Anyone Else at a State College/University (Non-Game, Non-Art)?
polycounter lvl 6
Sorry if there have been similar posts, I didn't see anything in the search.
I was wondering if anyone else is/was from a large state college, focused on general education, research and academia rather than art or design, and what you're doing to get yourself in shape for the industry.
I chose my state's university because it's unbelievably cheap for the quality and I may want to get into design, which I think benefits from a broad education. (As does art, in some ways) I'm double-majoring in graphic design and computer science, but because I'm doing both neither are really intensive enough to get me in by themselves.
The CS dept. is probably more functional than the art dept., whose requirements for design majors is woefully lacking. The drawing classes I've taken are solid, but I find I can only put so much work/time into those with all the other stuff I have going on.
It's amazing how lucky I've been from a game design prospective, though. There's a professor on campus who's doing a game design course where we interpret literature into game worlds using Unity, and we practice basic modelling, texturing, scripting, etc. Recently I've been teaching myself Zbrush for a job where we're building an online game/mythology course, but there's no one around to really consult, so in a lot of ways I've entered the dojo of Google-Fu.
It's slow-going, and I definitely don't have the skills/portfolio you'd get from a game school, so if you are/were in a similar situation let me know your story, I'd love to hear it!
I was wondering if anyone else is/was from a large state college, focused on general education, research and academia rather than art or design, and what you're doing to get yourself in shape for the industry.
I chose my state's university because it's unbelievably cheap for the quality and I may want to get into design, which I think benefits from a broad education. (As does art, in some ways) I'm double-majoring in graphic design and computer science, but because I'm doing both neither are really intensive enough to get me in by themselves.
The CS dept. is probably more functional than the art dept., whose requirements for design majors is woefully lacking. The drawing classes I've taken are solid, but I find I can only put so much work/time into those with all the other stuff I have going on.
It's amazing how lucky I've been from a game design prospective, though. There's a professor on campus who's doing a game design course where we interpret literature into game worlds using Unity, and we practice basic modelling, texturing, scripting, etc. Recently I've been teaching myself Zbrush for a job where we're building an online game/mythology course, but there's no one around to really consult, so in a lot of ways I've entered the dojo of Google-Fu.
It's slow-going, and I definitely don't have the skills/portfolio you'd get from a game school, so if you are/were in a similar situation let me know your story, I'd love to hear it!
Replies
I studied metallurgical/materials engineering in a state university which doesn't have an art department. It took me 9 years to complete the BS degree mostly due to personal issues and my interest in other stuff. Also, the university is one of those "difficult to get into, even more difficult to get out" kind of schools. So, now I have a pretty solid degree to fall back on when needed. And yes, the school didn't cost too much.
I attended drawing studios and now I'm attending a sculpture studio. I like working with real clay a lot. Working with a real 3 dimensional object definitely allows me to learn faster. I like making 30 second gesture drawings at posemaniacs too. I haven't been a very active member here but the knowledge I got from polycount and training videos(Gnomon, eat3d, imbueFX etc.) has been extremely helpful. Even looking at other people's P&P threads is a great way to learn. I also learned a great deal from books. I think I started with [ame=http://www.amazon.com/The-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/0874774241]Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain[/ame] which was a suggestion in a polycount thread. Glen Vilppu's training material is really helpful too.
Actually, still being far away from what one can be with these resources makes me feel a little awkward. I keep practising anyway though.
Best of luck for you
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[USC's Interactive Media Division Perspective - Junior, C/O 2014 - Career Intention: Concept Art/3D ninja]
If you're looking for an effective resource for a game design degree and a legitimate 4 year university, USC's the best. Ranked the best game design program three years in a row since 2010 by Princeton Review, USC's Interactive Media Division covers all the steps Extra Credits have asked for. thatgamecompany's key personnel graduated from USC's IMD program. We have graduates that find positions in places ranging from Zynga to Sony Santa Monica Studios, and even Microsoft Game Studios. Richard Lemarschand (former lead designer @ Naughty Dog) now teaches here. Jeremy Gibson, one of the strongest professors of game design I know, teaches here. Tom Frisina, an EA Board Member and someone with an avalanche of experiences,
Basic university application standards apply: high (and I mean aim for perfection: 2400 SATs and 36 on your ACT. I find the ACT to be the better test, imo) standardized test scores, ridiculously perfect essays, being unique when everyone else is unique as you, etc etc. Basically, work hard in highschool. I mean it. Work. Hard. And then even Harder.
