RobynH
September 7th, 2008, 09:51 AM
So I have about three years of art education under my belt from BYU-Idaho. For the second and third year I put all my guts into things and my art professors often praised me as being one of the top of the class and by far THE hardest worker. Unfortunately, the praise got to my head and I overworked myself and completely burned out. I've been withdrawn from school for over a year. Never graduated.
Now I'm back in good health and a good deal wiser. I'm thinking of going back to school. Now I want to get into game art/3D modeling and animation, which isn't offered at BYU-Idaho, but most of the top-notch schools that I've run into are pretty expensive. Not that I mind going into debt... but my dad doesn't really like the thought.
He thinks that since I already have a feel for good design and some 3D modeling skill, I could probably land an entry-level job or internship or something and get paid to learn the skillsets that I'm missing. Maybe not a lot, but still better than shelling out money to learn the same stuff.
So my question is ... is he right? I do already have the traditional art background, and a lot of the student 'game-art' work that I've seen I've ripped to shreds in my head, but the only 3D programs I know are free stuff like Blender and Wings3D. I haven't even downloaded a free trial-version of Maya because I HATE not being able to actually use what I create in there. Also, while I'm fairly good at modeling objects and environments, I haven't really gotten deep into modeling characters, or animating or anything. I've sorta done it, but not very well. I FEEL inadequate for employment.
Are there other options that I'm not seeing? I mean... maybe I should just shell out the money to buy the full versions of Maya and/or 3DS Max and try to learn it myself. It would be frikkin expensive, but still less than most of these schools. However, I'm not sure that I'd be able to learn everything I needed to know without formal instruction from people who know what they're doing...
Any thoughts?
Now I'm back in good health and a good deal wiser. I'm thinking of going back to school. Now I want to get into game art/3D modeling and animation, which isn't offered at BYU-Idaho, but most of the top-notch schools that I've run into are pretty expensive. Not that I mind going into debt... but my dad doesn't really like the thought.
He thinks that since I already have a feel for good design and some 3D modeling skill, I could probably land an entry-level job or internship or something and get paid to learn the skillsets that I'm missing. Maybe not a lot, but still better than shelling out money to learn the same stuff.
So my question is ... is he right? I do already have the traditional art background, and a lot of the student 'game-art' work that I've seen I've ripped to shreds in my head, but the only 3D programs I know are free stuff like Blender and Wings3D. I haven't even downloaded a free trial-version of Maya because I HATE not being able to actually use what I create in there. Also, while I'm fairly good at modeling objects and environments, I haven't really gotten deep into modeling characters, or animating or anything. I've sorta done it, but not very well. I FEEL inadequate for employment.
Are there other options that I'm not seeing? I mean... maybe I should just shell out the money to buy the full versions of Maya and/or 3DS Max and try to learn it myself. It would be frikkin expensive, but still less than most of these schools. However, I'm not sure that I'd be able to learn everything I needed to know without formal instruction from people who know what they're doing...
Any thoughts?