting Avengers: Infinity War to have a lot of character development, I’m very sorry for your loss.

There was never going to be a grand emotional reunion for Steve and Bucky, and there was never going to be whole hours dedicated to bonding and witty bickering and new friendships that weren’t absolutely vital to the plot. That we got things like the Steve-and-Bucky hug, the jealous Star-Lord vs. Thor moments, and Steve introducing himself politely to Groot were for the benefit of the audience more than advancing the plot, which is a huge victory in terms of crushing as much as possible into a theatrical cut.

A film production has a finite amount of screen time to allocate before a movie becomes bloated. When people joke about Infinity War being the most ambitious crossover event, I don’t think some of them realize how on the mark that is from a production standpoint. Hard decisions have to be made between what isn’t vital to advancing plot in a compelling way and what was retained to meet audience expectations. Infinity War often felt like it tried to recapture that Joss Whedon-ish sassy-but-kinda-flat comedy from the first Avengers, and that meant punchlines for jokes sometimes land at emotionally inappropriate times because characters just don’t have cinematic space for witty banter between shooting aliens and losing everyone they ever cared about.

There’s a difference in author-audience expectations of what’s important in these team-up movies, and also gaps between fans actively participating in fandom because they love the characters and casual moviegoers looking for a blockbuster. It all comes down to how much each party in the creative transaction is willing to settle for. Traditionally, Marvel has set up the character-driven plots and subplots in individual comics with occasional crossover cameos for a few issues when another character or baddie is relevant to the plot. The large crossover events, like Civil War, Contest of Champions, or Infinity are almost always plot-heavy and character-light.

This is so much easier in comic book format, where multiple series can be coordinated in regular, paced releases, and different comic issues may happen parallel or directly before/after the event crossovers. Movies take a significantly larger amount of time to produce, through pre-production, filming, post-production, marketing, and distribution.

A brief (I’m serious, they’ve been making comics since the 1939) explication of source material:

One of the largest disconnects for me, as a fan of both the comics and the movies, was the change in Thanos’ motivation, but not his mission. For those who aren't aware of the origins of his character, he essentially wants to murder people to impress a girl – Mistress Death, to be specific. He wants to kill half of all life in the universe so that he can be her equal and win her affection.

Dorkly did a pretty solid breakdown of some of Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet story and the innate misogynistic slant of his character, including comic panels from the original source material, that paints comic!Thanos an internet Nice Guy™. (Feel free to skim the article; it's a bit slow to get to the point.) Perusing the comic panels, you can see Thanos is hella into negging and is spiteful when Mistress Death shows interest in another dude (spoilers: it’s Deadpool). He clearly believes love is possession, and if he can’t have what he wants, then, good golly, no one can.

He’s also really off the rails – dubbed the Mad Titan even before his objectification mega crush on a badass corpse with a wicked bod – and is personally responsible for destroying Titan. He’s not a villain that believes he’s the hero, and this shift away from his motivation being dangerous-and-horrible to dangerous-and-misguided casts the first shadow on the premise.

My (very personal) opinion on the execution:

MCU essentially played keep away with some of the more supernatural elements of the source material, at least until introducing Dr. Strange. In doing so they had to construct Thanos’ motivation for a comic-book-inspired task out of whole cloth. There is no Mistress Death. Secondary characters that were discrete entities are often pulling double duty*.

(*Or triple. See also: Bucky Barnes, who is wearing the backstory of Captain America's gay best friend Arnie Roth and now White Wolf. If you were previously unaware of this factoid, please enjoy the irony that Marvel’s biggest pro-American propaganda piece had an openly gay best friend circa early 80s but Civil War ham-fistedly had to work in that awkward-as-fuck smooch between Steve and Peggy Carter’s hot young romantic surrogate niece.)

So, okay, they have to reinvent Thanos, who we've only seen in a handful of post-credit scenes and vicariously learned, through Loki in the first Avengers movie and then Gamora in Guardians, is a conqueror and also really Bad News™.

I buy everything so far. And why not? Black Panther made me love Killmonger and his rage, and the parallels to contemporary issues made him fairly empathetic without highlighting that his perspective was necessarily the ‘correct’ one. Similarly, Spider-Man: Homecoming’s villain, Vulture, was believable in the sort of suffering everyman-turned-desperate way, highlighting the fallout of the Space Invaders vs. Avengers destruction without suggesting the audience should root for Vulture.

In general, I am on board for these movies going straight for the throat on the big baddies of the comic universe because movie production is lengthy, expensive, and time-consuming. Dear Marvel Studios, Give me Avengers vs. Dr. Doom. Love, Me.

