Game Art School. Need help choosing!
polycounter lvl 8
So quick summary of my situation. I left the marine corp about a year ago and am able to use the gi bill to pay for schooling. Ive finally come to a decision and I want to put 100% effort into becoming a game artist. I would like to focus on 3d modeling, 2d texturing, possibly animation.
Now to the bread and butter. I know alot of you on this forum are industry pro's or current students of various game art colleges around the U.S. and world. I would value your expertise and opinion on my next chapter of education.
Ive been looking into these school for my art education:
Full Sail
www.fullsail.edu
AI of Pittsburgh
http://www.artinstitutes.edu/pittsburgh/
Expression College
http://www.expression.edu/
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)
http://www.scad.edu/
Ringling College of Art and Design
http://www.ringling.edu/
I am open to all other suggestions. I think as of right now I'm predominantly looking into fullsail how ever I am still in my research phase. I would like to begin my schooling some time early next year. If there are any other question please ask.
If any one is wondering im just a dedicated hobbyist. I'm not sure if i should post this or not but here is sort of my current level of art. I have alot to improve on in 2d texturing, and would say that im decently comfortable with my modeling skills.
Thank you for your time and help.
Now to the bread and butter. I know alot of you on this forum are industry pro's or current students of various game art colleges around the U.S. and world. I would value your expertise and opinion on my next chapter of education.
Ive been looking into these school for my art education:
Full Sail
www.fullsail.edu
AI of Pittsburgh
http://www.artinstitutes.edu/pittsburgh/
Expression College
http://www.expression.edu/
Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)
http://www.scad.edu/
Ringling College of Art and Design
http://www.ringling.edu/
I am open to all other suggestions. I think as of right now I'm predominantly looking into fullsail how ever I am still in my research phase. I would like to begin my schooling some time early next year. If there are any other question please ask.
If any one is wondering im just a dedicated hobbyist. I'm not sure if i should post this or not but here is sort of my current level of art. I have alot to improve on in 2d texturing, and would say that im decently comfortable with my modeling skills.
Thank you for your time and help.
Replies
Avoid AI at all costs, industry is very hard to get into right now. I graduated a year ago and still cannot.
Please read.
But I'd probably agree, you could probably easily land a decent job and learn a lot more if you just worked on your portfolio for a few months.
What does ringling and scad have over the others?
"I left the marine corp about a year ago and am able to use the gi bill to pay for schooling."
There's no reason not to do it if he's getting it paid for him. Simply saying dont go instead teach yourself is not for everyone.
I've heard great things about ringling, that would be my first pick too. I went to Sheridan myself and it helped me a ton to get into the industry. Lots of established schools have great connections with the industry and their jobfares at the end of each year gets a lot of students their first jobs.
And if he gets his schooling paid for him, what better way to earn some experience while the industry is a bit tough.
Oh my seems that ringling is extremely expensive. 15k per semester? I feel like is should be a heart surgeon for that much money.
Anyhow, AiP graduate here. Loved my experiences there. AiP + places like Polycount are directly responsible for me landing my first gig, and continuing to work in this industry.
If you just need a little fire under your ass I would recommend taking individual classes (even AI could accommodate that, but their instructors aren't great)
As has been mentioned, you only need an art degree if you want to work overseas.
AiP requires a portfolio for certain majors.
I went to AAU, it's like most schools, 90% of what you learn can be learned somewhere else.
I have mixed feelings, I feel like I could have learned all that I know now without AAU, and honestly, most of what I know, I learned outside of class time, some classes may have started me learning something new, but I really internalized it after the semester ended.
As far as instruction and classes go, they are either hit or miss. I've had a few really great instructors. I had one this spring which was my final semester, that I would have liked to have had earlier, I learned so much from him, his teaching philosophy was great, a lot of my earlier classes were very focused on making "portfolio pieces", this guy, in his classes you don't make portfolio pieces.
I'll quote him now, "You shouldn't use anything you made for a class in your portfolio. Portfolio pieces should be made on your own time and be what you want to make, not what someone told you to make. It will show in the work if you really don't want to make something."
He was a Senior 3D Artist at Massive Black during the time I had his class, he'd teach classes in the morning and then go to work at Massive Black around noon, he do video examples of various modeling techniques on vimeo if I student was ever stuck and emailed him with a request (and if he had some time to spare). However during my time there he got promoted to Lead 3D Artist at Massive Black, after his lead moved on to Microsoft.
