My estimate would be about 2%. Half of that 2% gets lucky, and the other half works there asses off till they get a job. If I could go back in time, I would have never gotten my game art degree. I would have taken some art classes at a community college and taught myself everything researching online. That's what I ended up doing anyway, even though I went to a game art school. There probably are game art schools that are good, but its still difficult to justify the cost, when salaries in the game industry are not all that high in general. Just my 2 cents.
Any school that advertises their employment rate is full of shit. And I've actually brought it up to schools in advisory boards. How they get those employment rates is by calling every graduate about 6 months after graduating. The first question they ask you is if you are employed. Just employed. They never ask you if you are employed within your chosen field, or if it's related to the course you took. I was working at a restaurant 6 months after (for 3 years before as well), and I was counted as employed because of it. And even if you tell them ya, Im working, but not in my field, they`ll be like oh, thats ok. and continue on with a 30 minute survey that makes no sense if you aren't working in your field.
Just a joke JacqueChoi, don't get hurt over it mate. I was just poking a bit of fun since my experiences oF educational establishments over the years have been rarely positive. I always found them too cliquely and not focused enough on the main subject.
i am sure there are good exceptions though.
throwing in my guesstimates from when I finished school in 2010 (Ai in Orange County)...
GAD class of about 25 or so.
I'd say maybe 7-10 of those people got jobs within a year of graduating.
Of those 10, only about half went on to work at "big/AAA" studios. The rest got stuck in VFX houses, doing free indie work, or doing 3D work for non-game related professions.
I'd say our numbers are higher than average on account of more 3d jobs being available in LA and Orange County.
Where I went to school, they boasted about their 80% graduate success rate, to everyone who was remotely interested in spending $15'000. Being completely in the dark about the industry as a whole at the time, I signed up, got accepted (Obviously, because I was willing to pay).
I was in a class of about 18 people, and I, along with two other guys, were the only ones to ever land a job in the industry, the very first in the school as a matter of fact (there were about 3-4 other groups of 15 students who were there before us, none of which got a job).
While I learned the very basics of 3D there, I consider myself a self-taught artist. The school was so bad, and has such a terrible reputation here in Quebec, that I actually took the school off my resume.
Polycount was one of the main reasons I ever got a job.
And now, I'm seeing fellow classmates, students who never took classes seriously, lacked any fundamental art skills, and being downright terrible at 3D, getting jobs as teachers. I cringe a little every time.
Sure. I totally agree with this. I would say this happens to about 70% of them.
But to just say "They should have worked harder!" kinda gets under my skin. I knew some talented people that didn't ever get jobs and some slacker people did. Could I have worked harder? Maybe... but probably not without having mommy and daddy pay for everything for me. You can work crazy hard and if you are not working on the right things it's utterly useless. I always felt like I was fighting the curriculum. I had to waste time doing stupid assignments and rush to get them done so I could learn other things on my own. Things that they SHOULD have been teaching.
I don't regret going to school but I "was" a little bitter, Even with a job after graduating. It's hard to not have the feeling that you got ripped off when you spent so much money and you find out that you could have just learned what you needed on Polycount.
Amen, to that. This comment was obviously from someone who actually went to a school and was probably a little older and more mature. It was a similar set up for me, I worked my ass off for ridculous amounts of work for classes that didn't do anything for me or my career. I was in the military full time with a full time schedule for school. (4-5 classes) I also have a family and was a little older. I found myself researching pretty much everything out of class with my skill level depending on "if I got the "right" teacher." I got out of the military while in school then actually got a internship at a video game company and subsequently got hired afterwards that. So then I was working over 40 hrs at the company and then juggling school with that. Now that job is over and I am about graduate. I even started a club at school for a while and had students outsourcing work for another game company which I got credited for as well. Now I find myself trying to refine all this mediocre work that I did while juggling classes at school, dealing with bias instructors, etc. The quality of my school, that is a whole nother can of worms, but I find myself still learning alot on my own (minus a couple of helpful teachers) and posting my work on sites like this one...
Where I went to school, they boasted about their 80% graduate success rate, to everyone who was remotely interested in spending $15'000. Being completely in the dark about the industry as a whole at the time, I signed up, got accepted (Obviously, because I was willing to pay).
I was in a class of about 18 people, and I, along with two other guys, were the only ones to ever land a job in the industry, the very first in the school as a matter of fact (there were about 3-4 other groups of 15 students who were there before us, none of which got a job).