A villain can be built up over the course of a single movie (or two). Armed with this optimism, and heartened by recent Marvel Studios successes in characterization, I walked into Infinity War expecting as much gratuitous violence, universe-cleansing genocide, and genuine fear of Thanos as I could possibly expect from something Disney-adjacent.

I knew people were going to die. Let me say – there was no way to spoil this for me. The Infinity Gauntlet comic series starts with half the universe dying. I expected there to be ‘casualties’ and even though the Russo bros said that this wasn’t two parts of the same movie, it’s certainly serial. At minimum, I was expecting Thanos bent on conquering the cosmos, worshiping at the altar of death in the abstract, if not groveling for an inevitable-cosmic-force-turned unattainable woman.

And yet. And yet.

We got the purple version of the Kool-Aid man with some seriously unaddressed parent-child issues (mirrored in Tony Stark’s loss of Peter Parker) and a wholly unimaginative motivation. I won’t go too far much into the movie’s alarming efforts at framing Thanos as a sympathetic character despite his genocidal and horribly abusive tendencies, because I am A) not an expert at identifying film technique and B) the push for Thanos to be an empathetic villain has been analyzed elsewhere.

Phenomenal, limitless cosmic power and all you want to do is break shit? For all the immaturity of it, Thanos’ comic book motivation was more believable.

To those arguing that the his motivations in the movie are predicated off of him being the Mad Titan and therefore not rooted in logic: The film did not explicitly plant the idea – except in the way that we know genocide is bad due to an innate sense of morality – that he was unhinged and power-mad, nor did they really give the audience any payoff.

Instead, we get, ‘I don’t really want to do this, but I must.’

There was a point where I started wondering why the hell he wasn’t just being steadily roasted by the Avengers for not receiving some sort of basic education in the evils of wealth disparity and resource distribution.

As an audience member, was I meant to believe this incredibly powerful entity at the center of a massive fleet, accompanied by a group of talented and sycophantic followers, couldn’t think of a better way to bring ‘balance’ to the universe?

Perhaps Thanos’ justification is simply the conceit of the way the universe operates, required to propel a plot forward. However, this is also poorly explained. There are many unanswered questions: Why is it a given that killing half the universe will create balance? What does balance look like? Is this state permanent or is it a routine, necessary evil in order to stop entropy? Is balance a socioeconomic state, or does it have some greater cosmological significance? We know that Titan fell after rejecting Thanos’ extreme solution, but would the population have actually endured and flourished if his plan had been carried out?

For a movie that did so well at handling a cast so phenomenally large as the one involved in its production, Infinity War really didn’t go in very hard on selling Thanos. I would have been perfectly happy if Marvel Studios had taken the risk to lean in hard on making the movie Thanos-centric, given Thanos even more screen time to develop his character, motives, and the rules of the universe – and then make Avengers 4 about, you know, the actual avenging.

Parting notes:

What are we left with?

Infinity War gifted us with some badass action clips, a fairly jarring death performance by Tom Holland, Cheerful Goatherd Bucky Barnes, and emotionally traumatizing bubbles. It never really sells the conundrum it sets up via Thanos. You'll never hear me insist a peice of art or entertainment is required to carry some sort of social commentary or moral message, but I feel like this could have been, tonally, a vastly different film had it considered the core of Thanos' motivations the same way it considered Vulture's or Killmonger's.

Also, where the hell is Adam Warlock (set up at the end of GotG: Vol. 2; revisit planting and payoff) to shit talk Thanos’ lack of villainous veracity when we need him?

#infinity war spoilers #infinity war #thanos #spoilers #seriously hella spoilers #mcu #marvel comics #infinity gauntlet #there was whiskey involved in writing this #so many links #thanos' motives #review #explication #meta

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cecillewhite · 5 years

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Podcast 28: How Tasty Is Your Product Training? – With Mike Martin, CLO of SAP Litmos

WELCOME TO EPISODE 28 OF THE TALENTED LEARNING SHOW

To learn more about this podcast series or to see the full collection of episodes visit The Talented Learning Show main page.

EPISODE 28 – TOPIC SUMMARY AND GUEST:

Today I have the pleasure of talking with someone who is both an experienced learning practitioner and an instructional technology innovator. Our guest is Mike Martin, Chief Learning Officer at SAP Litmos, a leading training platform for customer-focused companies.

Because Mike’s background is so diverse and his responsibilities span multiple audiences, we could discuss on all kinds of topics. But today, I want to focus specifically on why product training matters and how to deliver stellar training across the extended enterprise.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Product training can be a source of strategic advantage. This is why smart software companies are investing in creative new extended enterprise initiatives.