There's also a second layer of applications involved with applying to the Interactive Media Division as an undergrad (USC School of Cinematic Arts application). Once again, answer the prompts with memorable essays and send in a work sample. Assume that the competition is once again, extremely fierce, so send in essays that will change lives and a work sample (be it a game you made, game-oriented artwork, etc) that is beyond-awesome. I say assume it's super competitive so you can rock harder. Only around 15 students get in per undergraduate year. Get ready to rock.
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All I can say, in summary, is that USC will provide you the resources you need. Excellent professors, industry connections (I'm in Frisina's class this semester, he hooked me up with a mentor for Art Direction on a game project I'm working on http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=105086), and an environment where you can meet multiple different people to make games (designers, programmers, artists, animators, etc)
The problem is . . . it's really up to you if you want it. If you want in the industry at a good place, I will guarantee you things will be sacrificed. If you're not working hard at making games outside of class (Trust me, talking to a whole bunch of HR people: "No one cares about the work you did for class."), someone else will beat you to it.
Is there an opportunity to sorta slack off? Yeah. It's college. You can drink as much as you can, do all the extracirricular activities possible, sleep in, just do HW, explore that weird minor you wanted to try, it is your free will. BUT. BUT. If your intention is to become the best game developer (designer, engineer, artist, producer, etc), realize that your priorities need to change. When you're burning $55,000/year for school, hopefully you quickly realize there's a big difference between playing games and MAKING games. You'll be doing 90% more of the latter then the former if you have the drive.
Class make up for each undergraduate class will vary, in terms of what roles they specialize into. In mine in particular, we have like 2 artists, a couple designers, one composer person, etc. It will vary, but what this means is that just within the major, you have a composition that can make a full game, even a crappy one, but it's something. (That's assuming they all want to work together, and I can tell you right now, I am not currently working with my fellow juniors and instead am working with people from Computer Science for Games and senior IMD students on other projects.)
I really have to emphasize, you need to work hard once you get to USC. You need to schedule and find time to volunteer and go to events like IndieCade and GDC. You need to sacrifice time outside of school to make games, because professionals will care little for 90% of the work you do for class. What I mean by working hard:
Freshman year. I asked the SA during orientation if Freshman could get internships their first year. She said, and it was a good honest answer, "Unlikely." She said Unlikely, not Impossible. So I did my GEs that year, took like my three major related courses, but I spent my off hours working as an artist on a year long game project class that I wasn't enrolled in, a game that would be shown to industry professionals at these large presentation called Demo Days (People from EA, Microsoft, Activision-Blizzard, etc showed up to these: http://gamepipe.usc.edu/usc_gamepipe_laboratory/DemoDay.html), I kept working on my art portfolio, worked with a handful of upperclassmen on additional game projects in my spare time, and worked to "ship games." I went to GDC freshman year and asked every studio I cam in contact with if they had internships, even if they rejected me. It is INCREDIBLY scary to go to an industry conference like that knowing you are "nothing" to these professionals. But you have to start somewhere. Come time before summer started, I applied to several places for internships, and I ended up doing a QA internship at Blizzard Entertainment on Diablo 3. A dream half-fulfilled (hard to say QA is really a proper dev position, but it's still something, especially for a freshman). The other freshmen that year? One of them got a gig at a SFX Studio on the East coast, another made a successful Amnesia Mod ("To Give is to Force"), another I believe worked at an indie studio, but other than that, some of them took the summer as travel time, others used it to travel to various fan conventions during the summer like Comic-Con, which is "fine" (as in, it's not morally reprehensible) 4 out of 15 kids that year ended up with some semblance industry/game making/development experience coming into Sophomore year. Even when USC weeds out the best, there's still a bell curve. On that note: Yes, you can get an internship freshman year at a pretty good place. You just gotta work hard..
I am absolutely frightened and driven as to what I know I need to do to be the best I can be as a game developer (specifically on the art side). As a Treyarch developer has told me time and time again, "If you don't do it, someone else will." I'm still in the same mindset to work hard and really make the most of these 4 years I have/had with USC, because, at least in regards to Career Dreams, I want to make good games with great teams, and I want to be the best at my role.
Can college be about finding your place in the world? Yes (though I will assert that your place in the world should not be first found in a "fufilling" career). Can do a slurry of extra cirriculars and non-major related courses at once in college? YES.