While I learned the very basics of 3D there, I consider myself a self-taught artist. The school was so bad, and has such a terrible reputation here in Quebec, that I actually took the school off my resume.
Polycount was one of the main reasons I ever got a job.
And now, I'm seeing fellow classmates, students who never took classes seriously, lacked any fundamental art skills, and being downright terrible at 3D, getting jobs as teachers. I cringe a little every time.
Where in Quebec? Is it Lasalle College? I've heard some horror stories, but I was never sure if it was. I was thinking of going to school for 3d art once I graduate my Graphic Design program.
Its incredible these places can operate like this, you can sell anything as an education and the student has no recourse if the school drops flat and turns out awful
To add insult to injury they're often given poor quality educations to begin with because in order for the school to improve their graduating employment stats, graduates who couldn't get jobs in studios are sometimes given teaching positions at the school. So the next wave of students gets taught by the prior wave of graduates who weren't good enough to get jobs anywhere else.
Nope, we have all had at least ten years industry experience,
myself starting in 1997 Rare, Prime Focus, Kuju, Sony.
Luckily at the University of Hertfordshire when you become a lecturer my institution is happy to pay to train us up and do courses like CPAD, MA, PhD's and so on that's where many institutions around the world are getting it wrong, they need to chill out and train up their staff rather than just taking on people with PhD's.
My advice for perspective students would be to insist to ask to see students past work/showreel and secondly what industry experience do the lecturer staff have, then worry about the rest. You got to read the menu before you eat, dam it I said I was not going to do any more analogies! I have got to finish my MA paper tonight so no more teacher bashing or I will be procrastinating all night
P.S. another colleague Kevin Molloy credits
Art Department (8 titles)
2009 Olivia (TV series) (storyboards - 3 episodes)
Olivia's Snow Day/Olivia's Ice Spectacular (2009) (storyboards)
Olivia and the Treasure Hunt (storyboards)
Olivia Goes to the Beach/Olivia Keeps a Secret (storyboards)
2006 Toot & Puddle: I'll Be Home for Christmas (video) (storyboard artist)
2005 Charlie and Lola (TV series) (storyboard artist - 2 episodes)
I Love Going to Granny and Grandpa's It's Just That... (2005) (storyboard artist)
There Is Only One Sun and That Is Me! (2005) (storyboard artist)
2001-2003 Angelina Ballerina (TV series) (storyboard artist - 17 episodes)
The Old Oak Tree (2003) (storyboard artist)
Angelina's Baby Sister (2002) (storyboard artist)
No Match for Angelina (2002) (storyboard artist)
Angelina's Valentine (2002) (storyboard artist)
The Cheese Ball Cup Final (2002) (storyboard artist)
See all 17 episodes »
2003 Mole Sisters (TV series) (storyboard artist)
2002 Angelina Ballerina: The Show Must Go On (TV movie) (storyboard artist)
1997-2000 Kipper (TV series) (storyboard artist - 77 episodes)
Kipper the Hero (2000) (storyboard artist)
The Farm (2000) (storyboard artist)
The Magic Carpet (2000) (storyboard artist)
The Missing Tape Mystery (2000) (storyboard artist)
The River Trip (2000) (storyboard artist)
See all 77 episodes »
2000 Percy the Park Keeper (TV series) (storyboard artist - 2 episodes)
One Warm Fox (2000) (storyboard artist)
The Fox's Hiccups (2000) (storyboard artist)
Hide Animation Department (6 titles)
2007 Alice in Wonderland: What's the Matter with Hatter? (video) (character designer)
1992 Freddie as F.R.O.7. (coordinating animator - as Kevin Malloy)
1991 The Princess and the Goblin (additional animator)
1986 When the Wind Blows (additional key animator - as Kevin Malloy)
1983 Dexter the Dragon & Bumble the Bear (animator)
As far as I know, I'm the only one to graduate from my program and get a job in the game industry at all. The program is only a few years old, but it's still sad. A few of us did paid simulation internships and I know a couple of people got unpaid internships at studios that work on TV commercials. A couple of others do unpaid work for indy games, maybe a freelance job every now and then. Most of the other students are just long-time video game fans, and probably played a few too many games while in school. Very few of the others had any sort of artistic background, they were just fanboys and fangirls. Haha, I don't know how else to put that.
