schools in sweden to attend to?

wirrexx

hey guys and girls. I was wondering if people got any tips on school to search for to becoma a game art designer/level art designer, i do mostly 2D drawings. Not the best, but i try my best.

My question except for if there are any good schools in Sweden to attend to, what do teacher except from me to write in my Personal Letter?

Cause i can write about my passion for games and why i want to become a Game art Designer, but anything except for that?

Thanks in Advance! ¨

Wiz

Brygelsmack

Personal letters for applying to schools? Don't think you need it.

FutureGames in Stockholm requires a portfolio while Södertörns Högskola, which I'm at currently, does not (they could use that requirement though...). If you suck I suggest applying for the latter, if you're intermediate or better then I suggest applying for FutureGames.

Södertörns Högskola is alright, we have a crazy good 3D teacher atm but the rest of the education is pretty funky... I mean we just have Maya once a week, it's so stupid. FutureGames is definitely targeted at more game design/art, with Maya classes at least 3 times a week. At Södertörns you get to do some other weird stuff like croquis which is pretty retarded for a what supposedly is a game education... But that's just me, so whatevs. Worth mentioning is that our teacher is also teaching over at FutureGames as well.

wasker

You could check out http://www.thegameassembly.com/ they have both a 3d generalist education and a level design education. I think roughly 75% of the students land jobs too so I imagine that's the highest employment rate of any swedish game school.

And yeah, concerning the letter, I dunno, maybe tell them a bit about your background and what your interest are and so on. Portfolio is probably still what matters most tho.

You get to do 8 games during the education, working in small teams of 5 programmers and 5 artists in which you get to make your own game engine and make everything from text based games to strategy, to first person 3d. It's also pretty high paced and they work quite closely with ubisoft and other local companies which and give guest lectures and workshops industry insight there.


You can download and check out the games and student's work at the website I posted.

Visceral

You should check out http://futuregames.se/ im not good at advertising the school, but trust me its awesome.

KarlWrang

Since I'm currently also looking for Schools myself I've gathered a list of some of the Programs and Schools in Sweden that seems interesting:

FutureGames
Hyper Island - Digital Media
Gscept
The Game Assembly
DigitalGraphics
IAA
Högskolan på Gotland - Speldesign och grafik
PlaygroundSquad

Does anyone have any experience with Schools not specializing in Game Art, care to recommend any?
How about experiences with Högskolan på Gotland and their Game Art program? I love Gotland and would love to study there but I'd like to have some opinions on the programs and culture of the uni.

Also, do the Game Art programs go through any type of none-realtime CG, any traditional art? Like kroki, anatomy and perspective studies?

The problem I have with most Game schools is that it seems like so much time that could be spent making awesome portfolios is spent on working on small joint projects with the programmers and designers. And those usually doesn't look that nice from an art perspective, nor perhaps from a design perspective either. What are your experiences with the projects?

How much choice do you have when it comes to the projects? Are you assigned projects and teams, or do you get to choose teams?

Right now my top choices are these:
FutureGames
PlaygroundSquad
Hyper Island - Digital Media
Högskolan på Gotland - Speldesign och grafik
The Game Assembly
DigitalGraphics
IAA

I would love it if someone could give me some feedback, since it seems like a very big investment going to school for something like game art, but at the same time, the contacts you get from studying at a Game School will probably be very valuable.

chrisradsby

Futuregames and The Game Assembly seem really good. The Game Assembly students usually have their internship at Massive

Snefer

Futuregames and the game assembly is probably the ones I have seen most consistent quality from, some schools not so much. Also they change alot. i went to skövde, which was pretty much useless back then, but that was a long time ago. Dont know if I have seen any good 3d art come from gotland though, it seems like its a bit unfocused. Thats my gut feeling atleast!

wirrexx

Cheers for the answers guys.
I dont have the best degress, but i do have a degree from Escape Studios in London (game art design course). And Ma2b and Samh

KarlWrang

Cheers ChrisRadsby and Snefer! I'll definitely re-prioritize my list.
I think the promise of studying in a nice place can sometimes take the better of me, haha. In hindsight their complete lack of portfolios from any art student should definitely be a warning.

wirrexx wrote: »

I don't have the best degrees, but i do have a degree from Escape Studios in London (game art design course). And Ma2b and Samh

wirrexx

KarlWrang wrote: »

Cheers ChrisRadsby and Snefer! I'll definitely re-prioritize my list.
I think the promise of studying in a nice place can sometimes take the better of me, haha. In hindsight their complete lack of portfolios from any art student should definitely be a warning.


I think that having the required degrees are essential, but the grades of the degrees seems to be less substantial. They usually merit the portfolio and art samples higher than any of the grades, usually 50% or 75%, if not the whole sifting of applicants will be done on the basis of your art.

Oh, I'd also look into getting the English B degree, since some of the schools seems to require that(TheGameAssembly).

So I wouldn't worry that much about the grades as long as you have the them, but continue working on getting as good art samples and maybe looking into 3D and you'll do fine! :thumbup:

But that's just the impression I've gotten, and there are many different schools of course. But the good ones seems to strictly and solemnly discriminate only through skills and talent rather than degree scores!

I've got ENG B ( acctually got B+ On it, so that's not the problem).
Thanks for the Answer Karl.

I do have all the "important" Courses. Like Mathematics A and B, Swedish A, B , English A and B. Society (Samh

Saman

Have you checked if you can get a dispensation for those courses? I know that several of my classmates back in the day didn't have some of the required gymnasium courses but they got to study the program(högskola) anyway through dispensation.

wirrexx

Saman, how do i get a dispensation? Could you please get into it a little bit more so i can see what i can do??

Sincerley

Wis

Saman

You should ask the university that holds the program about this. I think it varies between different universities and I'm not sure about the rules these days(My example is from 2001).

maatin

i´m currently on my second year at BTH Digital Games in Karlshamn and i´m very happy here

http://kampanj.bth.se/utbildningar/digitala-spel-180hp/

dimosM

very interesting thread, though i am a bit late, so i am gonna try to revive it with a question thats been bugging me a while now :
So i am from Greece and interested in both FutureGames and The Game Assembly schools, but i dont know any Swedish( i have an English degree though), and i am not sure if knowing Swedish is a requirement , does anyone knows something more about that? (in the FutureGames site it mentions that : the languages spoken are a mixture of Swedish and English), nothing more i think.

S_ource

If you cant find the answers on their sites, i would recommend you to email them.