3D Art Schools - What should they be teaching and where are they going wrong?

TehSplatt

So I have recently been contracted to help restructure a New Zealand 3D school's Game Art curriculum. Most NZ schools are extremely out of date with their version of studio pipelines, software and general thought process. These are the main things I want to change but I would really love the opinion of the most knowledgeable art community in the world. What are your thoughts on Art School curriculum from your experience and if you could change any thing what would it be?

Thanks in advance for any one that takes the time to read and reply to this

Sukotto

I graduated from art school almost 2 years ago and I noticed some things that should have been addressed. One thing I wish they would have done was to have a proper portfolio building class. I mean have you seen how many student portfolios are full of Zbrush sculpts with no game res model? And then their title is 'Game Artist' but they have no real clue about the full asset pipeline. They also pushed EVERYONE to make a reel of their work, putting it above having a portfolio. Sure, if you're an animation student it makes sense but not for a prop or character artist when you have a decent portfolio with high resolution images

Also, a bit more focus on different disciplines would be great where I attended. Since most schools tend to churn out a lot of generalists theres not too much focus on environment, character or even prop art. I was never taught what proper edge flow looked like for characters until I checked out the PC wiki.

Just a few things to think about

TehSplatt

Awesome this is perfect, thank you very much.

Sean VanGorder

I could go on for days about this and hopefully I have time later to write a well thought out reply, but a quick answer would be...

1. Try to have students pick their focus as early as possible and base their course work on that focus. Too many students know the very basics of every discipline but aren't very good at a particular one. There's no reason a second year student who wants to be an environment artist should be spending 4 nights a week on animation projects.

2. Stress the importance of networking and encourage students to have an online presence. In my experience probably at least 90% of students don't attempt to network or post their work online, the reason usually being that they're scared of criticism.

3. The instructors HAVE to be up to date on current industry standards. Having instructors "teach" by watching a tutorial and learning along with the class is inexcusable.

But yeah, I'll come back to this when I get some free time =p

Lokter

First year its probably best to run modules that will bring everyone up to scratch on each software used. At least in the first half of the year, then the second half of the year having a simple project in each area, so characters, environment, animation. Whatever else you feel is needed.

In my first year everyone was pushed through 3ds max, Photoshop and using Game Engines. Animation was an optional module, and we didn't touch Zbrush till start of second year. The second year itself was focused almost entirely around characters and texturing. Anyone who didn't take the Hard Surface module wont touch Max/Maya all year. Which is pretty worrying.

I really wanted to have the option to take a more specialised set of modules in the second year, and follow those through to the 3rd, instead of having to wade through characters and environments, even though I'm 99.9% sure I wan't to be doing environment/prop work.

That's a pretty basic overview of how my Uni functions, if you want more in-depth info on the modules and options they run then drop me a message and I will help where I can.

Vailias

The biggest issues I've seen in game anything schools, is what Sean mentioned, about giving the bare minimum knowledge on a wide variety of topics. Not enough to actually DO anything with in any one discipline.
Definitely have separate discipline tracks that have some depth.

Teach Observation and deconstruction. You could make a class of this on its own. This, more than any other skill is what I see lacking in so many of the requests for help here, and what is lacking from most tutorials on the web. Just being able to break an object down into component parts, and those parts into simple shapes (positive and negative) is a highly beneficial skill. Likewise being able to look at a surface and break out its constituent elements (specular, diffuse, surface texture, etc) is incredibly needed for a successful shader artist.

Traditional Art skills. (this ties in with the previous). Being able to sketch an idea, paint a scene (digitally is fine), etc cements basic knowledge required for effective texturing, especially at the small scale where bold shapes and implied detail are what can carry a piece.

Getting things into an engine is really needed for just about any discipline. Something major like UDK, Unity, or CryEngine.

Make sure there's no management or studio direction fluff. Its not what a new grad get's hired for. (Ie design docs, and game pitches, etc)

Treat the program like a trade school. Make sure the grads are competent enough to actually do valuable work when they're done, and let the nuance and skill set rounding come with experience.

TehSplatt

Thanks so much for all this info guys, some of the stuff you have mentioned is being attempted in the NZ Curriculum already but it's done in a way that doesn't truly benefits students, it kind of just makes them jump through random hoops to graduate and what they learn along the way definitely isn't worth the money they pay.

Meloncov

I'd say the single biggest problem is that there are schools that will give you the foundational art knowledge you need to set the stage for a lifetime of growth in the industry, and there are schools that will teach you the technical skills you need to get an entry level job, but there are very, very few that will do both (and plenty that do neither).