Stresses, should I just give up or keep on going?
Hello everyone,
I have been plucking away for a couple few years at computer graphics. I have a two year degree in computer animation, but feel like I should know much more than I do. Some people just seem to get it faster, and I have to fight myself to get better. I always have procrastinators fear with projects. I have to make myself do them, as I feel overwhelmed. Right now I am in a studio arts major New Media. I love a mix of technical and creative and this was supposed to be what this major offered. My last class was kinetic art and I had to teach myself about ir sensors arduino programming and soldering, hard but interesting. The New Media program I'm in has now changed and it is now cultural art and more studio, less technical. They now want a portfolio and the portfolio I have is not really very culturally motivated. I have character models that I made after writing a story for them, and nothing too abstract or cultural. I have a project that I did for my class and it has numerous models, dynamics, environment, animation, lighting, and my teacher has told the class, me in particular that if our project is not as arty as he wants that it can be phenomenal and still fail. I am so stressed. I wonder daily what the heck I am doing and if I have enough talent to make more that 8.50 an hour doing retail(yuck). I work, take five classes, maintain a deans list grade point and I am tired. My teacher has already mentioned that I might not be the right fit for a New Media Arts degree. Good lord should I just try to get my Comptia A+ and say the heck with it.
Everyone have a great day.
I have been plucking away for a couple few years at computer graphics. I have a two year degree in computer animation, but feel like I should know much more than I do. Some people just seem to get it faster, and I have to fight myself to get better. I always have procrastinators fear with projects. I have to make myself do them, as I feel overwhelmed. Right now I am in a studio arts major New Media. I love a mix of technical and creative and this was supposed to be what this major offered. My last class was kinetic art and I had to teach myself about ir sensors arduino programming and soldering, hard but interesting. The New Media program I'm in has now changed and it is now cultural art and more studio, less technical. They now want a portfolio and the portfolio I have is not really very culturally motivated. I have character models that I made after writing a story for them, and nothing too abstract or cultural. I have a project that I did for my class and it has numerous models, dynamics, environment, animation, lighting, and my teacher has told the class, me in particular that if our project is not as arty as he wants that it can be phenomenal and still fail. I am so stressed. I wonder daily what the heck I am doing and if I have enough talent to make more that 8.50 an hour doing retail(yuck). I work, take five classes, maintain a deans list grade point and I am tired. My teacher has already mentioned that I might not be the right fit for a New Media Arts degree. Good lord should I just try to get my Comptia A+ and say the heck with it.
Everyone have a great day.
Replies
The trick to learn about school is that your GPA and your degree/certificate do not mean a damn thing to 99% of the game employers out here. No bullshit, this is coming from someone who has been in the industry for a long time.
We just do not care about them at all, grades and degrees tend to have very little bearing on your performance as an employed game development artist. All a degree shows is you can finish something you've started, but each portfolio piece shows this so much better and more succinctly than a degree does.
The chief thing we're looking for is the quality of your artwork. Does it stand up to the industry standard (or does it show the potential to become so)? Look at the Dominance War winners for example, and try to get your portfolio as close to that standard as you possibly can.
Some artists get into the industry without any degree whatsoever, and some get in with a degree, but the degree itself has no bearing on whether they were hired or not. Really. Schools may try to convince you otherwise, but they have a vested interest since they want more of your tuition dollars.
So... don't knock yourself too hard about whether your instructor is being a dick. Ultimately their feedback matters about as much as a flea, because some of the instructors out there have very little understanding of what the industry actually wants. Arty doesn't matter, quality and usability in a game does.
Keep going! I know it can be really daunting. Persistence will pay off!
What has worked for a lot of artists is to post their work on game artist forums like this one, get feedback, improve and keep posting their revisions. Keep looking at what others are doing, and check out the tutorials people point you to, learn and apply, rinse and repeat.
Some good reading that might help
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryGameIndustry
Keep going!
If you want to make Commercial Art, go to a Commercial Art School.
I went to a Fine Arts school and got my degree in Fine Arts - Drawing (It was the only degree granting program I could take in Canada where I could learn 3D at the time).