Unfortunately... he may not be teaching too much longer as being promoted to Lead has pretty much sucked up all of his free time.
Also, this is some advice that I was given by one of my former instructors that I keep in touch with:
"You need to put school behind soon. Game school of AAU does not have a good reputation, sadly."
I am a little glad that the relatively meaningless piece of paper I'll be getting won't say "School of Game Design" on it.
Now, the Foundations Department, which every major has to take classes from, I am so glad that they have that department. I've seen portfolios of students from other schools such as Collin's College (that school is totally useless). At least I can say that AAU gave me a fair amount of proper artistic theory education, I learned the basics of color theory, perspective, and composition. Which are completely lacking from Collin's College Portfolios.
Overall AAU was ok, and I don't entirely regret my time there. But would I do it again? Would I do a Masters Program there? No, and No. I finished that chapter, and I'm not looking back. I'm going forward and building a portfolio on my own, it's working out pretty much how I expected, I'd finish my time at school, and then work my ass off on my portfolio.
Got excepted to Ringling though, the reason why I didn't go is because they have ridiculous tuition rates like 120k a year... I knew a dude who went, he was great, but he couldn't finish due to that and had to go to SUNY which was no good at all. (I was there for a year and transferred to AIP)
AIP wasn't that bad, some teachers were idiots or rather pompous, others were most helpful indeed.. One thing you need to know is they teach 3DSMax in early MAA and GAD...And that is no good in my opinion, look around, most places aside from engine shooter places and architectural firms don't use max as much.
Also there will be goons, avoid them and find folks who do projects on their own or try their best. Goons will only do work to impress teachers and jeer at anyone else who isn't in the goon squad.
Also in Pittsburgh there are many artistic happenings, but it isn't the place to settle down......
What are you talking about? 3ds max is the most popular app in the games industry by far.
This.
If you are an OK drawer. I'd suggest you should take cheap 2d art classes.
Buy DVDs or subscribe to websites like Eat3d and/ or www.digitaltutors.com
I would recommend digital tutors because it teaches you skills from basic to professional level. How to use the 3d modeling programs / 2d sketching programs to finalizing it. You pay $500.00 a year for pretty much everything.
This is the cheapest package you can get.
And I would go with self learning will save you time and money.
This is my suggestion.
Though, you are welcome to waste your money on college.
Should you plan to do so, I would recommend http://www.gnomonschool.com/experience/gnomon_experience.php
No way, everywhere I applied they were looking for maya fellows. Really, just about everywhere uses maya nowadays, max is too cumbersome
Maya/Max, same thing, it's just a program :P. I've stuck to Max studios with my job searching cuz I don't feel like relearning Maya, it hasn't been an issue at all. I think there's a subsection of Murphy's Law that says whatever program you learn and master will not be the program you use in your career.
Movies, VFX, TV, Toys, drawings common man,
When it's games that use it, it's shooters due to their engines...
You can get the same education by buying a couple hundreds of dollars worth of Gnomon and Eat3D / 3dmotive tutorials.
I got two consecutive internships in industry out of high school. I decided against going to AI or a digital art school and instead went to University of California San Diego (which will look a LOT more impressive on a resume instead of any AI) and am majoring in a hybrid major of programming and art. A degree from a public institution and doing game art in your free time will get you much farther in life than any degree from AI.
Don't do it bro.
Where does that put me?
It is completely dependent upon the individual in how they learn and/or are motivated.
Regardless, pursuing any degree, furthering your education, or bettering yourself in whatever way you deem best, is never a "waste of money or time".
The arrogance in threads like this is palpable at times.
I would argue and say that for those people who go 60k in debt at AI studying game art and never get a job in industry (which is probably more common than people who actually get jobs in the industry making art) that it is both in fact a complete waste of time and money.
Is a worthless piece of paper that states that you graduated from AI really worth 60k if you never put it to use?
It absolutely is more common. There's no doubt about it. That does not lie on the institution itself, though. Sure, it's run like a business, and if students aren't doing a great job... they're not told, nor do they fail classes. It is very easy to skate on by. That falls on the individual.
