Looking for a Career switch and have questions - 3D Game Art Institute Bootcamp
This is my first post here so I apologize ahead of time if I'm posting in the wrong area. I originally posted this on reddit and one of the more experienced users mentioned that Polycount would be much better for professional advice. I appreciate any and all answers people can provide.
TLDR at the bottom. Sorry for the wall of text.
BACKGROUND:
Currently I’m an engineer working at a very large company. Now that I’ve
been out of college and have paid off my debts, I’ve had the freedom to
do things I haven’t normally been able to in the past. In doing so I
[re]discovered my love for both art and videogames. I always promised my
younger self that I would find my way into the digital entertainment
industry. Having gone to PAX multiple times now and seeing that it's possible to pursue a career doing what I've dreamed of, I’ve decided that I
don’t want to be miserable in a career doing something I really don’t enjoy. I want
to make the career switch into 3D modeling.
I’ve been learning and teaching myself modeling on blender, sculpting in Zbrush, and even texturing in Substance. All as a hobbyist now for quite some time. With this push to further my abilities and break into the industry I did research to figure out what more I could do. I enrolled in the CG Master Academy program to do the 2D fundamentals courses and then plan to follow-up and do the 3D courses. Reason being is that I’ve seen from several posts and sites just how important the fundamentals are in being a good artist.
MAIN QUESTION:
While doing research I also came across Ryan Kingslien’s Game Art Institute
which contains a few ‘bootcamp’ programs revolving around 3D
environment art as well as 3D character modeling. My main question is:
Does anyone have experience with these bootcamp
style programs in the 3D art world?
I’ve seen them for programming and
web development with various results (typically you get out what you put
in). I’m seriously considering doing a bootcamp program to accelerate
my career switch. However I don’t want to be too preemptive and fall for
one of the “art institute” scams (just google it and see how many
results pop up).
I would also be interested in any current working professionals that made the same switch or transition that I’m making. What did you do? How did you get to where you are now? What would you do differently?
TLDR:
Found an interesting website, am trying to break into said industry. Questions are:
Do you have experience with this program? What have you done to switch careers and break into the 3D art industry?
Replies
http://3d.cgmasteracademy.com/programs/environment-arts-program/
Maybe, try some of these.
You could probably just learn by watching gnomon tutorials and doing them. Maybe, join Polycount discord and DiNusty discord. Not sure if there is any magic bullet you are going to learn from overprice 3d course.
Currently I'm registered for the CGMA Perspective course and I have a subscription to the Gnomon Workshop videos. I've been able to improve and work on them a lot, I'm just hoping for some more structure.
TeriyakiStyle, I saw the pricetag compared to CGMA and it made me wary. Hence why I wanted to poke around and do some research a bit before I committed to anything. I've also seen a lot about "art institutes" and seeing it's name also made me cautious.
Pangaea, I'm aware of the Polycount discord, but I'm unfamiliar with DiNusty. Care to elaborate on that?
Either way thanks for the input, I'll probably stick with my original plan and do the fundamental 2d courses on CGMA, and do the 3d environment course alongside gnomon videos.