EmAr's thread of personal stuff and education

EmAr

Hi guys! I'm about to make some important decisions about education so I'd be glad if you share your opinions. If you'd like to skip the story part, you can jump to the paragraph which starts with a "#".

I'm currently a student of metallurgical and materials engineering and I've been thinking this is not the right profession for me for a pretty long time(about 3-4 years) and I'm 23 now. I have been unsuccessfully trying to complete this degree all this time just to get it out of my way but it takes so much time and effort.

You may wonder why I got into this department in the first place. I wanted to study architecture at the time(but I didn't have a solid decision of what to do), I couldn't get enough points in the exam(we have a central placement system which is a constant moot point in my country) for the architecture department. I had to choose this one or move to a much more expensive city which was not possible or try again(which was a terrifying idea at the time). I also had no experience with drawing etc. so I would have had no chance with a faculty of fine arts. This whole examination thing happened in 2003 BTW.

#Lately I've been thinking about quitting this program and enrolling in a fine arts program. I'm talking about state universities by the way. There won't be any huge amounts of debt if I decide to do this(private universities are out of the question). Now I must decide what to study obviously. I can choose: painting, graphic design, sculpture and traditional animation.

I'm thinking about graphic design since I know some of the tools already. So I can focus on learning composition, color, anatomy etc. Also, work opportunities are much better than the other choices in my country in case I fail to find a games industry job. I think painting or sculpture could be good choices too but I'm not sure since I have almost no experience with real paint or clay. I'm planning to get some clay and gouache paints to play with this weekend though. So here's my question: Do you think studying graphic design while working on my game-art skills on my own(and posting stuff on Polycount of course ) is a bad idea? If you'd like to see some of my work:

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/5558/mac11zu2.jpg
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/8789/girlhiuj9.jpg
http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/6315/desen1md1.jpg
http://www.crymod.com/filebase.php?fileid=1888&lim=0&sid=8d19551ef08cf4fec756d24b53161753

Thanks for reading Any inputs are more than appreciated.

Ruz

personally I think that doing a more general art sort of course, plus practicing in your spare time is the best way.
my degree was in scientific/technical illustration, but all of the game art stuff was either self

taught or internet/polycount tutorials+ a lot of mod work.

In fact mods are a great way to get involved in the gaming scene.

EmAr

Thanks Ruz. I'm a member of a mod team and I agree with you about mod work.

Much of our progress is not published on the web site yet but we are still working:

http://www.blitzkrieg-mod.com/

EmAr

Well, sorry for resurrecting this thread but there's an update about the situation. I had decided to finish what I had started(the engineering degree) but I just wanted to try a local art school test just to see how it goes...and now they offered me a scholarship. It's a 4 year bachelor degree graphic design program. I'll go to the university(it's a nice/respected one btw) tomorrow to get more info about the conditions. Here's the website for the program:

http://www.art.bilkent.edu.tr/graphic.html

I want to get as much useful info as I can. Any advice is welcome about art schools in general And thank you Polycount, I'd never make such an achievement without the help/advice from this place