Questions about Gnomon
Hey there everyone.
I'm just looking at Gnomon's website. The idea of studying there in some capacity has been a consideration of mine for a long while, but I'm just looking into it further. This isn't really a 'should I go to school or practice in my own time' question since I know there's plenty of those threads already.
I've got some questions about it, for anyone who knows, or has attended.
1. In terms of entry requirements, for the 2 year program, I'm guessing it's pretty strict on who they accept. Does one need to basically be pretty amazing already just to even get on the program, or will they take people on with beginner level skills.
2. How in the world do most people fund it? I'm not sure how it works for domestic applicants, but as I live in the UK, from what it looks like on their website, it seems I'm gonna need about $100k. Obviously student funding from England isn't gonna be possible, and I sure as hell can't just pull that kinda money out of nowhere. It's also unlikely I'd get approved for that kind of bank loan, and I'm not sure if that's something I'd want to do anyway.
3. Is it really as 'Holy Grail of education' as it seems? It's like their entire Alumni are high flyers of the CG world, be it games, film, TV etc.
And finally, has anybody studied their online classes? This is something I'm particularly keen to explore since it's much closer to my realm of possibility. They do a 9 week Maya course on hard surface modelling which looks great but how does it compare to the other selection of online training such as Digital Tutors etc?
Thanks
I'm just looking at Gnomon's website. The idea of studying there in some capacity has been a consideration of mine for a long while, but I'm just looking into it further. This isn't really a 'should I go to school or practice in my own time' question since I know there's plenty of those threads already.
I've got some questions about it, for anyone who knows, or has attended.
1. In terms of entry requirements, for the 2 year program, I'm guessing it's pretty strict on who they accept. Does one need to basically be pretty amazing already just to even get on the program, or will they take people on with beginner level skills.
2. How in the world do most people fund it? I'm not sure how it works for domestic applicants, but as I live in the UK, from what it looks like on their website, it seems I'm gonna need about $100k. Obviously student funding from England isn't gonna be possible, and I sure as hell can't just pull that kinda money out of nowhere. It's also unlikely I'd get approved for that kind of bank loan, and I'm not sure if that's something I'd want to do anyway.
3. Is it really as 'Holy Grail of education' as it seems? It's like their entire Alumni are high flyers of the CG world, be it games, film, TV etc.
And finally, has anybody studied their online classes? This is something I'm particularly keen to explore since it's much closer to my realm of possibility. They do a 9 week Maya course on hard surface modelling which looks great but how does it compare to the other selection of online training such as Digital Tutors etc?
Thanks
Replies
2. Loans, student finical aid, and rich families. I know schools have different policies and what not, most schools will help you get as much "free money" as possible. And I'm sure they'll know more about dealing with students in the UK, so email them (again).
3. No idea, never really talked to anyone that went there for school and was out for a few years, I actually visited gnomon once (my family was in LA anyway, so we added the stop) it was a really cool place, cool staff, hard working students, a very art first intensive mindset (traditional sculpting and such, which is GOOD (IMO)), they have a CG art gallery, too, and host lots of events. Decided the the costs and moving (at the moment) wasn't for me.
I think you should visit before you make a 2 year and expensive investment, but I'm sure they'll help as much as they can with the rest.
I guess talking to them will probably be the best idea initially. I'll fire them an email.
It's just something that's always interested me since I first discovered it a couple years ago, I guess it's just always fallen into the 'In your dreams' category of my ambitions, but recently due to getting turned down from a few jobs, I'm starting to rethink some of my once crazy ideas.
It's definitely a hell of a lot of money, and obviously if I'm likely to come out in 2 years time and be in the same position but in someones pocket for $100k, then it's a bad bad idea, but if it's gonna give me the kind of learning experience their website and others have made out then I'm more than happy to go for it.
Thanks again
Some stuff is very insightful. The stuff by Alex Alvarez is pretty awesome, he takes the time to explain things without over doing it. Ian Joyner from Blur studios also has some good tutorials on there.
What I find with some stuff though is the artists are awesome but they're not really teachers. It can be insightfull to see them work but sometimes its not enough. That or they dont vet their scripts. Jeff Patton(an mentalray artist I really admire) did some stuff and it was really scattered and felt unprepared. It made no sense because his written tutorials are excellent.
my 2 cent.
