Eventually when I go to school for my degree, should I go for game artist or designer. I’ve been drawing all my life so i’m obssesed with art and story behind characters, but I heard you can can be a game designer and still do art so which one should I do?
DON’T GO TO ART SCHOOL!!!
Seriously, it’s a colossal waste of time, money, and youth. All art schools do is cash checks and corral you from class to class until they give you a 100% worthless piece of paper.
If you want to be an artist get lots of books and spend a lot of time practicing. Like a 10,000 hours worth. Do eyes over and over and over. Do hands over and over and over. Do poses over and over and over. Do everything until you can bring down the draw time to less than a minute for each part.
Learn software. Learn to draw with your arm. Learn how to get yourself out there. And do something on your own, parallel to working at a job.
But whatever you do:
DON’T GO TO ART SCHOOL!!!
There are WAY too many art students that think they’re owed something just because some school gave them a piece of paper and a bunch of teachers filled up their ego. When in reality, something like 95% of them have no business trying to make money off of their sub industry par skills.
Seriously:
DON’T GO TO ART SCHOOL!!!
The cliche jokes about art school graduates working at Starbucks exist for a reason. Don’t be a cliche joke.
DON’T GO TO ART SCHOOL!!!
4 Likes
I’m not going to say not to go to art school, but I will say that Portfolio matters more than any other piece of paper you can come up with.
If you go to art school, you’ll need to make a portfolio. A great school will force you to make one. Most schools will not.
If you don’t go to art school, you’ll need to make a portfolio. Nobody will force you. You’ll have to do it on your own.
My advice is to get started helping with projects now. Go to the Collab section and just start helping people. You will learn a ton, get experience, and have stuff for your portfolio.
Also, go sign up on Polycount Forum and start posting your work for critique. It’s going to be painful at first, but never argue with them. Just accept their advice, improve your work, and it will definitely be worth your while.
It’s not as though a university would have made them bad artists though, so they wouldn’t have made anything of themselves regardless. Just saying ‘don’t go to school’ because you buy into those stereotypes isn’t great advice if you can’t say why.
I’m not an artist and I know nothing about art courses, but nothing in your post actually says why you believe you shouldn’t go to school to learn game art.
Also, back to the OP, Game design and art for games is quite different, with unique sets of skills. I’d do research before jumping into one or the other.
Actually, that’s EXACTLY what I’m saying. From what I’ve seen most art schools (especially Art Institute) instill this idea of false accomplishment and reward mediocrity when in reality people could spend that time more constructively practicing the craft.
I’m not trying to be an ass about it. But there is a brutal reality waiting for a LOT of would be artists that get over inflated egos.
And yeah, over inflated egos are definitely another characteristic of the barista/artist cliche’. And it comes from a long line of art teachers who tell you you’re the best, when really you could use some reality checking.
That’s not to say that I don’t think that people shouldn’t strive to be professional artists, what I’m saying is that art schools have very little to do with reaching that goal.
Surely this is just the difference between a good and bad school?
Like I said, not an artist, so no clue. As a programmer who went to university though, I feel like it’s completely the opposite situation for my occupation. It seems bizarre to me to have such expensive courses that achieve nothing.
I do realise that generally degrees aren’t a requirement for top art positions like they are for programming though, so granted there are significant differences. I’d imagine that you’d need significant technical knowledge in a top art position in a games studio, which surely a decent art course would give.
Thanks guys I’ve been looking around and see, plenty of people have gotten jobs without degrees it just matters what you have to show I guess.
1 Like
We hire freelance artists exclusively on portfolio strength and style match alone if they are remote working. A probationary period let’s us know if the productivity is there to match the quality, and if their personality is a cultural match. Resumes never get opened.
If you were a programmer, that would be different. We’d be looking for a maths or physics degree combined with programming experience either as a games or asset developer.
3 Likes
Thank you for telling me that and is the artist the guy who animates also.
The artist does everything that is not code. The coder does everything that is not art.
To be a competent game artist you should have a working knowledge and be able to make a passing attempt at every part of the pipeline. From concepting to modelling to rigging to animation. From characters to UI to environments. Its perfectly okay to specialise in something. Big companies often want specialists. But you should know your whole pipe line.
The same principle applies on the coding side. Game designers have an even rougher road, they need a decent understanding of both art and code.
2 Likes
Someone is rather impassioned about this. My general understanding is there are far more unscrupulous schools in the US then the rest of the world.
A good degree programme will leave you knowing the stuff you need to know or force you to fail or drop out. Do be wary of school programmes you can’t fail. However there are plenty of art degrees focused on computer graphics or graphics design that are actually valid ways to get into the industry.
Growing up I was obsessed with art. I have boxes and boxes stuffed with sketch books. And I watched friend after friend go to school for art.
And all of them had this delusion about their skill that was down right cult like.
I on the other hand was never content and always saw room for improvement. Mean while one friend would spend 2 hours drawing one very poor illustration and days plastering it all over the web.
That’s when I decided that art school wasn’t for me.
And you know what? I know more people that went to school than I have fingers and toes. But not one, NOT ONE, is now a professional artist. Not one.
