Has anyone here gone to FZD?
polycounter lvl 4
I am strongly considering going to FZD and was wondering if anyone on polycount could share their experience there. What challenges did you face? Did you land a job upon or shortly after graduation? What were the classes like? How were the instructors? What were the other students like? How effective do you think their fundamentals based approach worked out for you?
Replies
Challenges - Honestly the crunch is pretty brutal. Especially if you're not a very experienced artist to begin with. Drawing 10+ hours a day every day can be quite taxing for some and it's made worse when the end result of your artworks still end up looking kind of shit.
Landing a job - For me it took about a year before I finally found a job. Important thing to note though was a lot of that time was spent building up a portfolio to get job ready in the first place. Other people that already came in FZD with a solid foundation found jobs almost immediately. So it depends person per person.
Classes - We had like 3-4 different classes. Every term (there's 3) we'd get new classes covering different subjects. Term 1 covered fundamentals mostly. Term 2 was more advanced. Term 3 was kind of all about putting all the stuff we learned to the test for the "final project". Classes didn't take the whole day though. Most of the time at school was spent on working on assignments that were due the next week.
Instructors - I liked 2 out of the 3. Feng had some wisdom to share about the industry and some good technique. But I soon learned that building up the necessary skills mostly came down to the practice and the work you put in. There are no industry-kept secrets to getting good at concept art... Just practice. Practice following good advice that is.
Students - Probably the best part of the experience at FZD. We're kind of all like-minded individuals, so we motivate each other. Some of the best friends I had were people I knew from FZD. We had people from many nationalities - US, UK, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Germany, Australia, Malaysia...
Fundamentals - Groundwork was there I think. Just needed more time. I think 4 months to learn fundamentals is still moving kinda fast. I dunno...