International Correspondence Studies ?

MisterSande

Hey guys,
In my second year of studying music and technology I was forced to quit due to an severe illness.

It has been 3 years after my dropout and in the meantime I have fallen in love with game design and all the facets that surround it. Sadly this illness has taken over my life and is forcing me to make some very difficult decisions in my life.
But even if the odds are against me I really want to push forward and try to study (and finish) a degree.

While I have enough mental energy my physical energy is very low so I can only study at home.

Now my question is this:
Are there any International Correspondence studies regarding game design (3d/programming/animation/art) that are certified as a Bachelor ?

Donavonyoung

Honestly you can save yourself a whole lot of time and money by studying here. There is an amazing wiki on this site that will teach you more than I ever learned at school. Plus this support systems offers more credulous, honest, and helpful feedback than any school likely will.

MisterSande

yes but it won't give me any credentials

Mongrelman

It's not a direct answer to your question, but in this industry your portfolio is your credentials.

Gnomon has a lot of great stuff on it (only seems to be two small online courses though), but you can get a year subscription for $499 which gives you looooaaaaaads of stuff to go through. Between that,polycount (as Donavon suggested) and spending the time practicing you could really come a long way.

Donavonyoung

Most studios don't care where you studied as long as your work is great. You could have studied at the most amazing art school but if your art sucks they aren't going to hire you.

Andreas

It don't matter what you get your degree in, you can still get a job in games if your stuff is awesome. If you wanna do a degree in some other interest and do the art in your private time, go for it.

Ben Apuna

You mention "game design", that is actually a separate discipline than what you listed 3d, art, animation, and programming. I suggest figuring out from among these things what it is you actually want to do.

Most people in the mainstream AAA game industry will hired as a specialist in one of those disciplines even though they might also have some skill in the others. Trying to learn them all is a long way to not be good enough at any of them to ever be hired. Smaller companies are an exception to this rule though. In such places you might find the 3d artists are also animators, or a game designer that can also program or do art. There are also "technical artists" that mostly code but are also intimately familiar with creating art and/or animation.

If you're actually looking for game design resources I highly recommend checking out Ludology University (it's free).

Animation Mentor and iAnimate both are well known as great places to study animation online which are likely better than any traditional college animation classes.

Coursera and Udacity are pretty good places to get a start on programming (not needed for employment as an artist in the games industry btw.) The Programming and Scripting Master Thread also has some links to a couple of courses from Stanford and MIT that are quite good for beginners. Udacity in particular is partnering up with Pearson VUE to provide some sort of certifications for it's classes.

Good luck.

sprunghunt

Go back to studying music and technology. Learn game design in your free time.

You're just as likely to get a games job with a music and technology qualification as with a game design one.

Andreas

MisterSande

thank you guys for the feedback It is good to hear that it is indeed about the skills and results rather than the educational "papers". I will just go for it and learn as much as I can the next 2 yours !