Clock
December 1st, 2008, 10:54 PM
Er, well, hello everyone. I'm new at this forum, although I've been stalking here for a while. :bashful: Anyway, enough introductions.
I'm a senior in high school with dreams of becoming an animator, so naturally I've been taking art classes and am now applying to art schools. One of my choices is Cal Arts, along with Ringling and Art Center. I'm planning on applying for character animation at Cal Arts, but I've heard tons of different things about what the school is looking for.
Allow me to explain. One of the first people I met who went there was a woman who now works at Cartoon Network, who took a look at my drawings and said they're good, but to take more life drawing classes. (I'm taking Figure Drawing at the moment, so it's all good.) Next, I met an animator who went there in the 90's, around the time Hanna Barbera was becoming popular with the school again. He looked at some of my character design drawings and said if I had that along with figure drawing/life drawing stuff, they'd love me. Finally, I went to National Portfolio Review Day, where I had enough time to only look at 2 schools. Naturally I went to Ringling first, and they, too, liked my life drawings and gave me constructive criticism, said how kick-butt their school was, etc.
But then there's the Cal Arts rep. I waited -2- hours to talk to this guy, who is a figure drawing teacher. It was most likely the fatigue, but his advice was... pretty harsh. In fact, it wasn't very constructive or helpful at all. Now I'm not trying to say that he's evil or bad for being the ONLY person so far to give me negative reviews, but seriously, a lot of what he said was about him, and how he got in, etc. He told me to use more color in my figure drawing stuff (which was actually helpful advice), but then he had to sort of... admit I could draw.
Now I'm kind of confused about what Cal Arts wants. I'm definitely pumping up my figure drawing pieces, but do they seriously want drop-dead gorgeous work with tons of color and be amazingly perfect and detailed, or do they want someone who understands anatomy and animation and is more about the character design side of animation? I feel like applying for character animation is more like illustration to them than it is to me.
I'm a senior in high school with dreams of becoming an animator, so naturally I've been taking art classes and am now applying to art schools. One of my choices is Cal Arts, along with Ringling and Art Center. I'm planning on applying for character animation at Cal Arts, but I've heard tons of different things about what the school is looking for.
Allow me to explain. One of the first people I met who went there was a woman who now works at Cartoon Network, who took a look at my drawings and said they're good, but to take more life drawing classes. (I'm taking Figure Drawing at the moment, so it's all good.) Next, I met an animator who went there in the 90's, around the time Hanna Barbera was becoming popular with the school again. He looked at some of my character design drawings and said if I had that along with figure drawing/life drawing stuff, they'd love me. Finally, I went to National Portfolio Review Day, where I had enough time to only look at 2 schools. Naturally I went to Ringling first, and they, too, liked my life drawings and gave me constructive criticism, said how kick-butt their school was, etc.
But then there's the Cal Arts rep. I waited -2- hours to talk to this guy, who is a figure drawing teacher. It was most likely the fatigue, but his advice was... pretty harsh. In fact, it wasn't very constructive or helpful at all. Now I'm not trying to say that he's evil or bad for being the ONLY person so far to give me negative reviews, but seriously, a lot of what he said was about him, and how he got in, etc. He told me to use more color in my figure drawing stuff (which was actually helpful advice), but then he had to sort of... admit I could draw.
Now I'm kind of confused about what Cal Arts wants. I'm definitely pumping up my figure drawing pieces, but do they seriously want drop-dead gorgeous work with tons of color and be amazingly perfect and detailed, or do they want someone who understands anatomy and animation and is more about the character design side of animation? I feel like applying for character animation is more like illustration to them than it is to me.