I supplemented the shit out of the program, though, and put almost every spare moment into improvement. Anyone who went to my school and actually listened to the all of the professors' advice and ONLY their advice is doomed to fail. (We were advised to use Wix for our portfolios, and I got in trouble a couple of times because one of them found out I had been working on 3D sculpting and painting exercises on the side. Scandalous! lolol)
edit: We were also encouraged to render our game props, environments, and character projects in Mental Ray. teehee
If AI wouldn't be a 'trade school' and if it wouldn't cost you an arm and a leg then it's really not that different from most European unis with their big auditoriums, with students who never had to pass an entry exam, who care or couldn't care less and who'll drop out after a year or two. From professors who range from awesome to terrible. From courses that aren't relevant to practice. And that nobody cares if you get a job or not, since you were so stupid to sign up for that sinology or numismatics study. After all, you wanted to study it!
Where in Quebec? Is it Lasalle College? I've heard some horror stories, but I was never sure if it was. I was thinking of going to school for 3d art once I graduate my Graphic Design program.
Institut Desgraff. Avoid it if you can, you'll be spending a fortune. It's funny you mention Lasalle College, because I personally know of 2 guys who teach there, and they were students in my class 3 years ago. They never had *any* studio experience, and landed a job as a teacher about 2 months after finishing school.
Institut Desgraff. Avoid it if you can, you'll be spending a fortune. It's funny you mention Lasalle College, because I personally know of 2 guys who teach there, and they were students in my class 3 years ago. They never had *any* studio experience, and landed a job as a teacher about 2 months after finishing school.
Thanks for the info. I've never heard of it but I'll avoid it.
That's pretty scary they employ people without experience. Were they any good?
A better question would be when did QA become a related field to game art? Because the issue is not getting a job in the game industry, it's getting a job that is relevant to your education.
If the only thing that matters is that it counts as "industry work" then I don't see why you wouldn't count Gamestop too and I doubt when those students sunk $100k on their degree that their lifes dream was to work minimum wage buying back used copies of games.
From what I've gathered being at AI...depending on which campus you go to I suppose; the quality of work depends on you. The game art department teacher pushes maya and renders in mental ray...being new to 3D I went "oooh pretty pictures"...
One year left of school I met another game art teacher who asked the class,"why are you using mental ray? don't you want to make games and things for games?" Things started to click, he also directed us to Polycount as well...ever since then I've been learning on my own to make up for the lack of game engine knowledge that I have missed. I pass this knowledge to fellow classmates who are new to the program, it's up to them now to follow through. Those who do I help as much as I can in hopes that they will grow this curriculum properly. "Students dictate the education that is being taught" MW.
What I concluded from my 4 years at AI is that, true I could've learned most of this on my own through polycount and other tutorials, but I was fortunate enough to meet an autodesk certified teacher who even though pushed mental ray, taught me the value of hard work and determination. I think without this I would not have had the motivation to work and learn 12-14 hours a day.
during my time at AI I noticed that AI had a very mixed bag of teachers. It's a shame though, because some of them were really good...makes you wonder how they ended up there. Best thing about the media arts program was that they had plenty of life drawing and painting. I started with doing most computer stuff just halfway during the study.
Everyone who was there wanted to get to maya or max asap, but now I'm happy they had so many traditional classes. Hope this is still the case.
My first 2 years at AI were general eds and foundation art classes....Gen Ed I took most online feeling they were a waste of time to the skill traits...still I got A's in them for my Degree. Its too bad they don;t stress enough the importance of the foundation classes. One great teacher I had always said, "Be and Artist first" (JC).
Since QA is more of a trained job, and not a skilled craft.
There are some good QA peeps, for sure, but hiring a person with no idea as to how to do the job they are hired to do, and training them on the job is a thing you can do with QA, but not with a dev team.
Nobody these days would ever hire someone who has no clue how to work in their field and decide to give them on the job training to be an artist/animator/tech guy.
So yeah, I don't consider QA to be industry work, IMHO. Though it does give some valuable insight to how games are made.
My first 2 years at AI were general eds and foundation art classes....Gen Ed I took most online feeling they were a waste of time to the skill traits...still I got A's in them for my Degree. Its too bad they don;t stress enough the importance of the foundation classes. One great teacher I had always said, "Be and Artist first" (JC).
Gen ed is for the most part useless, but it's a requirement by the state from what I heard and everyone would love to have some more art classes instead. Some genEd classes were useful and interesting though. Art History was a really great class because we actually analyzed pictures for style, technique and innovations. US History was, for me as non American, interesting. The class for resume writing wasn't bad either.