The only useful thing I got out of it, was a degree that let me work in the states (which wouldn't be a problem for you, seeing as you live in Texas).
The mentality i've had to get as close to breaking in as I think I am, is to not think of art and everything as a giant road that stretches for years on. I've always thought i'm 1 amazingly good project away from a job, that's it. I'm not years away, i just need to make something so mindblowingly awesome that that project will open doors to me. Attacking every art project you do as your stepping stone you'll invest more into it, and get more out of it while holding yourself to a higher standard to produce even better work. (i've had this mindset for years now, and for some people it only takes them months to get their first gig once they think, hey imma just make something bitchen and get a job)
Don't spread yourself thin trying to peck away at getting better, to maintain a pefect GPA. On the contrary fail a class or two because you're so obsessed with your current project. No one's going to turn down your job applicatoin because you didn't finish Ethics, or because your animations aren't good enough while you focused on environments. Get stupid awesomely good at 1 thing and produce 1 single awesome piece for your portfolio. Then gear your resume to highlight that peice and what you've learn from it. That may not be what gets you in, but now you're on the right path and you have a great portfolio piece, which is what getting a job hinges on when you're just breaking in. Now work on a second super awesome project to make your portfolio even stronger, again this project will be so awesome it gets you the job.
Your worth to employers isn't your degree, or your breadth of knowledge, it's that super awesome thing you made that screams "hire me!", and the skills that were required to make that 1 thing that you discussed in your resume.
I highly suggest you get involved in the various competitions going on right now, there are still weeks left in the dominance war pre game, and the dominance war following that covering character art 3d and 2d, as well as animations. There's also the eat 3d competition going on.
Good luck, and i know the stress you're going through all to well. I've always thought though that regardless of your innate talent, if you stick with it long enough, and work hard enough, and you're not terrible, at some point something's gotta break. But that's just my belief, not everyone on the inside is super awesome, but there sure is a lot of competition these days.
One side has me thinking that this is just a typical case of a professor who's looking for work that's good looking, but isn't exactly technically impressive. He may not appreciate all the work that goes into a complicated project, and the fact that everything is done correctly. He could very well just be on the hunt for work that makes an artistic statement rather than having real substance and professional content behind it.
The other side has me thinking that you might be sticking to really clean and technical styles of artwork, but are ultimately rather generic. You do this kind of work because trying new things may be a bit out of your comfort zone.
I don't mean to troll you with that suggestion, but sometimes you can really gain a lot by approaching projects you're not comfortable with. I also find that in those circumstances, that failure is an option because you learn from your mistakes. In this case, it could simply be your professors intention to get you into trying new things and expanding the types of work you can approach. I don't exactly know all of the details, so you'll just have to make that judgment yourself.
The others are quite correct that grades, and school aren't everything. It bucks the trend of what everyone else has told you all your life, but in times like these, your work ethic and talent are what matter most. If you're in this program, I'd just take all you can from it and get that degree. The best it's going to do you is at least tell your employer that you can finish what you start, but not much else. You can think about school, but you should really follow the advice of some of the others and evaluate the quality of your work against some of the best stuff you see out there right now.
You have to understand that school rarely gets you into a position where you're production ready, so you have to be dedicated enough to teach yourself everything else you need to know to land that job. I've seen people come out of these programs and they have no problem finding work. But these guys were all extremely talented and dedicated to going above and beyond learning what their program was teaching them.
Good luck.
So you might hafta ask yourself. Is your school providing what you need for your choosen field?
I just scraped by enough to graduate and focused all my effort into learning stuff myself.
Sounds like your school sucks big ones though.
Anything technical is just a technical exercise to him.not a project and he said that he will fail those students that fall in that category.
Do what you love Hutena! Its never too late !!
I ended up transferring schools, but your circumstances may be different. My advice would be to take a look at your work and see what you really need to address in order to end up where you want to be. Instead of dropping out or transferring this might simply involve reprioritizing your efforts.
