Gaming School Recommendations.

kaih

hi everyone this is my first post; i am looking for a good gaming school in N/A hope people can give me some recommendations.

Anything with in 1 year will be nice

Ott

N/A?

What does that mean, "Anything with in 1 year will be nice"

If you are brand new and have never touched 3d, a Game Engine, or don't know what the default RGB value is for a flat normal map, then I'm sorry to tell you that there are very few schools that A) Are only 1 year in length, and Can actually teach you what you will need to know to make a career out of games.

Some more info, or background might be helpful.

Marine

most common suggestion is to study traditional art and learn 3d on your own.
vfs are apparently good and they do one year courses, but they're in canada and they do fill up fast, earliest you could start there would be in october

Wahlgren

I´d say one year is just enough to figure out the cg world, play around with some stuff and figure out what you want to do. Becoming a good artist in one year is probably pretty dang hard. Even with talent

Ryan Clark

I recommend going to a traditional college. Take a major in Computer Science with a minor in Fine Arts, or vise versa.

Don't take classes about game-specific tools. Tools are always changing and you can pick them up yourself.

Take classes about composition, color theory, algorithms, artificial intelligence. Those skills are vital to game development, and they won't become obsolete.

Create games in your spare time, outside of class. Constantly.

Mark Dygert

Most game artists schools do a piss poor job of teaching you one thing, what the buttons do. They don't teach you anything about what drives the thinking behind pushing those buttons. Without the traditional artistic talent, you're a ship without a rudder or an actor without a face. There are a few game-art-schools that do dabble in the traditional art, but really most are expecting you to show up with artistic skill they can channel.

The markets full of mediocre artists who know plenty of how, but not enough artistic skill to really pull much of anything off. Most are suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

- A great artist can be taught the tools in a few days/weeks and be making great game art.
- A crap artist, no matter how advanced his knowledge of 3dsmax/Maya/ZBrush/Mudbox, will still only churn out crap.
These people shouldn't abandon all hope, but they need to know its a tough road ahead, hopefully they'll pick up what they need along the way.

If I was to structure my learning again it would be a 5 year course. 4.5yrs would be traditional art with a slant toward games. Toward the end of the first phase, I would start to get comfortable working with a tablet. Followed by 6mo of how to use the most common tools.

Now if you're thinking about game design, technical artist, QA, tech support, or programing, that's a different discussion for another forum =P

TheWinterLord

N/A means: not availible

www.playgroundsquad.com
(Sweden)

East

Yeah, I'd say traditional art school is the way to go. I got a job in the games industry from teaching myself (and letting others teach me in forums and training videos), but some things are just a lot quicker to learn with the full time (or even part-time) tutoring you can get from a proper art education.

I'm 28, and I am currently considering going back to Sweden to get such an official education at one of the art institutes. It would mean I'd have to leave the industry for a while, but as long as I keep myself up to date (hanging around at Polycount) I think it would just benefit my career.

Richard Kain

Ryan Clark wrote: »

Don't take classes about game-specific tools. Tools are always changing and you can pick them up yourself.

QFT. Technology is constantly advancing. The game engines that you might learn how to use this year will be obsolete by the time you are looking for a job. The 3D software packages that you might learn now will have gone through several major revisions. Going to college for those things is a waste of time. Focus on general and art-centric classes that will teach you artistic fundamentals. If you are expecting to get into 3D modelign, be sure to take several classes on traditional sculpting.

If you do want to learn specific tools, most of them come with all the basic tutorials you might need. Maya and SoftImage both have effective learning versions that you can legitimately download for free. And as far as 3D modeling is concerned, you'll learn more about the proper fundamentals of that right here on polycount than you would from any university professor.

I would personally recommend taking classes on programming, data management (database creation and maintenance), and web coding. These can probably be taken alongside an art degree, and they can prove very useful and profitable in your career. Programming and data management are constantly in demand in several different industries. If you can't get a job doing game art immediately, you can use those skills to get steady work while bolstering your portfolio. The web coding is also job-friendly, and it will give you the skills you need to develop your own on-line portfolio. All of these skills can be incorporated in some way into game design, even if you don't specialize in them. Knowing some of the basics of programming and data management will make it easier for you to communicate effectively with the tech heads in any game company you end up at.

Talbot

Take a look at this thread I made at the end of the summer. It could help
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=55421

Although this is your first post... and you didn't give us much to go on... and you haven't added anything else for us to go on.... but hell you got a response in less than a year. Got to love that "Polycount: We get shit done in less than a year... guaranteed!" slogan.

Just joking... take a look at that thread... you may get some useful information.