Many other genEd classes were just plainly bad and boring though and the teachers made little effort, probably because they saw the futility of their task
I myself am a recent graduate (June 2012) and I can tell you from year one until the day I graduated people dropped left and right. When I started we had 3 different sections of about 25-30 students each. Move onto second semester, 2 different sections. Move onto 2nd year, now you have the ability to specialize in Animation or Modelling. 2 Different section in each stream. Which held solid until end of year 2. Year 3, One section for each stream both capping in and around 15, second semester of year 3, we had about 10 in each stream. Some of which didn't even graduate.
Being a person that is now currently looking for work and doesn't have anything promising on the horizon. It's sometimes all too easy to look at these stats and be somewhat heart broken. But I remind myself. The person I was in year one until now has grown exponentially, look at how many dropped out and failed before me. I'm not saying the course itself had its faults, believe me it did, I sometimes learned more here than in class. But you have to pride yourself on completing the program, as a step in the right direction.
And now as some of my graduate friends (and some who didn't graduate) are being hired at AAA companies here in Toronto or starting up their own indie projects. It's always good to keep in contact, and always keep an eye out for opportunities. Stats shouldn't hold you back from finding a job. It's your ability to want that job. You're more than a percentage.
Just a question. Why are these schools very expensive?
The UHAnimation course is £8500 per year, that's $13,209 US what's that like compared to course's in your country? and before you start to grill me I take part in the student rallies, when I studied it was free and the government gave me £3000 to study:)
Students come from around the world on our course, we have American, Australian, New Zealand, Singaporean, Chinese, lots of European I would say around 30% of the course is non UK, its a fantastic mix of people.
Just a question. Why are these schools very expensive?
Because someone has to pay for it - computers, teachers, yadda yadda.
Private unis, aka for profit, take tuition everywhere. In many EU countries state run unis are practically free and there's some really good 3D/film ones, such as Hagenberg in Austria or Filmakademie in Germany. Some EU countries require some tuition, ranging from none/very little to quite a lot. I think Britain asks for most right now. Used to be much cheaper in the past though.
It comes back to the question how a state can finance their uni system - how much is tax payers' money and how much is tuition and how much is other sponsors.
Just a question. Why are these schools very expensive?
Because people are willing to pay it and in the U.S., the government enables them to do it through student aid. We have a cultural belief that everyone is entitled to education, so virtually anyone can apply for a student loan and easily get it.
Remember the mid-late 2000s housing bubble, when anyone could take out a loan to buy a house, so everybody did? Even people who couldn't afford it and ended up defaulting on their first payment? This is the same principle. If you guarantee people a loan to get something they want a lot then a pretty large chunk of them will take it almost without any regard for the cost.
The school gets paid whether you repay the loan or not. If the student defaults the student gets screwed, the taxpayers get screwed, but the school makes out like a fucking bandit. So there is absolutely no reason for the schools to keep prices down so long as they continue to fill classrooms. Which is not hard to do when people think "game development" means sitting on your ass all day playing video games.
In order to fix this problem regulations were being passed which stated that in order for a school to qualify for federal student funding that more than 35% of their former graduates had to be successfully repaying their loans.
In apparent fear over this regulation, AI was encouraging their alumni to send out form letters to the U.S. Department of Education telling them not to enact these regulations. Evidently 35% is too high a bar for the Art Institutes...
Ultimately the regulations were put on hold, so the cycle of bullshit continues.
Edit: I see you're from Canada, it's important to note that the U.S. has this problem because we've structured our federal funding to be easy to exploit. This obviously does not necessarily reflect the cost of education in Canada.
I don't get it. Why is there such a low success rate?
The two reasons I've read/heard of:
1. Lack of discipline/work ethic
2. Many younger people go into game art just because they love to play video games (don't know what they're getting into)
For experienced people, is that really just the reasons? I've just started independently studying and the low success rate has literally given me nightmares...
I know I need to work on my networking skills, but it doesn't seem that bad... errr, I'm equating it to being top 10 percent for GPA grades in high school/college in my head though.
it's a difficult industry to get in. A graduate has specific skills for a specific industry - even more so as colleges move away from generic 3D studies to even more specialized things like "game art". With a games degree you can work at a .... game studio! With a business related degree you can work at...? well, there's many industries to choose from in that case - certainly more than for people with game degrees.
