Benefit of funky course studies

[Oliver23]

I've seen a lot of debate about the best course of study for the aspiring concept artist, mostly centered on illustration, animation and industrial design. Now, how helpful would double majoring or minoring with art history, english, film, interior design, or architecture etc. be? Or is it better to study these subjects on your own?
Some artist, like Feng Zhu (architecture) and James Gurney (anthropology) were in involved in fields before, and seem to have benefited.

[Cthogua]

Well, first...the best course of study for any type of artist is one that best suits his/her personal inclinations and style of learning. So its difficult to recommend one without personally knowing you.

However I am of the opinion that knowing more about the world around you can only make you a better artist/designer/human being. Especially concept art. The more you know about everything, the more material you have to draw upon when coming up with new concepts. Some people seem to believe that creative people just pull concepts out of their ass...and while I can't really speak for where the ideas issue from...NOTHING IS BORN IN A VACUUM. Your brain is a crazy blender where everything you've known, thought, seen, heard, smelled, ect is mixed together and ideas are born from this soup, not some magical gift of imagination. Powerfully imaginative people are most often people who are able to associate things with no logical connection thus combining them they come up with novel concepts. Knowledge feeds imagination. The more you know the more the world expands around you. I don't know if you need to go as far as minoring, or double majoring. If you want to be a professional artist there is a certain level of quality expected of your work that only comes through intense study of artmaking and minors or double majors would probably distract from that....but don't let art become your only obsession, the artist that only knows about technique is a boring person indeed, and boring people make boring art.

Also don't think that learning stops at some point, like the end of college or something. Keep feeding your brain. Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) said at a commencement speech,
"We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery...it recharges by running."

So I say take a few random non-art classes (if you can) however also, and perhaps more importantly, learn on your own time, and learn to enjoy learning.

Sorry if I ended up being a little long winded on this but one of my friends and I had this very discussion earlier today

James Ball

[darth massacre]

Cthogua pretty much said it.

The brian is a our most important tool. So whatever knowledge you have will help you in concept art. But of course you need the skills of drawing, painting, sculpting and so on before you can produce recognisable drawings, but yeah once that's achieved the rest are your brains.

So I think the more important thing is your curiosity rather than what courses you decide to take.

[stoph]

whilst brian is pretty important, i feel the brain is important also. haha what fun a simple spelling error can make :P

[Oliver23]

These are good responses!