I would of loved to be able to go to gnomon, their focus really seems to be in the right place (making specialists with a strong art and 3D generalist background).
I hope you hear from some alumni currently in the video games industry talk about the school.
I was more asking about their scheduled training courses, I probably should've been more specific!
I've watched a fair bit of their training DVD's and you're totally correct, some is great but a lot is a bit more of an insight than a tutorial. Still useful nonetheless, especially being able to see the workflow of some industry pro's.
Yeah the course I was talking about is a 10 week online course in modelling where you get homework/graded assignments etc.
http://www.gnomonschool.com/courses/ol_polygon-modeling-01.php
Obviously you don't have anyone at hand to ask questions, but then you can ask them here.
Have you had a look a Escape Studios? I considered them, but couldn't afford it at the time when i was just starting off. They have some online stuff now aswell that wasn't available back then. Some of the tutorials look pretty basic for the £££ they are charging though.
I personally think that your spending a whole lot of cash for something thats already available freely.
and to be honest I would never pay 100k for any type of schooling, think how long that would take to pay back on a game artists salary. for the 1st few years you will probably be under 50k, with living expenses on top of every day life. It might make sense to pay for that kind of education if you are a lawyer or in some type of job where starting salary is over 100k, but most game artists will never break 100k salary in their entire career.
I think having a variety of instructors is good even when they aren't the best "teachers" as long as they can critic your work and give you good advice, it can make up for not being able to completely walk you though their process on a dvd.
I guess it's Gnomons high regard and integration with the top studios that attracts me over other educational routes. Obviously I could just go into a UK University, but for some reason or other I'm kinda thinking I would either 'go hard or go home' meaning I'd either like to study at Gnomon, or just continue to develop at home.
The communication factor is a huuuge thing for me right now though which is motivating me to look into education. I seem to have hit a wall with my development and while I'm trying to improve further, even asking on here and getting feedback is sometimes not as good as being involved in a class full of people and actually communicating with them. This is why I'm so desperate to just get onto that first step of the career ladder, because I feel like where I'm at now I'm kinda stuck, like I learned the basics, and now I've stalled.
There seems to be a little gap that is tricky to bridge. Like you can learn all the basics at home, online with tutorials etc, but then there's that gap between being 'pretty good' and 'employable'. Now there are some people who just jump that gap because of ninja skills and they're very naturall talented, and there are some who just about get to the employable stage and once they're in work, continue to develop due to the work environment. Of course some people also jump the gap using education, but some of us... myself included, hit that wall and find it incredibly difficult to get over. Getting crit on here is all well and good, and incredibly helpful, but there's only so much one can do even with all the crit in the world because they are limited by their physical ability to produce something.
For example, lets say you're working on a character, and you post on here. You get some crits saying 'these proportions coudl do with fixing', 'the clothes could be creased better' etc, now obviously if those changes are made to the character, it will be better, but making those changes requires skills that might not exist yet.
I'm in a bit of a developmental rut so to speak, don't get me wrong, I'm still loving every bit of what I do, and still love trying to develop...haven't lost motivation or anything like that, it's just that I'm not getting any better!
that said for the money they charge they have no real excuse not to be very picky in their vetting. Being skilled doesn't infer the ability to teach. I had teachers from Don Bluth and Disney. some were awesome teachers others .....weren't.
If people here are giving you feedback, but your not exactly sure whats wrong with it or how to fix it, ask them for a paint over of pics of what they are talking about, I'm sure most people would be happy to help, but I also agree there is a big difference between an instructor spending 2 hours critiquing everyone's work versus a short 3 line post.
Stop blaming "lack of natural talent/ninja skills", most artists spend a lot of time practising their craft and its pretty insulting to just attribute all their effort to their "natural talent", as if they didn't work hard for it.
You spend too much time discussing how to do things and not enough time actually doing things. Planning is good, but you're overdoing it.
By the way off topic; How's your Japanese studies going? Did you give up or did you find some better methods of learning?
[ame]
Have you looked at Escape studios? A guy who studies with me did their course and it got him some pretty good skills in a short time to work on to excel himself, and it got him a job on completion.
University of Derby offers one of the best Game Art courses in England, i'm on my final year here and each year group just gets better and better. We have another 75 odd people joining the new first year.