It's like studying sinology (which is the study of things Chinese). There's only so many positions for sinologists and little else. Unlike game art sinology has never proven to be extremely popular, nor does it have the image of an easy ("I'm gonna play games all day!") study. Nor is it particularly easy to discover at any university. If all that weren't the case the sinologists probably too would lament about success rates and what not - well maybe they are and we just don't know about it. But there's not too many of them I'd wager and there's also not too many jobs - so there's probably more of a balance due to the study being less accessible and less "cool".
I don't get it. Why is there such a low success rate?
The two reasons I've read/heard of:
1. Lack of discipline/work ethic
2. Many younger people go into game art just because they love to play video games (don't know what they're getting into)
For experienced people, is that really just the reasons? I've just started independently studying and the low success rate has literally given me nightmares...
I know I need to work on my networking skills, but it doesn't seem that bad... errr, I'm equating it to being top 10 percent for GPA grades in high school/college in my head though.
1) Lack of discpline
The "you get out what you put in" mantra. Unless you're a prodigy you're going to have to work hard at it and that means doing a lot more than just going to class and doing homework projects. You have to put in hours and hours outside of that.
2) "Game art" curriculum is difficult to design without massive inefficiency.
Game art is fairly straightforward to learn but it has a very large technical barrier to entry. People have to learn tools before they can even make art and then they need to spend time learning good practices and why everything works the way it does. All of this takes time away from actual fundamental art skills.
This is why it is often suggested by professionals here that students take traditional art courses at a community college that focus on foundational skills like figure drawing/composition/design and learn the technical aspects of game art in their spare time. Because the technical parts are simply a matter of time and knowledge where as artistic skills are often much more abstract and difficult to learn so the more time spent on them the better.
To make matters worse in an industry that demands specialists, schools often focus on curriculum that is designed for generalists. This keeps school expenses down while accommodating a large number of students every year who simply do not know what they want to do but ultimately hurts everyone's employment prospects as they waste time focusing on shit they don't need to learn.
3) Poor instruction from poor instructors
When your teacher is telling you that you have to model all in quads and that you should render your work in mental ray you're essentially being taught the wrong shit. This is majorly counterproductive to even the brightest students with good potential.
4) Lack of initial skills
If you're behind the skill curve already you need to work even harder to get yourself up to speed. Sometimes they just don't make it in time.
5) Not everybody learns at the same speed
Some people just learn slower than others... It's entirely possible that after four years, even with good work ethic someone still will not be good enough to get a job in the industry. Concepts are not as easy for some to grasp as they are for others and students struggle with different things, not all of which are of equal importance to getting a job.
This is especially bad if you're being handicapped by bad instructors, a poor curriculum and are already below average in skill to begin with.
6) Game art degrees are worthless
Like Kwramm says you can take a computer science degree and apply it in a lot of fields, a game art degree isn't even useful in the game industry let alone anywhere else. The only people who care about your degree are immigration services.
If you live in a country where education is cheap or free, I would say go to school and study something else. If you really want to go to art school, go to a school that focuses on artistic fundamentals, most schools that offer an illustration course fall into this category, then learn the technical shit from Eat3D and 3DMotive DVDs. If you really must go to a game art school then fine go for it.
If you live in the U.S. I suggest just teaching yourself from tutorials at Conceptart.org, 3DMotive, Eat3D, Polycount/Wiki, etc. and supplement it with foundational classes from your local community college. Community college is dirt cheap. If you REALLY want to take art classes geared toward entertainment art, take courses at Futurepoly, CGMW, or Schoolism. And clutch your fucking wallet and run in terror when the Fullsail/Art Institute recruiters show up.
I don't get it. Why is there such a low success rate?
In addition to what has already been said, it's simply supply and demand. There are only so many jobs and they go to the higher skilled people. Students are getting churned out faster than jobs are getting produced.
A friend sent me this and even tho it's VFX related it's still applicable to games. It's a kinda depressing read.
Replies
I'll second that.
[ame="
I'm a teacher!
i am sure there are good exceptions though.
GAD class of about 25 or so.
I'd say maybe 7-10 of those people got jobs within a year of graduating.
Of those 10, only about half went on to work at "big/AAA" studios. The rest got stuck in VFX houses, doing free indie work, or doing 3D work for non-game related professions.