But if you want to join the industry, and if you're at USC, you need to put in the time and effort. It hurts to see my colleagues who don't do this. I WANT to help them. I WANT them to succeed at least at a career level, if not a God-given spiritual level, but because it's their Free Will and not mine, if they decide they don't want to put in the work, it will not happen as well as they expect. It's hard to fail upward in this industry, even at a student level, from my experience and understanding.
Apart from doing personal work and tutorials, I'm hoping to look at getting freelance work or selling assets to the unity store or something like that, although I haven't really looked into this stuff myself yet. When you're on break from uni is when you really need to start taking on the larger projects, since you simply won't have time during semester.
I imagine people with a full-time job who work on their art in their own time are in a similar situation to us really. You've got to get the hours in somewhere, and since work/uni can't go, you spend less time gaming, less time messing around on the internet, etc.
I was in a similar position where my major, "New Media Design and Imaging", was so broad that I graduated with too many skills and not nearly enough focus. Although I was more versatile then many of my friends, my portfolio was weaker because I had too much to prove. It's great knowing you can fill four different roles instead of one or two, but when looking for a job, you're usually only applying for one.
Aside from picking a focus, my advice would be to drop the design major and take design courses as electives instead if you can. Graphic design wont intersect with the games industry as much as you're hoping short of exposing you to Photoshop, Illustrator, and possibly Flash. It sounds like you want to focus on 3D with your art side, not typography. It also sounds like CS is what you're more interested in anyway, plus it will make you more employable down the line.
Lastly, transfer schools if you have to. If you're in college to get into a desired field and your particular school doesn't really help you do that, then you're wasting your time/money trying to swim upstream.
I can't say I use what I learned from graphic design very much day to day. Most of what I got out of school came from our student game dev club. Best advice I can give is to force what you want to do into your classes. I feel like I wasted a lot of time giving my profs what I thought they wanted, not realizing until senior year that many of them were willing to bend the rules and let me make games or game art for assignments. For example, I did extra historical research on a game I was working on set in ancient Greece, and my Ancient Art history prof counted it as a project for that course. Independent studies are also a godsend. I had a sympathetic graphic design professor who let me do character designs for an independent study credit. Once you demonstrate that you're really passionate for a certain field, your profs (at least the good ones) will help you get there.
What's the class your lit prof is teaching? It sounds awesome; I like hearing about liberal arts incorporating games into their curricula.
@EmAr - Work work work! I'm very familiar with Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, great book, I'd recommend it to anyone, for sure. I have a huge store of great ebooks/PDFs I've found, but I find it really hard to read printed books seriously from PDF. Still love the physical tomes.
@JadeEyePanda - No matter what way you slice it, the kind of work you're talking about has to get done, for sure. It sounds like you might be kind of frustrated with some of your classmates, or peers from elsewhere? I know where you're coming from, for sure, sometimes it seems like we have a lot of design majors who are only picked at art degree because it's easy and really don't push to make good work.
I'm focused on the long game for now-- I'll either bring my skills up to snuff by myself or I'll go to some type of game school-- how does USC's masters program work? Is it a general core with a elective specialization? Is it even possible to get in?
Also, FWIW, I did go to GDC (I think I talked to some of your classmates at some point!) and it was quite the scary experience for sure-- it's pretty far from here, and so commercial that after that first time I realize I need to work a lot more before I can get anything out of it.
I'm completely dedicated to getting in, but I understand it probably won't happen immediately for me. And that's ok. But I will get there.
@Bek - It's tough man, for sure. Writing is a great major if you eventually want to go to game design-- I have a friend who's writing/history and he's VERY articulate about game design concepts; he wants to do game scripts and design. If there's any sort of department doing any 3D work I'd say show up and try and get involved with them, even if it's mundane. It's been incredibly helpful for me to be able to work on it and get some money for it.
@Equanim - I don't know what my focus is yet, although I do know I need one. I have realized I want to lean more towards art than the code side. Eventually I would like to have the knowledge/skills to make games of my own, in small studio environment. I think in that world being able to wear a lot of hats is very beneficial, but yeah, until then I want to learn from the bigger studios and that requires being good at one thing. If I had to pick a focus...environment art? I really love building functional, efficient pieces and fitting them into the world.
I'll be a fifth-year senior in the fall, so transferring/dropping isn't really an option. I like the art and design side quite a lot, even compared to the CS, it's just that the art dept. has all sorts of dumb bureaucratic problems. (For example, there's no art minor. Now you know why I'm double majoring) Overall I'm very happy with my education, I just realize I need to supplement it with a lot of additional work. Hopefully I can make all the work I've done up to now work for me.
