Good game art colleges?
I'm currently a freshman majoring in Game art at Ringling college in Sarasota FL. Not really doing well, because in order to get through the freshman year your drawing skills have to be at a very high level, which is very hard to achieve for someone who never drew before and doesn't even like drawing. Also sophomores and juniors spend a lot of time working on general game stuff, such as creating board games in order to create a notion of gameplay and balance or developing entire games in Ue4, which I'm not interested in doing.
Don't get me wrong, I love video games and anything that has to do with their development,but there seems to be too much focus on other aspects of video game development (such as creating characters). I prefer to focus on environment creation and it's something I'm way more passionate about.
I was thinking of switching to a college which focuses more on creating environments for games, if such exists. I don't find creating characters interesting though.
Which ones would you recommend?
Don't get me wrong, I love video games and anything that has to do with their development,but there seems to be too much focus on other aspects of video game development (such as creating characters). I prefer to focus on environment creation and it's something I'm way more passionate about.
I was thinking of switching to a college which focuses more on creating environments for games, if such exists. I don't find creating characters interesting though.
Which ones would you recommend?
Replies
This forum is a great place to learn. Work hard on your art. Post your work for critique. Take the advice to heart and improve your work. Rinse and repeat. It's a proven strategy which has led to many people being hired from their exposure here.
We have some good info here about education, see the links
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Game_Industry#Education
Drawing though, that's something you should persevere with. Don't stop because it's uncomfortable in the beginning. This is an essential skill for any artist. It is also a key skill which studios want in their art employees. Keep at it, it does get better with time and effort.
Do you deviate a lot from Game art in their course? Did you graduate from college? How was the workload? I hope you didn't spend too much time doing non game art related stuff.
Now, I have the self-starter motivation fully instilled so I can work on my own, and thru virtual team interactions (forums, skype, email, etc.). But it took a little while for me to get it started.
I taught at Mt Ida, maybe I had you as a student Yourname492? No disrespect for Mt Ida, but there's definitely a range of quality to the instructors there, and that's true for any school. Any prospective student really needs to ask around, see what the current students like/dislike about the instructors. Some are really terrible.
I probably wasn't that great myself, haha. Teaching is such a different animal from professional work. Some people are really good at teaching, but lack the professional knowledge to teach the right things. Some people are really experienced, but lack the ability to teach it. Finding those who have both is really hard!
If you're going to choose a school, do your research.
Again though, like any art college, there will be instructors who know their stuff and can teach it well, and there will be those that do not. I don't know enough about the foundation art instructors there to know if they're good or not though.
Again, find current students and ask them a lot of questions.
You'll hit two birds with one stone.
And especially if you're planning on being a game developer, make a game then!
Bring a sketchbook and pencil with you wherever you go, fill in those empty times.
Here's few examples of work that some of the freshman did this first semester in Ringling college BTW:
With that being said, if you do not want to go through all the drawing pre-reqs and such (I was in the EXACT same boat going through Art Institute of Orange County in 2011), a community college with drawing, and 3D classes will allow you get some sort of AA or general art BoS if you want that. You will be surrounded by semi like minded students and go through the introductory classes with teachers. I then recommend taking your studies to another level in your free time. Do personal studies like others have recommended. You will not get a better education than the one you tailor to yourself and your core skill set you desire. If you only want to sculpt and build environments, damn straight you can do that. 3D Motive, Digital Tutors, Gnomon, and a few others are phenomenal nowadays. You have an entire education + post graduate study level classes available online for next to nothing. I mean.... like $25 a month I think it is for 3D Motive? Good lord that is chump change compared to what you are getting out of it. You could potentially go through the content in a month or two, pay 50 bucks, and then use Polycount and personal work to build off of it. That and Gumroad tutorials? 6 months and you could potentially be at junior level if you really really pushed yourself. I worked for 10-14hrs a day at one point, 6-7days a week, balanced with exercise and my social life (who needs one of those anyway? lolol), and was able to drop out of Ai a year into it and get a job working various 3D positions in and out of the games industry until I worked up the resume and portfolio to jump to a AAA position that I am in now. Surprisingly, construction and pre-visualization type jobs pay REALLY well, and they are great money makers and experience in production builders as well.
There is no better time to take advantage of the insane amounts of knowledge on the internet for free or relatively free. But once again, if you really want to be at a great game art college, Ringling is known as one of the best across the nation. It has eyes on it at every game studio. A lot of students get hired right out of graduation at some awesome junior or intern positions.
The courses I am taking are mainly Game art courses. I was a transfer student so most of the gen-ed classes were already met, so I didn't have to spend much time on non game art stuff. I'm currently a senior and next semester will be my last before I graduate. I'd consider the workload average, it depends on the course and teacher, but overall it's not bad.
Yeah you did, this is Greg.
If you don't know who Warren Spector is (and how awesome it would be to get him as one of your reference!), it's okay 'cuz you know what? It's tuition free and the program will actually pay you 10K to offset living costs.
http://moody.utexas.edu/gaming-academy
Valentin, pretty much yes I learned on my own. I had some really good instructors in junior college, and later at RISD, but I think the biggest influence came from being around other like-minded students, and being around people much more talented than I. That kind of friendly competition is super helpful and encouraging.
The Polycount forums have that same kind of vibe, I highly recommend posting your work around here for critique and feedback. Digital Sketchbooks is a good place.