I'd say our numbers are higher than average on account of more 3d jobs being available in LA and Orange County.
sad shit
I was in a class of about 18 people, and I, along with two other guys, were the only ones to ever land a job in the industry, the very first in the school as a matter of fact (there were about 3-4 other groups of 15 students who were there before us, none of which got a job).
While I learned the very basics of 3D there, I consider myself a self-taught artist. The school was so bad, and has such a terrible reputation here in Quebec, that I actually took the school off my resume.
Polycount was one of the main reasons I ever got a job.
And now, I'm seeing fellow classmates, students who never took classes seriously, lacked any fundamental art skills, and being downright terrible at 3D, getting jobs as teachers. I cringe a little every time.
Amen, to that. This comment was obviously from someone who actually went to a school and was probably a little older and more mature. It was a similar set up for me, I worked my ass off for ridculous amounts of work for classes that didn't do anything for me or my career. I was in the military full time with a full time schedule for school. (4-5 classes) I also have a family and was a little older. I found myself researching pretty much everything out of class with my skill level depending on "if I got the "right" teacher." I got out of the military while in school then actually got a internship at a video game company and subsequently got hired afterwards that. So then I was working over 40 hrs at the company and then juggling school with that. Now that job is over and I am about graduate. I even started a club at school for a while and had students outsourcing work for another game company which I got credited for as well. Now I find myself trying to refine all this mediocre work that I did while juggling classes at school, dealing with bias instructors, etc. The quality of my school, that is a whole nother can of worms, but I find myself still learning alot on my own (minus a couple of helpful teachers) and posting my work on sites like this one...
Where in Quebec? Is it Lasalle College? I've heard some horror stories, but I was never sure if it was. I was thinking of going to school for 3d art once I graduate my Graphic Design program.
Oi! yes yes I get this from my old work colleagues, I also get "those that can't teach" little sods!
Nope, we have all had at least ten years industry experience,
myself starting in 1997 Rare, Prime Focus, Kuju, Sony.
My colleague "Mark Wallman" Showreel
Frank Victoria, Weta 12 years and many more.
Luckily at the University of Hertfordshire when you become a lecturer my institution is happy to pay to train us up and do courses like CPAD, MA, PhD's and so on that's where many institutions around the world are getting it wrong, they need to chill out and train up their staff rather than just taking on people with PhD's.
My advice for perspective students would be to insist to ask to see students past work/showreel and secondly what industry experience do the lecturer staff have, then worry about the rest. You got to read the menu before you eat, dam it I said I was not going to do any more analogies! I have got to finish my MA paper tonight so no more teacher bashing or I will be procrastinating all night
P.S. another colleague Kevin Molloy credits
Art Department (8 titles)
2009 Olivia (TV series) (storyboards - 3 episodes)
Olivia's Snow Day/Olivia's Ice Spectacular (2009) (storyboards)
Olivia and the Treasure Hunt (storyboards)
Olivia Goes to the Beach/Olivia Keeps a Secret (storyboards)
2006 Toot & Puddle: I'll Be Home for Christmas (video) (storyboard artist)
2005 Charlie and Lola (TV series) (storyboard artist - 2 episodes)
I Love Going to Granny and Grandpa's It's Just That... (2005) (storyboard artist)
There Is Only One Sun and That Is Me! (2005) (storyboard artist)
2001-2003 Angelina Ballerina (TV series) (storyboard artist - 17 episodes)
The Old Oak Tree (2003) (storyboard artist)
Angelina's Baby Sister (2002) (storyboard artist)
No Match for Angelina (2002) (storyboard artist)
Angelina's Valentine (2002) (storyboard artist)
The Cheese Ball Cup Final (2002) (storyboard artist)
See all 17 episodes »
2003 Mole Sisters (TV series) (storyboard artist)
2002 Angelina Ballerina: The Show Must Go On (TV movie) (storyboard artist)
1997-2000 Kipper (TV series) (storyboard artist - 77 episodes)
Kipper the Hero (2000) (storyboard artist)
The Farm (2000) (storyboard artist)
The Magic Carpet (2000) (storyboard artist)
The Missing Tape Mystery (2000) (storyboard artist)
The River Trip (2000) (storyboard artist)
See all 77 episodes »
2000 Percy the Park Keeper (TV series) (storyboard artist - 2 episodes)
One Warm Fox (2000) (storyboard artist)
The Fox's Hiccups (2000) (storyboard artist)
Hide Animation Department (6 titles)
2007 Alice in Wonderland: What's the Matter with Hatter? (video) (character designer)
1992 Freddie as F.R.O.7. (coordinating animator - as Kevin Malloy)
1991 The Princess and the Goblin (additional animator)
1986 When the Wind Blows (additional key animator - as Kevin Malloy)
1983 Dexter the Dragon & Bumble the Bear (animator)
1980 Seaside Woman (short) (assistant animator)
Do I need to go on?
