Game Art courses and Schools

[latinmessiah]

Originally Posted by kaf

I'm attending the Art Institute of San Francisco - here's the program outline : The Art Institute of California — San Francisco

Of course, school isn't the necessary route, but there's a great atmosphere available which can help improve your skills.

I graduated from there Spring 2006. Attending a game art school definitely increases your exposure, compared to learning at home. I learned a lot from classmates, instructors, guest speakers; and participating in the Portfolio Show helped me land my first professional job at Visual Concepts.

But I heard from a friend of mine that the faculty is changing due to the fact that the school now requires their instructors to have a Master's Degree in order to teach, which unfortunately, rules out most of the game development professionals that I once knew.

I'd recommend taking a tour before enrolling, though.

[tigger]

anyone know if theres any good game/digital/computer arts courses in scotland?
currently im applying to abertay, but I don't just want to apply to one course or anything in case I don't get in.
thanks

[Talon]

Duncan and Jordanstone (part of Dundee Uni, I think) might do one.

I don't really know.

[sgv3dmax]

Is there any school / university offering PG degree course on Game art (not diploma) in canada?

[Craig Lewis]

May as well post up my college.

I go here.

Would I recommend it?

I think so yeah. You only get out what you put in, so if you try hard, you can learn a fair bit,though if you don't bother you wont learn anything. You're shown the ropes with things such as 3ds max, but a lot of it comes down to learning in your own time as well.

I don't know how many colleges there are doing this in the UK, but it's fairly good for those just coming out of high school who want to get into games.

[SlappyBag]

I'm on a similar course Craig but I wouldn't reccommend it to anybody on here. If you've the dedication and experience to work well on this website than it is most likely that an introductory course isn't well suited. This is just from my own experience though, I've been part of the mod community for three - four years and therefore this college course hasn't taught me much - though it does give me good grades (Triple distinction atm) which means a good uni.

[Craig Lewis]

I think I'm in a similar situation to you. After having worked on mods beforehand really gave me the upper hand. As I say, a lot of stuff is more self taught - at college you're just introduced to things.

I guess I should have said I'd recommend it to complete newbies to the world of game art. Certainly most of the people here are talented enough to not need it, but I thought I'd post it for anyone that interested.

Though it certainly helped me. The college set me up with some work experience several months back, and I've been working there on my days off college since.

[Talon]

I'm in the same boat as the above two fellows. 2 years of free mod experience starting out as a total 3D noob has taught me far more and far better than 3 years of expensive university could ever have taught me.

However, university has allowed me to make contacts in the industry, gain work experience and even pitch game ideas to publishers. Although, it only presents the opportunities, you've got to take them. Networking is key

It seems common with these courses that if you expect to be taught all you'll need to know just from the work you do there - you won't get far. It's probably best to treat it as a means to an end and do as much (or more) outside of the course than you do inside it.

[DaveW]

That's pretty much the theory behind all university courses. Well, except the ones like 'Sports Science'.

[Talon]

Well, yeah, but when you're forking out about £5,000 a year for all the stuff uni requires, you expect to get a little more from it :P