For example, when product training is an employee imperative, everyone in the organization becomes aligned with the customer experience.

Also, for new customers, early access to training makes onboarding more efficient and successful. This adds value and differentiates a product beyond core features and functionality.

Q&A HIGHLIGHTS:

Welcome, Mike! Your background as a learning professional is rich and varied. What led you to this current role as CLO at SAP Litmos?

It was an interesting path. It actually started when I was a teenager, working at a summer camp. One year, they built a ropes course, and I became a facilitator.

I fell in love with the idea that we could train people to try things they totally feared, and we could have conversations based on questions like, “What has this experience helped you learn about yourself?”

Nice.

From the first day I was hooked, so I gained a lot of experience in outdoor team-building and education. But I also wanted academic knowledge of how adults learn. So I got a master’s degree in instructional design and technology. And that led to roles in the corporate world.

In particular, over about 5 years or so, I built the training department from scratch at Build.com. That’s where I met Litmos in 2011, and I remained a customer until I left in 2016.

That’s neat…

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It was a really great experience, so I stayed connected with Litmos. One of the things I loved most is that they have great people behind the product.

I really appreciated their enthusiasm and their moxie. And if I was going to hitch my wagon to any vendor, I wanted it to be an organization like that.

And then they hired you?

They brought me in to create tools and processes to train our customers, partners, resellers and anyone else who wants to know how to use Litmos and why it’s such a great investment. And I’ve been here ever since.

It’s unusual for an LMS company to have a CLO, but Litmos does. Why is that?

I think Litmos realizes it’s not just a technology company. It’s a learning company.

We need to be doing everything we ask of our customers. That means we need to “drink our own Kool-Aid” and use our product just like they do.

What exactly does product training look like at Litmos?

It centers around what we call the Dojo. It’s a self-paced online product training platform for everybody.

Our customers, our resellers, our partners and even our internal staff learn how to use our LMS by use the same Dojo instance of Litmos. This includes how-tos for all of the features, functionalities and other things they need to understand the product.

Interesting…

So with a CLO behind the Dojo, there’s one person who’s responsible for training our staff in a way that’s really consistent with the training our customers get. This way, we can be sure that everyone is seeing Litmos from a similar perspective and is speaking the same language.

That’s really important. Because, let’s say a service rep gets on the phone with a customer who says, “Hey, I did this training in the Dojo and it said xyz.”

Our rep will be able to say, “Yeah, I took that same training, and I thought the same thing.” Or, “I know exactly where you’re coming from.”

That’s a great way to be sure your team is aligned with a customer’s reality.

Right. The CLO position was intended as a sort of unifying position.

Also, I imagine you connect with CLOs all over the world who face the same challenges of serving internal and external audiences.

Exactly. I love working with customers to understand what’s really going on in their world. Plus, because I bring background from different walks of life, I have an opportunity to look ahead and help figure out next-generation capabilities we should pursue.

What are your customer learning objectives with the Dojo? How broad is your scope?

It’s been an incredible journey. At the end of 2016, we dove into the Dojo to understand what we had and where we needed to be. At that point, there wasn’t much in there.

There were a few courses and traffic was pretty minimal. At that time, there were fewer than 1000 users. Now, in just a few years, the Dojo attracts more than 20,000 active users, and those numbers keep growing.

Great momentum!

Just like any good learning designer, my goals were to make sure that anyone taking our product training can become competent and confident in their ability to do whatever they want to accomplish.

In this case, that starts with enabling people to navigate through the Litmos tool and set it up the way they need to, so it works for their business use case. It’s a self-paced method that lets people jump in and take the type of training they want at any point, at any time.

Smart approach…

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We also want this learning process to grow with them, organically. That means each quarter when we roll-out new product updates, we also add new courses.

This gives everyone access to a single source of truth that helps them understand how to use the tool and make the most of it as it evolves.

Makes sense.

Plus, we set-up the Dojo to deliver training in several different forms. We want to offer product training at every level, so no matter what the situation, a customer can gain competence and confidence.

This helps them get excited about the product and gives them a reason to keep coming back.

For example, a customer may say, “I only have five minutes. What can I learn about dashboards in that timeframe?” So we created a set of courses that are just that. They’re 3-5 minutes and they give you a 75% flyover. Those are our “Fast Track” courses.

In addition, we offer a series of deep-dive learning paths we tie to “belts” – White Belt, Green Belt and Black Belt.

Interesting. I haven’t heard this concept expressed before in those terms. But we often see the need for just-in-time instruction versus formal certification tracks.

Our goal is to never leave anybody wanting. Many people just want a quick how-to or a down-and-dirty overview. They’re Fast Track candidates. While others want to learn absolutely everything there is to know. Those folks can go through the belts at their own pace.