I supplemented the shit out of the program, though, and put almost every spare moment into improvement. Anyone who went to my school and actually listened to the all of the professors' advice and ONLY their advice is doomed to fail. (We were advised to use Wix for our portfolios, and I got in trouble a couple of times because one of them found out I had been working on 3D sculpting and painting exercises on the side. Scandalous! lolol)
edit: We were also encouraged to render our game props, environments, and character projects in Mental Ray. teehee
Thanks for the info. I've never heard of it but I'll avoid it.
That's pretty scary they employ people without experience. Were they any good?
When did we stop considering QA industry work?
If the only thing that matters is that it counts as "industry work" then I don't see why you wouldn't count Gamestop too and I doubt when those students sunk $100k on their degree that their lifes dream was to work minimum wage buying back used copies of games.
One year left of school I met another game art teacher who asked the class,"why are you using mental ray? don't you want to make games and things for games?" Things started to click, he also directed us to Polycount as well...ever since then I've been learning on my own to make up for the lack of game engine knowledge that I have missed. I pass this knowledge to fellow classmates who are new to the program, it's up to them now to follow through. Those who do I help as much as I can in hopes that they will grow this curriculum properly. "Students dictate the education that is being taught" MW.
What I concluded from my 4 years at AI is that, true I could've learned most of this on my own through polycount and other tutorials, but I was fortunate enough to meet an autodesk certified teacher who even though pushed mental ray, taught me the value of hard work and determination. I think without this I would not have had the motivation to work and learn 12-14 hours a day.
Everyone who was there wanted to get to maya or max asap, but now I'm happy they had so many traditional classes. Hope this is still the case.
Since QA is more of a trained job, and not a skilled craft.
There are some good QA peeps, for sure, but hiring a person with no idea as to how to do the job they are hired to do, and training them on the job is a thing you can do with QA, but not with a dev team.
Nobody these days would ever hire someone who has no clue how to work in their field and decide to give them on the job training to be an artist/animator/tech guy.
So yeah, I don't consider QA to be industry work, IMHO. Though it does give some valuable insight to how games are made.
Gen ed is for the most part useless, but it's a requirement by the state from what I heard and everyone would love to have some more art classes instead. Some genEd classes were useful and interesting though. Art History was a really great class because we actually analyzed pictures for style, technique and innovations. US History was, for me as non American, interesting. The class for resume writing wasn't bad either.
Many other genEd classes were just plainly bad and boring though and the teachers made little effort, probably because they saw the futility of their task
Being a person that is now currently looking for work and doesn't have anything promising on the horizon. It's sometimes all too easy to look at these stats and be somewhat heart broken. But I remind myself. The person I was in year one until now has grown exponentially, look at how many dropped out and failed before me. I'm not saying the course itself had its faults, believe me it did, I sometimes learned more here than in class. But you have to pride yourself on completing the program, as a step in the right direction.
And now as some of my graduate friends (and some who didn't graduate) are being hired at AAA companies here in Toronto or starting up their own indie projects. It's always good to keep in contact, and always keep an eye out for opportunities. Stats shouldn't hold you back from finding a job. It's your ability to want that job. You're more than a percentage.
*steps away from podium, ends rant*
The UHAnimation course is £8500 per year, that's $13,209 US what's that like compared to course's in your country? and before you start to grill me I take part in the student rallies, when I studied it was free and the government gave me £3000 to study:)
Students come from around the world on our course, we have American, Australian, New Zealand, Singaporean, Chinese, lots of European I would say around 30% of the course is non UK, its a fantastic mix of people.
Because someone has to pay for it - computers, teachers, yadda yadda.
Private unis, aka for profit, take tuition everywhere. In many EU countries state run unis are practically free and there's some really good 3D/film ones, such as Hagenberg in Austria or Filmakademie in Germany. Some EU countries require some tuition, ranging from none/very little to quite a lot. I think Britain asks for most right now. Used to be much cheaper in the past though.