I would say that any Game Art focused degree is going to be chock-full of gamers who think it would be super k-rad awesome to make 'dem vijeo games. That was certainly the case with my experiences. The people with that mentality are absolutely throwing their money away... or most likely their parent's money away. But, it has nothing to do with the education or opportunities they are presented with in college.
I do not look at my degree as a worthless piece of paper, by any means. I earned it. I worked my ass off for it. I completely changed my life for it. I am very proud of what I accomplished. Sure, I could have skated through the majority of it, and really worked hard to just scrape by with a B-Grade portfolio to graduate... but I took pride in my work, and my education.
edit:
I would argue that you need to follow what you feel is the best approach for you. Whether it be college or not. I never advocate going to college over self taught, or vice versa. However, if you believe that investing that money and time into a degree program is the best choice for you, you had better be intelligent about it and do your research. We all learn differently, and there are countless avenues into this industry.
http://kotaku.com/5610985/how-a-bad-degree-robbed-a-stripper-of-her-video-game-love
It looks like your pretty far ahead without any formal training. I would REALLY REALLY recommend to get some easy job and work on your portfolio at night. Get the eat3D tutorials. They will fill in all the gaps you might have right now. You could have an industry job in like 6-9 months if you stay focused.
Here is a master list of a bunch of well known art test Try a couple
http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=5970
Save your GI bill money for later down the road if you want to go back to school when you get tired/burnt out of games.
But we will all be here either way to help. Good luck!
Your degree defiantly is not worthless in any means because you got an awesome job in the industry. For the people who did not it is.
College (for the most part) is like you said....you get more from it the more you put into it.
Just based off of the gun that the OP posted he is already light-years ahead of most students at AI. He probably won't be getting much out of what is taught there because he probably knows most of what they will teach him. But he will be in an environment with others who want the same thing as him and he can learn off of them.
AI is basically a real life version of polycount that costs you 60k to join.
<--used my GI Bill for my waste of a degree.
However, college does teach various other skills past the base skills. Working in groups, tight deadlines, and insane time management... to name a few.
College may not be the #1 choice for someone at the OP's level.
My main concern is the, very common, blanket statement that college is a waste of time and money. I really wish people would see both sides on this.
That being said, I can not speak on other colleges, or even other AI's.
I highly recommend not going to an AI unless you know for a fact that it has some really good instructors. I think some of the ones out here in Cali have pretty decent game programs but still, I'd be hesitant until I talked to graduates or currently attending students.
Meteors rain from the heavens, lavos emerges from the
center of the earth and mass hysteria abounds......
In the end it's your kiester mister....
No matter how dimwitted some teachers can be.
The student is supposed to bring the drive to learn, the teacher is supposed to deliver a worthy education. Yet probably the most common thing you will hear in these threads is "I learned more on polycount"
There are lots of ways to judge a school, you can go by the difficulty in getting accepted, the quality of the graduating students work, or the quality of the instructors work. That last one is really probably the most significant and it's why I think Gnomon has a much better reputation than most other schools in the entertainment industry.
That said, I really think game art courses aren't very good in general simply because they're hard to design. The technical barrier to making game art is huge. You end up having to ration away time spent developing core art skills so that you can teach people how to use tools and the result is students with technical skills who are not well rounded artists.
I'd recommend going to college for a hard degree, like computer science, or something with engineering or math in it. I got my degrees in comp sci, and it opens a lot of doors. You really don't need formal art schooling from what I see posted above.
GI Bill only qualifies for accredited schools, I don't think certificate schools qualified last time I checked. YMMV.
I think i will be doing alot more research and saving my gi bill till i am 100% comfortable in what i want to do. From what i have read around the web a fine arts background will help me understand the fundamental aspects of art in general thus furthering my over all artistic skills, so i might check out the fine art side of education.
Further more i do believe we have a strong response from the poly count community and further discussion about school or self taught should go on, and possibly be stickied so others like me might be able to refer to this thread for future reference!
However there are talented people at each school no doubt who push themselves above their work, and above their peers. Find them, learn from them, that valuable face to face time and interaction is invaluable..something that online forums, and DVD's can't offer you.
Plus if you find good, honest, hard working people at a school..and they land a job..then you have already made possible in rows at a company without even having to lift a finger.
I attend SCAD now, I finish next year. The school doesn't have enough time to prepare me for everything I need to know. What school can? For me..I have been supplementing my education with DVD's and Polycount. Sure the debt will suck, but what I am getting out of it is a decent base in 3D/game knowledge, the ability to discuss games in a mature fashion; above just pure fanboy talk, and hopefully in the end some connections into the industry through those people I meet in school.
