Please watch this before going on:
[link]Ok. All watched now? These are third year students from an Animation course at a Canadian college (university). Right now, I have severe doubts that I will ever be able to reproduce the quality of work they do there by next year. I have always wanted to go to Canada to study animation and this has just about tipped me over the edge with jealousy.
The thing with this course is that it is actually a PROPER ANIMATION COURSE. They go through everything such as subjects to do with character design, setting design, studying actual animations etc and these are actual subjects. I know what people will say - things like RMIT still gives a good insight to the world of animation etc and gives us the skills to explore.... yada yada yada...
BULLCRAP!
RMIT's animation course is really a visual arts course with an animation component tacked on and interactivity hanging by a paperclip and Simon is the only sane one there! Also, its all well and good to 'explore and develop your own techniques and styles' but we need friggen foundation and this is what these people at Sheridan college are getting. God bless lecturers like Simon that actually give a damn about it but its simply not enough.
I'm not happy with being 'ok' or 'good' at animation. I want to be awesome. Is this arrogance? Maybe but I don't care. I'm sick of hearing about people hiding behind the excuse of 'making it for my own self'. I draw and animate because I enjoy it but I also do it because I like the feeling of someone saying 'Wow! That's awesome' and giving them something to aspire to... and I think people who do stuff stuff and keep it to themselves are only lying to themselves. People should exploit their talents. They have them for a reason and they should use them.
This brings me back to my original point. Our skills as animators can't be exploited because we're not given the tools to do so and this is where I get confused. Who should I be angry with? RMIT for making such a frankenstein of a course or the Australian government for not putting much of a focus on film and animation in Australia. For simplicity's sake I'll choose RMIT for now. It just angers me to find that compared to another institution we're only learning our ABCs while they're off doing advanced calculus and trigonometry. Don't even get me started on the actual tools we're given to make animation. Flash?! Even other universities IN AUSTRALIA are using professional 2D animation software such as ToonBoom Studio.
I judge the quality of someone's work by comparing it to my ability and whether or not I myself would be able to do it. This might be shallow but I'm only being honest to myself and everyone else. When I see the work of these students, I see myself severely lagging and I don't like it. I guess the only way I can describe it is that I feel that my creativity and my ability to be creative is part of me and its mine. It is what makes me unique. When I see something like those students' reel I find myself looking at my own stuff and saying 'Gee, on a grand scale... I suck'.
I know that I am good at what I do - I'm not scared to admit that but I can't help to feel thoroughly disadvantaged when I see work from others who at a 'similar' level to what we are. When I say 'similar' I mean the level we should be at.
On a grand scheme though, I shouldn't really call myself disadvantaged because really the only thing stopping me from going to somewhere like Sheridan College is money - and on a whole, its really not that expensive when compared to compared to American institutions (~$20 000 CAN). Who knows, maybe I can save up some money and go there?
Ok. I'm done ranting... the anger has subsided... for now. I know I've said things that plenty of people would disagree with but this wasn't written in order to build an argument but to express my opinion. I'm sorry if I offended anyone but I'm not sorry for being honest. Next journal, I'll try not to be so serious. I don't like it... its too... serious.
Now go off and have a slice of watermelon!
Ok... and I'm studying animation... right 
Anger
You shouted in my box of shoutiness! 
Devious Comments
Second; that is the best animation college in the country, and one of the best in the world I imagine (as I am too lazy to go look it up). They only get the best of the best because even though thousands and thousands of wannabe animators from EVERYWHERE apply there, only a few get in. So they get the BEST new artists. We get the best of the ones that apply to RMIT that can't afford to go to these places. I don't know if you've noticed, but there are a lot of people in our course who CAN'T draw for shit. Most have the creativity, and some have serious skill in other fields. But a fair few don't have the basics down pat. Which is why they don't lob us into groups; bring down the team, you know?
Now I'm loosing my train of thought; but back to RMIT. If we don't get the good artists to begin with, they can't make us into good animators. You can't teach art skill; it doesn't happen. There are going to be good animators coming out of the course, because they have the skill to pull it off. We can't blame them because our animations don't look pretty because say we didn't take a bit of time to figure out how to draw perspective properly etc.
There is a lot lacking in the course. A hell of a lot. But RMIT won't give us the resources to do anything about it and neither will the government because film and tv means shit to Australian economics.
the course itself - I could do without this design shit. If I wanted to design stuff I would have done a graphics course. But everything else that I've chosen to do right now WILL help with my future career, but you only get out what you put in.
I know I've got a hell of a better chance to get into an animation career because of what I've learned already than if I hadn't done this course.
Right. I'm going to go back to wasting time now
(if all that made no sense its because I'm not going back to read though it
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There's only us, There's only this, Forget regret, Or life is yours to miss, No other road, No other way, No day but today.