It comes back to the question how a state can finance their uni system - how much is tax payers' money and how much is tuition and how much is other sponsors.
Because people are willing to pay it and in the U.S., the government enables them to do it through student aid. We have a cultural belief that everyone is entitled to education, so virtually anyone can apply for a student loan and easily get it.
Remember the mid-late 2000s housing bubble, when anyone could take out a loan to buy a house, so everybody did? Even people who couldn't afford it and ended up defaulting on their first payment? This is the same principle. If you guarantee people a loan to get something they want a lot then a pretty large chunk of them will take it almost without any regard for the cost.
The school gets paid whether you repay the loan or not. If the student defaults the student gets screwed, the taxpayers get screwed, but the school makes out like a fucking bandit. So there is absolutely no reason for the schools to keep prices down so long as they continue to fill classrooms. Which is not hard to do when people think "game development" means sitting on your ass all day playing video games.
In order to fix this problem regulations were being passed which stated that in order for a school to qualify for federal student funding that more than 35% of their former graduates had to be successfully repaying their loans.
In apparent fear over this regulation, AI was encouraging their alumni to send out form letters to the U.S. Department of Education telling them not to enact these regulations. Evidently 35% is too high a bar for the Art Institutes...
Ultimately the regulations were put on hold, so the cycle of bullshit continues.
Edit: I see you're from Canada, it's important to note that the U.S. has this problem because we've structured our federal funding to be easy to exploit. This obviously does not necessarily reflect the cost of education in Canada.
The two reasons I've read/heard of:
1. Lack of discipline/work ethic
2. Many younger people go into game art just because they love to play video games (don't know what they're getting into)
For experienced people, is that really just the reasons? I've just started independently studying and the low success rate has literally given me nightmares...
I know I need to work on my networking skills, but it doesn't seem that bad... errr, I'm equating it to being top 10 percent for GPA grades in high school/college in my head though.
It's like studying sinology (which is the study of things Chinese). There's only so many positions for sinologists and little else. Unlike game art sinology has never proven to be extremely popular, nor does it have the image of an easy ("I'm gonna play games all day!") study. Nor is it particularly easy to discover at any university. If all that weren't the case the sinologists probably too would lament about success rates and what not - well maybe they are and we just don't know about it. But there's not too many of them I'd wager and there's also not too many jobs - so there's probably more of a balance due to the study being less accessible and less "cool".
1) Lack of discpline
2) "Game art" curriculum is difficult to design without massive inefficiency.
This is why it is often suggested by professionals here that students take traditional art courses at a community college that focus on foundational skills like figure drawing/composition/design and learn the technical aspects of game art in their spare time. Because the technical parts are simply a matter of time and knowledge where as artistic skills are often much more abstract and difficult to learn so the more time spent on them the better.
To make matters worse in an industry that demands specialists, schools often focus on curriculum that is designed for generalists. This keeps school expenses down while accommodating a large number of students every year who simply do not know what they want to do but ultimately hurts everyone's employment prospects as they waste time focusing on shit they don't need to learn.
3) Poor instruction from poor instructors
4) Lack of initial skills
5) Not everybody learns at the same speed
This is especially bad if you're being handicapped by bad instructors, a poor curriculum and are already below average in skill to begin with.
6) Game art degrees are worthless
If you live in a country where education is cheap or free, I would say go to school and study something else. If you really want to go to art school, go to a school that focuses on artistic fundamentals, most schools that offer an illustration course fall into this category, then learn the technical shit from Eat3D and 3DMotive DVDs. If you really must go to a game art school then fine go for it.
If you live in the U.S. I suggest just teaching yourself from tutorials at Conceptart.org, 3DMotive, Eat3D, Polycount/Wiki, etc. and supplement it with foundational classes from your local community college. Community college is dirt cheap. If you REALLY want to take art classes geared toward entertainment art, take courses at Futurepoly, CGMW, or Schoolism. And clutch your fucking wallet and run in terror when the Fullsail/Art Institute recruiters show up.
In addition to what has already been said, it's simply supply and demand. There are only so many jobs and they go to the higher skilled people. Students are getting churned out faster than jobs are getting produced.
A friend sent me this and even tho it's VFX related it's still applicable to games. It's a kinda depressing read.
http://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2013/02/oh-mess-were-in.html#.USFXVaXiip1
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But jokes aside, there are just lots of expenses. PCs etc. Essentially, what Kwramm said.