Seeking Research Assistance
Howdy!
I'm Tay, a Game Art and Design student at Ex'pression College for Digital Arts. I am currently taking a media studies class as part of my program. We've been tasked with maintaining a blog, populating it with an interesting point of view and content of substance to support that topic. The following term, a small complimentary documentary will be created of the most successful of these projects.
I've chosen to dedicate my work to art direction in games, concept art and entertainment design (go figure!). To compliment this, I'm also doing research into games education. My goal in creating this cross-forum discussion is to discern what motivations are behind pursuing this education path, what it provides (or an individual thinks it will provide), as well as it's overall importance to the community. In the end, my heart is really set on the project being something not only interesting, but useful to someone somewhere.
General, but ever so slightly aimed at the more experienced
First, are available education options possibly seen as a means to an end by students? (For example, choosing to study game art to avoid programming their way in and vice versa)
Second, Will (or do) current programs of study produce graduates that the industry needs to grow and prosper?
For students, future and current:
Why did you choose to study gaming?
Why and/or how did you choose game art or design?
Do you get what you think you should?
This is essentially a mass interview. It is going to work best if as many perspectives as possible are involved. Those looking to start school and those who've left, students and professionals, large studio and independent, pro education and staunchly self-study. Even educators are invited. Anyone who is involved in the gaming industry (or hopes to be!), this discussion is open to you. My only rule is to not sugar-coat your opinion. I can't build this on fairytales
.
As (or if) this progresses, I'll post to the blog, which can be found here: http://students.expression.edu/tayallen/2011/05/20/hmmmm/ , with an analysis of the general consensus at the time of posting. I may also explore other questions as the topic grows. If you would like your comments to be featured, leave a note at the end of your post and I will bookmark it for use.
And... that's about enough rambling from me. Please have a look at the original post on the blog for context and if you are interested in participating, please feel free to begin posting below.
Thank you very much in advance for your your help and participation!
I'm Tay, a Game Art and Design student at Ex'pression College for Digital Arts. I am currently taking a media studies class as part of my program. We've been tasked with maintaining a blog, populating it with an interesting point of view and content of substance to support that topic. The following term, a small complimentary documentary will be created of the most successful of these projects.
I've chosen to dedicate my work to art direction in games, concept art and entertainment design (go figure!). To compliment this, I'm also doing research into games education. My goal in creating this cross-forum discussion is to discern what motivations are behind pursuing this education path, what it provides (or an individual thinks it will provide), as well as it's overall importance to the community. In the end, my heart is really set on the project being something not only interesting, but useful to someone somewhere.
General, but ever so slightly aimed at the more experienced
First, are available education options possibly seen as a means to an end by students? (For example, choosing to study game art to avoid programming their way in and vice versa)
Second, Will (or do) current programs of study produce graduates that the industry needs to grow and prosper?
For students, future and current:
Why did you choose to study gaming?
Why and/or how did you choose game art or design?
Do you get what you think you should?
This is essentially a mass interview. It is going to work best if as many perspectives as possible are involved. Those looking to start school and those who've left, students and professionals, large studio and independent, pro education and staunchly self-study. Even educators are invited. Anyone who is involved in the gaming industry (or hopes to be!), this discussion is open to you. My only rule is to not sugar-coat your opinion. I can't build this on fairytales
.As (or if) this progresses, I'll post to the blog, which can be found here: http://students.expression.edu/tayallen/2011/05/20/hmmmm/ , with an analysis of the general consensus at the time of posting. I may also explore other questions as the topic grows. If you would like your comments to be featured, leave a note at the end of your post and I will bookmark it for use.
And... that's about enough rambling from me. Please have a look at the original post on the blog for context and if you are interested in participating, please feel free to begin posting below.
Thank you very much in advance for your your help and participation!
Replies
I think most people go into these courses knowing what sort of area they want to go in to, with an initial interest in that area rather than going into the education because they want to be in the industry no matter what... but the more I think about it I have encountered some students who have just taken the course with no interest in anything.
They do produce graduates that can get into the industry, depending on the university. For the one I know of, it does, but for most people it can take a while after studies to get in. A lot of graduates may not get in though. I think universities could improve the programs so that graduates will fit the industry's needs more. We'll have to see if these courses survive in England after the tuition fees increase to almost 300%.
I couldn't think of what to do in the future basically, I was progressing with these A-levels and no idea about what I could do with them. I think it was my brother who suggested I look into level design, as I had been messing around with Hammer Editor on/off for a number of years. I felt I could probably do it seriously and it was something I was enjoying at the time. I found a booklet inside an Edge magazine which listed all the Games courses in the UK and with that I set to looking at all of them and eliminating them.
I guess I didn't really look hard enough but the university I found which mentioned a lot about level creation was Staffordshire University. It was a Games Design course (while on your blog you mention a design course has a lot of programming, this one was different), and the main gist of it was that it would be a mix of modelling (useful for levels), games engines (making levels), and games design (designing games and levels). So it all fit what I wanted, I think the fact that it's course also used Hammer Editor sold it to me.
As the course went on though, I enjoyed the games engines and physics modules but preferred the modelling side to it. Then as it went on I found that I preferred creating characters than levels, so I concentrated on trying to become a character artist.
I think the arrangement of modules in the course leaves everyone knowing a few different areas but as it goes on you just want to focus on one thing. For me I just wanted to make characters and not have to write a few thousand words to accompany it, or have to do other modules that weren't related to it. In hindsight of course I think if I had been on a more focused course that I'd know even more about the area I want to be in, but initially I wanted to do level design, so my bad.
And, although it'd all be pretty shabby, I could design a game and documentation, level designs and narrative. Move on to environment and level creation. Create a character, rig it and animate it, put that into an engine too (but not the animations). I can then tweak code and botch job a HUD or something. So you get a lot from it I guess.
I did go ahead move the questions up for tl;dr'ers, but I would really like to folks to understand my intentions/ the project so the post will stay it's length.