It doesn't cover sculpting as much, but alongside the in school hours they have master-classes from current people in Industry, one of the guys last year who had a master-class every week was one of the lead character artists at Rebellion, so it's a pretty industry heavy course along with all the other staff.
The course changes every year with certain modules to get the best out of the student opinion and skill levels.
Whatever you choose best of luck
This is because of the reasons stated above. As I said, I'm finding myself not improving unless I get some assistance on here, and this is what I mean, one can ask 'too many' questions on here which is why I've been considering education.
And I only reply to threads so often because I like to be thankful for peoples responses, I always think it's kinda sad when people jump on here to ask a question, someone takes time to give a decent reply and then the OP either doesn't even bother to post a thanks.
I said that badly. I didn't mean all the best artists just sat on their arse and pulled out some uber talent. I know anyone who's successful has worked damn hard to get there, I don't dispute that for a second. I just mean that the simple idea that time/effort = improvement is just not true. You need another catalyst, and that comes in the form of guidance and teaching or a better natural ability, or of course both.
For example, the last 3 or 4 months has been super quiet at work for me as the construction industry gets back on it's feet, and nobody even wants Architects, let alone Arch-Viz. So I've had a LOT of time to do work on my game art. Now I've probably spent the best part of 30 hours a week for at least 8 weeks or so trying to improve, and in all honesty, I don't feel I have.
They're just on hold. I was really enjoying it and making ok progress, I just felt I should focus the time on my portfolio for now. I'm still listening to stacks of Japanese music and practising my recognition of Hiragana just to keep it fresh and hopefully that daily immersion will have been a big benefit when I do decide to go back to properly studying.
@R_Fletch_R - Thanks a lot for the link to the podcast. I'd never heard of that guy but he seems to talk some sense. Should do me some good to have a look/listen.
@Mr Bear - I've looked at Escape briefly but not in detail recently. I may have another look, the main concern initially was that I'm a little too far to commute to London and living costs would just be too high if I was to go back to studying now. I hear Derby uni is good, Leicester too. The only problem with going to uni is that I'm 25, have been working full time for about 7 years, got a house with my girlfriend and pay bills/rent/own a car etc, and to drop all that and go back to living off of a student loan or a part-time salary would be almost impossible.
Anyway, I just need to get my head down I guess, I'm sure I'll figure it out.
I'm gonna call this topic closed because I've turned it into a 'Polycount is not your Blog' thread.
http://www.escapestudios.com/en_GB/online-learning.html
However if you're really spending 30 hours a week on game art and have been doing so for the past 8 weeks, then you should have something to show for it - unless it was all tutorials, in which case you should have learnt quite a lot.
I don't know what kind of improvement you wanted to see within 8 weeks but it greatly depends on how you spent that time.
Everything you learnt counts as an "improvement", even if its not directly visible in whatever you produce. If it boosts your knowledge/workflow, then its a improvement.
It takes a long time to improve, online courses and tutorials help with building technical skills and efficient workflow, but you shouldn't expect to suddenly become a great artist after the course has ended... it gives you the skills to be able to practice more efficiently and the knowledge to just do things without seeking as much help.
off topic; taking a break from learning Japanese is the same as quitting
Ive met some students out of gnomon. Some are great, some are average, all of them grew over their time over there I am sure. As a european 100k seems crazy to me, but I guess thats another discussion altogether.
About progress and skills building. I think its much, much more simple than you think! On your website you state that you have advanced skills in Maya, Photoshop, Zbrush and 3DSMax. Meaning that you already have all the tools you need to produce artwork.
So, technically you need nothing else. Now, you mention that getting 2hours crits is better than getting a 3 liner and a paintover. Truth is, now you just need to practice your artistic sense so that you can make the paintover ... yourself!
It doesnt mean you need to become a concept artist. You just need to spend more time looking back at what you produce, and put in the necessary reasoning so that you can tell your own mistakes and weaknesses by yourself. Studios are interested in people able to be independent and productive.
Take your spawn model for instance. What can you say about it ? What should be fixed ? What is almost there but not really? Should it be displayed on your folio? What would it take to start it over and doing it better?