Art schools are a racket that ruin lives.
2 Likes
The only good thing about art school is an immediate group of peers and that is not worth the price of admission.
1 Like
well, i would not put it as harsh as Not_Sure,
but from what i have seen, read and experienced, he is right
art schools won`t make you a good artist
they will teach you basics
you still need to put in all the time practicing and you will need to learn all the advanced stuff for yourself
(yes, there are some schools or courses, that are pretty good, but its a minority and they are pretty expensive)
from the knowledge perspective its propably easier and faster to learn all this stuff by yourself
there are a lot of tutorials and explanations on the internet for free
and there are also sites like http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/ where you can buy online courses from real professionals who currently work in the industry and know their stuff
the upside of art schools, at least if you do something like a bachelor, would be that you can also work outside of your country more easily
and there are still jobs which require some sort of diploma, simply because the people hiring don`t know any better
but for gameart it really comes down to your portfolio in 99% of the cases
100% agree with this. We have one employee straight out of art school who performed better than a veteran. Don’t be afraid of competition out there from people more experienced than you. Most of the time newer artists are more up to date with the latest tools while veterans are stuck in their old ways.
If you’re going to be a game artist, don’t even touch Unity until you can make great 3D models in blender/max/maya first.
3 Likes
This is some golden truth right here.
I would also recommend not going to art school. It is a waste of time and energy if what you want is to get into the art profession. The truth that no art school will tell you is that NOBODY CARES IF YOU WENT TO ART SCHOOL. Nobody. Your future boss will not care. Your future boss will only care about what you can do.
Now, what you need is to be able to do better than others. You need to draw better than others. You need to know how to work with color better than others. You need to show in your portfolio that you have enough skills so that they will hire you instead of the hundreds of other people at the door. Some of the people at that door will have gone to art school(even fancy famous ones that cost a lot of money) and they will think they have an edge over you. They don’t. The only edge is what’s in the portfolio.
Everything you need you can teach yourself, either through online/book/video resources, or by socializing with other like minded individuals that will push you to excel. But mostly what you need is to push yourself. Practice everyday. Practice when you don’t want to. Don’t accept the last thing you did, make it better. make it faster. make it, then trash it and make it again. You can always do it better.
Also, there’s always someone out there that can do it better than you. Don’t get discouraged. Just get yourself to be better, all the time. Embrace your failures and learn from them. Trash your successes and learn from them. It’s a long road, but plenty of people have gotten there and you can too.
source: Me. I spent nearly 20 years as a graphic artist in NYC. Worked with some amazing artists, some who didn’t go to art school. Worked with some total crap artists, most who went to art school. I didn’t go to art school.
1 Like
I don’t know if it’s about being “better” or “worse” than competing artists. What it comes down to, at least for me when I was shopping around, is there are artists that can and there are artists that can not.
And the artists that can not are over whelming in numbers, making the artists that can hard to find.
Then once you have a nice selection of artists who can, then it really comes down to whoever is going to be a best fit for the project with their art styles, personalities, availability, and cost.
But the biggest, most important, number one thing I need to see in an artist before I’d hire them is to see that they have a passion for the project.
If they don’t have that, just forget it. You’ll get lazy work sent in late and squeezed for every penny along the way.
@gdog105 - Sorry, I kind of got WAY off topic there. If you are serious about being an artist you should do the following:
1) Spend at least 20 hours a week of “delibrate practice”.
Delibrate being the key word here. One big mistake that I made was doodling WAY WAY WAY too much. What doodling does is instill bad habits. In my case, drawing from the wrist and not the arm, and using sketchy lines rather than clean ones.
Delibrate practice means that you set up a frame work of skills to work on and go through the actions precisely and in full again and again and again to get it in your muscle memory.
And above all else you need to learn speed and abandon fear of screwing up. Spending hours on one drawing and getting sucked into the time invested, inhibiting your willingness to make changes or do it again? Not good. You need to get to the point where you can draw something fast, then feel nothing if you were to throw it away because you know you can do it again.
An artist like that is an artist that “can”.
Here’s a really good video on how to practice:
2) Build a freaking resume!
Always, always, always be doing SOMETHING. Work on your own project. Go do a collaboration. Go to a for-hire site. Make assets! Anything, really!
Real world experiences are just as important as a portfolio.
3) Make a proper portfolio site. Dot-com and all.
Sell assets on it. Sell gear on it. Give examples of costs for hiring out. Provide a portfolio and a resume. Make all points of contant go back to that site.
4) Get out there! (And by “there” I mean the right places).
The worst places to social network are art sites like Deviant. They’re good for screwing around and wasting time, but suck for building a business presence. People who hire artists don’t hang out on Deviant, and usually give up on looking for people to hire after a couple of hours of shoveling through crap (which those sites usually have a lot of).
Instead go to placed like, well, here and other game dev sites. Or go to sites in other fields that use art.
Anyway, that’s my advice as a failed professional artist.
2 Likes
Or… You can do both - be a technical artist.
Be a coder and artist together…
Then you need both an awesome portfolio and degree.
2 Likes
Not sure if there are many jobs that specifically require a 2 in 1 deal 