Art School Angst, the state of Art Schools

[ecofugal]

http://uncleeddiestheorycorner.blogspot.com/2007/09/thinking-about-art-school.html

hi everyone,
i came across this post (see link above) about the teaching of animation in todays art colleges and uni's.

The author talks about how traditional art skills are devalued in art and animation courses. i was wondering what are your experiences of today's art school training. Do you think todays animation art courses are too computer centric, only interested in teaching 3D software because its "cool and hip".
Do you think they only play lip service to traditional skills such as drawing?
i first went to art college in 1978 where we were figure drawing almost daily and of course there was not a pc in sight.

btw, some of the comments to the post are also quite though provoking. i have pasted some here.

To the boomers, 3D is this sexy new thing, it's The Jetsons finally arriving. To my generation (born in 84), we have grown up during the rise of 3d and it's not really a huge deal to us. We can pretty much take or leave it (and most have left it). In fact, the majority of 3D fare is produced for 8-year-olds, who don't know the difference anyway! But the boomers are still reeling from this sexy new invention, and I think they're the ones insisting that it's going to be The Future.
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It's all about learning programs and then you're out the door! Where, may I ask, is the art?
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Last time I looked at the job listings, Pixar requires 2D experience to apply for an animation job, no 3D experience necessary.
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their practice to accept anyone that can come up with the money to pay the tuition (regardless of their abilities).
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Any school can teach it. Well, not really, but that's what a lot of schools believe. They can get a computer lab, some educational licenses and someone who knows how to use the program, and then they can teach. Lots of people are surprisingly enough willing to believe that if you can create a simple 3D model, it's good work. Try to do a drawing of a cellphone and get to teach 2D animation. Hah! You wouldn't be put in the faculty, you'd be put in the first year of lifedrawing class. Well, with 3D, you WOULD be put in the faculty.
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My brother in law just graduated from one of those fancy CG animation schools, and he sends his reel to PIXAR and they reject him. So he calls, asking me why he didn't get the job there. And I ask him who else he submitted his reel to? "No one." So I look at the reel and I see photoshop polish, afterefx tricks, but no drawing ability. I don't wanna crush him, so I tell him ALL the guys I know at pixar can draw. And paint. And design. And board. They're well rounded classical artists. He says, "I can do that stuff." He thinks manipulating photoshop and laying a texture on a model makes him an artist, but he won't take drawing classes because he says "I got my own style." Yeah, I call it the "I-don't-know-how-to-draw-so-I-ape-that-anime-crap" style. Sigh. This is why there's so much bad stuff out there.

[ecofugal]

just in addition.
Although i think that people who run the courses still respect traditional skills (they often only pay lip service to them). They seem to lack the knowledge on how to teach it. i don't think there are many animation courses that will keep the students away from the computers for the first year. most students are diving into 3D in the first semester.

most animation courses are sold as "learn 3D!" not "learn to see, draw and animate"

Everyone bows down to the latest animation software and the whole course becomes centered around it. it seems the colleges are only interested in getting bums on seats and they sell their courses by saying "hey kids this 3D animation stuff is cool. You don't need to learn how to draw. just sit in front of this Mac and you will become an animator."

end of Rant

[Robert Soulless]

Yes, of course, drawing ability is prerequisite to studying digital art. No one should even think about digital animation before life drawing and practice with all the media, watercolor, pastel, etc. You have to learn arithmetic before the calculus.

But I know the desire to skip ahead -- having gone to art school 40 yrs-ago and only recently begun to "paint" with Adobe's software. What a universe it opens up! I used to be satisfied spending weeks painting a single nanosecond of life. Now I can "paint" almost half a minute in the same time -- with movement, plot and music! How cool is that?

It might take a warehouse-full of artists to produce a Pixar product. But I think art's real future lies in that computers allow one person to do it all. Software technology is so far out in front of us artists these days, we've just begun to explore the possibilities.

Yes, it all begins with drawing. Don't let art schools hustle you to believe otherwise.
-Robert

[2Dan]

Life Drawing and a traditional art background is very important, yes. However In todays day in age, most 3D animation is split up for the different people who specialize in such things, like texture artists, animators, modelers, riggers. To be one of these you don't necessarily need some of the skills you learn from traditional media because your not focusing on the whole picture as much as traditional animation was concerned.

I'm about to go to college soon for Digital Art and Design over at Full Sail university. although they don't require an extensive background in traditional media, they do recommend it, and their 3D animation course does go over life drawing and sculpting. So some schools and courses still teach the skill, sadly my degree does not (even though it is motion graphics) It is up to the student to realize the importance of the subject and learn for himself.