I always think a college degree, although not important for finding work in movies/games, can still be useful to have (working overseas, government jobs, teaching, etc.). Depending on how deep you are in the program, it might be worth it to just finish school knowing that you're going to have to put in some time afterwards getting a proper portfolio together on your own. It takes some people years before they "make it" so don't stress yourself out thinking that you have to solve all these issues before graduating. Give them artsy if they really want it, and try to learn what you can from it, but don't expect it to be part of your portfolio.
I don't know about your professor, but I've found that sometimes you have to keep an open mind; keep what you find useful and stick to your guns on what you consider better practices. Texturing can come at almost any time in production because it's independent of cameras. Especially if you're working with other people you may find it necessary to hand off the model to someone else to start rigging and animating and camera work while you work on textures. In some situations you can even project textures in post after the scene has been rendered. Whatever gets the job done most efficiently and effectively is the right solution.
Of course, this is all assuming you really, REALLY want to work in commercial art. If you find yourself having strong doubts about it then that's a whole other situation.
You just have to get the hell out of that school in my opinion. Your teacher really has no clue, and sounds like an egotistical jerk with a negative attitude. I wouldn't pay them another cent. He doesn't even sound that good at teaching fine art either.
Really the best thing you can do is make a clean break, just stop going.
I got an F in a college course (an opera appreciation elective) because I realized in the middle of it that it just wasn't for me, so I stopped spending any more time on it, didn't attend another class. Teacher failed me, and rightly so. But it was absolutely the best thing for me to do, I really hated it with a passion. I spent the time learning anatomy instead, which I loved.
Best of luck with it! Let us know how it goes...
The second I was able to take my education into my own hands and learn what I wanted when I wanted at the pace I wanted, I loved it.
It looks like your school is actually hindering your progress instead of propelling it.
Everyone is right. I have never been to a traditional school for game development. Learned everything I know through self study, and have now gotten good enough to get freelance jobs which could turn into fulltime opportunities soon enough.
That's really how I ended up where I'm at. It wasn't the degree, it wasn't the grades and it wasn't even the core work. It was working with people, friends, that appreciated my work and felt confident in recommending me for a job.
Sure enough, I have more debt that I care to but I don't think I would have made it into the industry as easily without the contacts I made while in school. Just a thought.
The quality of the schools over here in the Netherlands, for 3d and the like, is pretty bad.
I was in school "studying" multimedia design, which had some 3d in it, mostly video though.
After dropping out, I took one CGWorkshops class at CGSociety, the game design one with Jonathan Rush, which basically taught me more about the stuff I wanted to learn, which is 3d, game design etc., then the 2 years I spent in school.
So I am mostly self-taught but need to invest more time in learning more, might take another CGWorkshop.
Now the question on my mind is, should I continue to work, I currently work in the local grocery store which pays above reasonably (not the best job but still), while working on a portfolio, entering contests etc. and then try to apply for a job in the indusrty when I feel like my portfolio is up there.
Or should I go back to school pay a couple thousand euro's a year for 4 years, and try to build a portfolio during those years.
Decisions, decisions, quite stressfull,have kept me up at night wondering about if I was ever going to make it etc.
Would love to hear some advice.
Sorry to hijack your thread Hutena
Stress like this is normal. I've been doing 3D for VFX and games for over 18 years and still feel stressed at different times. I've also been teaching 3D for the last 5 years and I've seen a lot of students stress out. Here are my two cents for what it's worth. Try and figure out what gets you excited about 3D. Is it building cool models? Technical problem solving? Making a character move? Sometimes when you're learning it seems like your drinking from a fire hose. Too much information is coming at you too fast and you need time process what you've learned and practice what you've been taught. Realize we all suck when we started doing this stuff. Practice, hard work and passion is what is going to get through. Eric makes a lot of valid points especially about looking at whats going on with other artists work. I'm also a little bothered by the fact that your teacher is dismissive of the work produced in the so called commercial industry. Anyway hang in there and work hard and try and have some fun!
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i love how the german guys name is like 50 characters long but he pronounces it in less than a second