What was your first experience in game dev communities?
Game dev communities are usually very open, especially ones focused on indie games. As long as you show that you are interested in being part of the community, and not just sharing your work without interacting with anyone.
Is it okay to share unfinished, or even just started, showcases and projects?
Absolutely, in fact when creating a project page, there is an option to select “Release Status”, with the options “Prototype” and “In Development”. Just make you are clear to potential users that this is work in progress, to manage expectations.
How should I go about finding people who might be interested to work with me who have different skills, such as artists?
There’s the Help Wanted or Offered board, where people can look for other people to team up with.
There’s also the Itch.io Discord which is full of people chatting and sharing video game knowledge. You can read a post here about it.
Would it make sense to record “making of” my first games, and share on Tubes? Is it wasted effort until I get a better grip on the whole process, or can it help prepare for a possible launch?
I don’t have any experience in this, it’s always worth giving it a try. If you are still learning game development it might distract you from the actual learning, but that’s for you to decide. I’m not sure how a behind the scenes helps for an actual launch.
Hope this helps :)