Now you could say, that you need knowledge in order to critique even your own stuff. That knowledge is easy to find in oldschool art theory books (on composition, anatomy, color). Even teachers wont give it to you all served, they might hint at things but you'll have to do the homework yourself in the end.
If you have free time for art practice before doing your next big move, try to split it halfway between 2D and 3D. By the end of this time, thanks to the critical eye aquired through 2D work, I can guarantee that your 3D will improve more than if you spent the whole time clicking away in Maya.
Point being you can spend a crap load of money and still not be in much better standings. Over the past 2 years (since I graduated that is) I have been busting my ass, and only recently have I been working successfully as a freelance artist. Almost everything I learned was either threw polycount, or tutorial dvds and the internet. Even if you went to Gnomon and it guaranteed you a job out of school, I still think it would not be worth the 100,000 debt. By the way, in no way would it in-fact gaurentee you a job. The hard work and dedication it takes to get a job in the games industry, is just as obtainable on your own as coming from a good school imo.
I never went to Gnomon so I can't say for sure, but I seriously doubt that if you can't get in the games industry on your own, then you would be able to if only you went to Gnomon. Plus you save yourself a 100,000. I would just stick with polycount if I were you.
The instructors here are amazing and the amount of connections you make is well worth the money. Not to mention you're across the street from awesome industry gallery shows and huge free public events which hundreds of people attending. Their new program is probably tuned better if you know what you want to do, as they adapted to a sort of VFS type program where you pick a "track" on what you want to do (IE: modelling, animation, visual effects, etc). Or you can just take individual "professional studies" classes which are just single or multiple classes of your choice. If you're in LA I'd recommend taking a tour of the school or even signing up for a single class.
If you have any questions feel free to throw me a PM or IM over AIM (ceebee3d). I am in no way a spokesperson for Gnomon, but I'll tell you straight up what to expect. And as like any school, you're probably not going to come out of Gnomon with a job unless you're willing to work long hours and work on personal projects in your free time. There's not much time for screwing around here, unlike 4 year colleges where you have plenty of time to waste and procrastinate.
Thanks for all the advice/suggestions/help, it's really appreciated.
I think $100k+ is far too much to spend despite the quality of tuition, and really I do have all I need right here in my head and on PC.
@Pior - Thanks, I am actually working on 2D Skills a fair bit and in that department I can say I've noticed a big improvement. I asked a while back about painting face/muscle textures from scratch and you suggested doing some drawing from life in 2D to help develop those skills. So I made sure to do a portrait every night just in pencil/paper and as well as enjoying it, my recent concept for a character I just did has seen a massive improvement over any previous 2D work I've done.
Thanks for the advice on analysing what I can improve. When I look back at my work, I see so much that could be improved! I guess knowledge of where improvement could be made is development in itself. Overall the main problem with every single one of my projects is that I go too far through without posting for crit. I need to post regularly and get crit at every stage, otherwise I get to the end, and there's so much to be changed at once and I'm so far into it I just never make the changed to improve it.
@Yozora -
Great suggestions though thanks, saying that improvement can come in the form of greater knowledge you're right, and I didn't think about development like that either.
And yes I know I've probably ruined my Japanese studies, but as I said, other things have gotta take priority for now.
@BradMyers - Yeah you're right man, the dumb thing is I've given the same advice before here on PC when people have asked about schooling. I do have all I need here really. If I was a complete beginner or hadn't really done anything in game art before then I guess school may be a way to go, but as Pior said, really I've got all the technical skills I need so it's just about working with it.
@ceebee - Thanks a lot for the reply, it's great to hear that Gnomon is so good. It does look like an awesome place. It is just far too expensive for an international student. I'll definitely go have a look round if I'm in California. I think the school of PC is gonna be my place of study though.
Thanks again for all the help/advice, I'll see you soon in WAYWO and P&P!
Good you realized that, since I was about to say the same thing.
Related, if you still wanna do studies, maybe the school I teach at is something to consider. We're working on an international program (though don't quote me on how finished that is, might not be for next year), big advantage is it's a fraction of almost every other school, only 8000$ a year or something and we do pretty well quality wise. And it's close to the UK.
(I wouldn't normally do this sort of promoting, but whatever)
Yeah I've checked out the school you teach at from the link on your site. Looks great and I'll keep an eye on the course for international students, would be cool to be taught directly by you!