Digital Animation and Visual Effects School (DAVE) in Orlando

glottis8

Anyone has any thoughts on this school? has been to it?

A coworker of mine, one of the students he mentors is looking into it. Thought i would help by asking here as well.

Thoughts?

Synaesthesia

These guys were talking about it a couple of years ago. Maybe their perspective can help you out.

praetus

I have heard of decent things about it but honestly (and this is as a Full Sail grad), I feel like most people that are wanting to learn 3D only are better served by putting their money into a gnomon/eat3D/3DMotive subscription and just learning as much as they can. I don't know how long Dave School runs for, but 14 months of Full Sail put me back about $40k in loans. Two years of online learning subscriptions and software licenses may set you back about $6K give or take.

Unfortunately when I went to school there really wasn't much of any online learning in the way of videos as there is now. If I could do it over again in this day and age I just would have bought into the online stuff for a fraction of the price.

3dnmator

Hey guys/gals,
I know this is already an old post but I thought I would respond with some information. I know my response will come off as bias but I want to give you a quick breakdown of what we are doing at the Dave School for teaching video game art. Warning: Wall of text below.

My name is Angel Gonzalez and I am the Gaming Dean at the Dave School. I graduated from the school in 2003 and went out to work in the industry for a while. They asked me to come back to head up the program and I was honored to do so.

I agree with praetus, you can find some pretty good online tutorials and websites that would help you learn software specific techniques to create 3d art. I personally have used Digital Tutors and 3dmotive. They are both are great resources. If you are the type of person that can watch a video and self-teach yourself then this route isn’t bad at all. However, this path doesn’t work for everyone. If you are the type of person that needs more hands on and wants to learn more than just the software then a school might be a better option.

The thing that I looked for in a school was who is teaching me. Who is the person that is showing me how to do what I am looking to get a job doing? Is it a recent graduate or someone with real experience? At our school we are hiring instructors who have actually worked on shipping titles in the industry. (minimum 7yrs. experience) Students will be getting real world instruction on not only how to use the 3d software but why we do certain things to get our art or animations running in game engines.

We do teach the software and how to get good looking art but we also teach the why and how of what you are creating. Things like environmental storytelling, animation blend trees, cancel combat animation systems, etc. This type of knowledge is given at the studio level and there are very few online sites that show how this stuff is created and why. We like to think we are doing more than just teaching software here at the school.

We want our students to understand how to package their art for game engines. Most companies use “their” version or a proprietary engine anyway so they will probably be taught by an artist when they arrive at a studio. In our program students will get a basic understanding of how to get their art into Unity, Unreal and the Cryengine. Why? Because they are easy to get and these three are different enough to show students that the art they create just needs to meet the criteria each engine requires for playing in the game. This exposure will get them ready when they walk into a studio and they are shown how to do it the studios way.

We also focus on teaching students how to work as a team. Communication and teamwork are huge inside game studios. Those of us who have been to art schools know that it is usually the 3-8 people that really work hard on the final project. We are teaching our students that everyone in a game studio is needed to do their job to make a great product. If one person slacks on their job the whole product can suffer. We want our students to get that exposure very early on in the program.

Problem solving is another key area we like to focus on. Most of the tutorial sites avoid showing you how an artist fixes a problem. We thrive on it. We don’t mind if the instructor is stumped with a problem during a lecture. We let our students watch how he/she breaks down the problem to fix it. This is something we are all doing in our studios on a daily basis. We show students it is ok to ask questions and don’t waste too much time working on a problem before you do ask questions.

One final point is networking. A school can provide you with a great network that an online school will not do. (Unless you are using sites like Animation Mentor and there are live instructors). I got my first job in the industry because of the networks I created at the school. Our instructors are still working on games and know a lot of people in the industry. I myself might personally recommend students to guys/gals on this forum for a job. We don’t want to spit out mediocre artists. The last thing I want is to call one my colleagues and recommend a graduate for a job only to have them laugh back in my face.

I know this post is rather long winded but as I said above, I would love to answer any questions about our school or any other school out there. Training is important either way. Whether can do it on your own or end up at a school. Just do your homework and ask around to see what others are saying as well.