@hobodactyl - Awesome man! Anything you'd do differently? Anything from your education you've found particularly helpful?
@pixelb - I've actually been super lucky with regards to "game-ifying" my classes. I've taken AI and Graphics (OpenGL), and in my Software Engineering class we formed teams and built a game for the semester (pixel art is hard!). These have all led to a greater understanding of how games function. The biggest disappointment, and this might be similar in most state schools, is the art department is still in the stone age with technology. They realize they have to teach Creative Suite for graphic design and that's where things stop. There is one 3D animation project in one motion design class that one professor teaches that's only offered sometimes. I didn't take it. I DO have the sympathetic professor, however, hopefully I'll be able to do a digital painting independent study in the fall like we talked about.
The game design class really is awesome, and the best thing to happen to me in college. He's not even a lit professor-- he's classics-- fluent in Latin and everything. He was recreating Pompeii in 3D and then started using Unity as an engine and gradually realized how useful game development techniques are for recreating a Roman world. So he started a game design class to learn more about it and teach undergrads about it as well. It's not just games in the curriculum, we actually design and build games based on mythical texts and our own ideas. He legitimately wants a game design curriculum on campus, but one that's not dominated by the CS department and one that's not just focused on teaching you the raw skills, but also on how to create thoughtful, artistic games.
Thanks for all your replies, guys.
I'm hoping to get my MFA afterwards and go into Concept Art and eventually I would like to lead on the artistic direction of games.
I didn't want to go to my school, I actually wanted to go to an art school. I still kind of regret my decision of coming here, because art isn't a huge focus for the guys at the top so our program does have trouble with some things, but several of the professors here are amazing and make do with what they have. They honestly try to teach to help the student progress and many pick up students for a mentor-student relationship completely, at the cost of the free time of the professor (and they love doing it).
Here's a quote from my drawing professor:
"I've been teaching here for 8 years and I'm a really strong professor I think. I'm ready for a more steady income. The only reason why I'm here now is because I love the experience of working with new artists and watching them grow."
Or my sculpture professor in a personal conversation with me:
"The reason why I am so hard on you is not to be mean, but because I see potential in you and I know you can do the work. I expect to see 200% effort from you and if you have any questions, feel free to let me know."
The professors are the only reason why I will finish my degree here. There are so many more, like this one Painting/Drawing professor who is known for his bootcamp like approach and his realistic style. There's just so much variety and you basically choose your professor based on their experience and what you want to learn.
My problem with the department is that it's reallly, really fine arts focused. Not fine arts in the way I think it's usually used here, which is the say the traditional set of skills that made guys like Frank Frazetta so much better at what he did, but rather the larger art-world, non-representational, Damien Hirst-esque meaning of "fine art". This has it's upsides and downsides, one upside being the encouragement and appreciation of art at all stages, not the masterful level of someone like Caravaggio. Even a rough gesture drawing can be really beautiful in other ways, which I totally agree with. The problem is nailing down those qualities gets so ethereal and confusing that I can't help but wonder why we're talking about this in an undergraduate foundations class. I won't say it's bullshit, because it isn't, but it's definitely not for me. I guess I'm more of a designer, but I want to be able to represent my ideas as they are in my head to other people, which means a high degree of representation is necessary, and I get the feeling that faculty there are just bored by that, or don't understand the appeal.
The other problem is, in the romantic sense, I'm not an artist at all. I'm a white American male who's parents aren't even divorced. I don't think I have any demons to excise, nor any prejudices to take on. Maybe I'll get there eventually with the games I make, but for right now I just want to learn to draw people.
Haha, I hear ya there except I enjoy fine art quite a bit. I think it's because I want to work in concept art, I find a lot of what I learn with post-modernism useful.
I like to think of myself as being better-than-average in terms of being interested in and applying whatever I'm learning to games or other interesting things. Art history classes I love, although I've taken mostly older stuff-- I dunno, I guess it's just the general mindset that kind of irks me.
A lot of post-modernism revolves around the idea that the meaning is more important than the actual work. When you add to the piece, it has to reflect back upon the meaning. When it comes to concept art, when you're designing a character or zone or object, everything has to reflect back to the central idea of the person or item. That is how I see it and have come to appreciate it. If you can make something give an idea through abstraction, you should be able to do anything!