Choose what you feel is right for you, know what kind of structured environment you need..then hit the DVD's and the 3D Apps with all you got. I needed a class structure, but thats me. This is my 2cents.
www.therydanworkshop.com
PM me if you have any questions.
For example, some Colleges offer an Intensive Course type of deal, where you only have to pay about 900$ per year (since it's public option), and it lasts only...well, a year, and while the classes are something like say from 8AM till 9PM, you'll have 4 days off instead of 2, which should give you plenty of time to do assignments and make it polished enough with your own style to be in a portfolio.
I would like to give my own mind in here, so if I'm insulting anyone, please, take my apologize in advance since it's not my intention to be an arsehole.
While it's true schooling is a good idea with a nice paper in your hand and connections, alot comes from the people in said Education system. I know for a fact that at this point, my skills are superior to ANY of my teachers when put to comparison, and most of them don't care on you succeeding, much like other schools, but there will be the occasional teacher who will try real hard to drive their student home on full burst to get him in the industry.
Also, I was lucky enough to be in a year a movement, so far, I had one guy from France who was teaching us ALOT in UDK, even some nice technical stuff, another guy from WETA who gave us some nice inlooks on Iron Man and Predator, and another animator who had worked in 300...but they all lacked actually teaching skills, and they only came in as guest teachers for a few weeks.
All the rest, for the past 8 years, I learned from Polycount and Gnomon (before Eat3D was out).
The questions comes and should come from you, are you willing to put in the extra effort by yourself to get the job done or not? Many teachers won't explain what is Waviness in Normals Maps or how to get rid of them, nor how to correctly UV Map for Hard-Surface models, and many just quickly toss a Diffuse Map in the Normal Map and call it a day, hell, one of my instructors thought that Edge Padding was some BS I created to look fancy.
Some teacher outright don't pay attention to you because they believe they deserve better then being teachers.
The CGI industry doesn't have the best mind and matter of education currently, all those AMAZING students you see usually coming out of place like AI and others need a portfolio to get in, and good ones too (meaning they already have the skills) so they're paying about 120K just to 'work' on their stuff, not learn, and to come out with a nice title name.
There is WAY too much wiggle room and leaks on the current system of teaching for CGI art, and honestly, it all depends on you and what you want.
I'm not trying to discourage you, it's your option, we're all chipping in, but if you're expecting the schools for CGI to be like Uni's and Colleges from other schools, it might not be the same cake you hoped to bake.
However, either way look at it this way, apparently being a game-artist is more demanding and harder then being a CIA agent, go figures, you'll get all the ladies/men with this line
Am I going to say all of those horrors of schools are bullshit? No. There are a lot of problems in colleges and universities. Funding limits hardware & software plus the most important thing, faculty. Lack of faculty means both adjuncts and grads teaching plus not being able to have all the classes we'd like to have. I'm currently teaching over my required load in order to provide a class that was missing, Organic Modeling (I get paid, but doing it takes time away from projects that I'm also expected to be doing as part of my contract which puts my future at the school at risk).
What I'd look for:
Student work samples
Where are the recent grads?
Work samples by faculty (screw degrees and claimed experience, what can they actually DO?)
Find out who teaches. (Don't settle for "staff", ask if a full-time faculty member teaches the classes you're into)
What's the biggest problem with colleges and universities? Students. Seriously, most don't want to work as hard as necessary and then, because they've been told all their lives that they're awesome because of this damn self-esteem movement, they EXPECT "A"s and when they don't get them, they complain and eventually faculty get strongly encouraged to accommodate them, which, imo, sullies the name of the school, the degree and perhaps your chances of getting hired if companies begin associating those students with what to expect from your school.
Thanks for the link to the girl complaining about AI. I had never seen that before.
Oh, I should also add that over the years I've received demos from students from Full Sail, Ringling, SCAD and many others (I have an independent business as well). A lot of them were subpar. Again, no school can make you talented. If you have something, then a good school can help you improve but if there's nothing there, well, you can't spin straw into gold. Sadly, I think it's REALLY difficult to earn an F at most places, thus the subpar demos.
Good luck, btw!
1,000 times yes.
Yes