So tell me – how do you create and manage all that content? Let’s start with Fast Track content.

Well, we want the Fast Track experience to be exciting and hold attention, so everything is fast and fun. All of this is in MPEG4 format. We use Adobe After Effects and Premiere with animations and voice-overs.

We incorporate a lot of humor into this content because we know that the brain craves novelty. People will tune-in, stay focused and remember something that’s a little unexpected and makes them laugh.

With Fast Track content, we’re not trying to teach people everything. It’s just a whirlwind introduction. Then, if they want to know what every lever and button does, we steer them towards the belt courses.

Great. And how do you approach the belt courses?

These courses require us to go deeper into more traditional instructional design. So we use Articulate Rise and go SCORM for a couple of reasons:

We can produce content in 1/3 of the time. It’s good enough because you can paint by numbers and they give you various blocks, so it works really well.

It’s natively responsive for any device.

It’s super fast.

I really like the layout.

We integrate some videos and walk-throughs using Camtasia. But we’ll do screen recordings that illustrate a specific task in a quick 15-second clip or longer, if needed.

So, when people earn a belt, is that just for internal use? Or can they share that distinction to demonstrate value within your broader business ecosystem?

Our tool lets people share their badges and certifications outside of the LMS on Twitter and other public channels. We’ve gamified the whole thing, so we see that all the time. It’s great.

Excellent…

I think of product training like making a stew. If I just throw meat and potatoes into the pot, it will nourish people. And if I add carrots, that meal may taste better.

But if I start tossing-in some spices – a little salt, a little garlic, a little paprika – all of a sudden, people start saying, “Wow, this tastes amazing!”

It’s those little things that make the biggest difference. Just those little spices. In a learning environment, that could be something as simple as a graphic that winks at you at the ideal moment. Something that’s a bit out-of-the-ordinary but really thoughtful.

Sure. So what kind of impact are you seeing with this new approach to product training?

Just putting some time and effort into offering product training that fits customer interests has boosted engagement 100-fold.

Wow. That’s fantastic.

We give a lot of credit to our customers for telling us what they want. Much of what we do comes from their suggestions. They’ll say, “Look, it would be great if…” and that’s an opportunity for us to respond.

So how different is the content you deliver to internal versus external audiences? And how do you deal with that?

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Since we use the same instance of our LMS for all audiences, we need a line between what internal employees see and others don’t.

But that’s the beauty of the Litmos product. It’s built so you can provide distinct experiences to different audiences – whether that’s segmented by team, or brand or other categories.

We can even do that automatically, through assign rules and other things, so you can give people exactly what they need when they need it – while omitting other stuff that might confuse them. All of these things are built-in to support various use cases.

Cool. And how do you do that with your audiences?

We actually have a treasure trove of content – with Litmos Heroes content and all the compliance content we’ve created. We can tap into that for our employees as well as customers.

Keeping that separate in the system is pretty simple, but we can put all the courses in one place, rather than having to keep two different instances open and up-to-speed.

And it’s not all just product knowledge and compliance. We’re also starting to move into best-practice knowledge.

Mm-hmm. What’s your goal with that?

Well, as you know, instructional designers are asked to do many things. We write content, do graphic design, develop the program, drive reporting and assessments. These are all disciplines that people can study in school and pursue as a professional specialty. But we often need to do it all.

Yep – a master of all trades.

Right. But many people can’t be experts at everything. So we want to make it easier for those people to create awesome learning content that doesn’t suck.

In short, we’re trying to get into more best-practice stuff that helps learning professionals succeed in their roles. It’s not just about LMS features or functionality or compliance.

Great. I’ll be interested to hear how that progresses. So how do you measure the effectiveness of product training?

We use the LMS, itself, to measure rudimentary things, such as who takes courses. But at the end of the day, we want to know if training is adding value. Can customers do things better, faster, stronger? Or is change happening?

So, for example, our metrics include customer satisfaction. We also look at how many support tickets are submitted for different types of product-related issues. So, if there’s a reduction in the number of people who don’t ask us how to do something, it’s an indicator that training is making an impact.

We’re also looking at reducing the amount of time required for kickoff calls, and how well the Dojo prepares customers for those calls, so they can ask smarter questions. After new customers get some of the basics out-of-the-way, they can have better, deeper conversations. So we want the Dojo to help move that meter.

Great! Often, software companies rely on customers to figure things out for themselves. So putting training tools and best practices in their hands as early as possible can really differentiate your brand…

Right.

Okay, so let’s look ahead. Over the next 12-18 months, where do you want to add more of the “spice” you mentioned before?…

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