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Foundation, god damn it!! No one understands how important it is. I want to do digital illustration right, I need to learn things like anatomy, colour, form, composition, pose, etc. Aall they show us is crap! Nothing at all, nothing that will help me do what I want in the future. What do they teach us? "Contemporary art". What on earth is this contemporary art thing anyway? Geeeez. Do you guys have things like that at RMIT? Like "art outside the gallery" yada yada...
Someone saying "Wow, that's awesome!"? Oh my god, you are reading my mind!
Do you know how I started out wanting to become a digital illustrator? I saw someone's painting on deviantART, and I said "Oh my god, that looks amazing!!! I want to be able to do that!". Yep, believe it or not that's how it started for me. And I'm determined to get there.
Right now, the things I draw and paint on Photoshop at uni, I get really good compliments, people saying wow, awesome, etc. But they're all crap compared to what other people are doing. I want to be able to do it to!!!
You shouldn't feel guilty for wanting the best, because that's the only way you're going to get to the top. And let's face it, we know these institutions won't help us, I gave up on Swinburne ages ago, I'm not sure what RMIT is like.
What we have to do is use the tools and resources provided at uni to develop ourselves and reach our goals ourselves. When they give you a project bend the rules a bit and just make something that you think will develop your skills and help you in the future. Be your own teacher.
And I would really like to meet Simon.
Oh, and Sheridan College is university known worldwide. Yanick Dusseault (aka Dusso: [link]) is also a graduate of Sheridan, he did Illustration there, and you know what titles he's worked on? Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Terminator 3, Pirates of the Caribbean, War of the Worlds to name a few.
Too bad there aren't any big names from RMIT or Swinburne, but why not in the future? You? Me?
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Conquering Others Is Strength, Conquering Yourself Is True Power.
#DigitalMedia - #GameArt
Instead of of focusing on most elements of creating animation they've chosen to focus on concept and story. Meanwhile someone like Simon is left to cram every theory and technique into a measly 3 hour class per week that only really starts in second year. I honestly think that as long as someone's final project had a good concept yet looked like it was animated by a 2 year old they would think it was worthy of the third year show-reel. I'm sorry, for me that doesn't cut it.
I understand what you are saying about letting the best of whoever applies to RMIT in but I don't believe that is true. Just look at the International student to resident student ratio. They pay to get into the course. But this is off topic. I'm not saying I haven't learnt anything, I have. I've learnt a heap that I wouldn't have learnt elsewhere and I'm grateful for that but I'm not paying for this course to get the basics. I can get those off the Internet. I'm studying to become a professional animator and our course shouldn't be altered simply because some are crap at doing it.
I definitely think that there will be some awesome animators that come out of RMIT but I can't help but feel jibbed when we're not even provided proper animation facilities like other Australian universities such as Griffith.
In regard to Sheridan college group assignments, I do think that would have been something really good to do. I feel RMIT are a little focussed on people creating independent work, which is all well and good but there is a lot of work out there where you would have to work in groups in animating something, in which we have no experience. You're exactly right about others bringing others down but those people shouldn't be there to start off with.
As I said, I find it really confusing because I do really like the course and I enjoy what we are doing but I don't feel its enough. Experience makes a good animation and I want more to do with it. I think maybe if we had actually started doing something in first year, I would feel a lot less frustrated by everything.
Blah. I'm a mess of contradictory feelings
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Thanks for the encouragement though
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There's only us, There's only this, Forget regret, Or life is yours to miss, No other road, No other way, No day but today.
This, and no other animation course will magically make any beginning artist a brilliant artist or a great animator. It's all about skill, practice, and effort.
The fact that, as you mentioned, our course is focusing on concept and story, is a good one. We can be taught that, and then apply our own practiced skill as artists to make good things with what we are taught about the very basis of film making. We can also apply that to all other fields of film and TV; at this point in time I'd like to branch off into editing instead, and Video is teaching me that.
I'm quite sure that the people who are head animators, directors, and artists for Disney, Warner bros., Pixar, and all other fantastic animation studios did NOT take an animation courses, because 20 years ago there practically weren't any. They still seem to be doing bloody good for themselves.
Right. I want noodles.
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There's only us, There's only this, Forget regret, Or life is yours to miss, No other road, No other way, No day but today.
I'm writing one myself at the moment... although it's all in my head and not on paper yet....
What I find crazy is that the way the Austtralian uni system is set out, you go into a degree straight from school, with no chance to start specialising beforehand. In England for you to be accepted into an arts degree, you have to do an art foundation course - which is exactly that - design basics, colour theory, anatomy and all that. Doing that course (which costs like $600 for the year!) means that when uni comes around, people have the basics down pat and they don't have to spend their first year of uni designing brochures.
I'm really not sure if it's an Australia-wide problem of the first year of any course being utterly basic in every respect, or whether it's specific to RMIT.
Either way, I wish I'd known before I applied.
I would absolutely love to have done some kind of collaboration and group animating, but because the course is so huge and the talent is so diluted, I know I would get frustrated with other peoples lack of effort/talent/whatever.
That course has so many problems, the work we saw at the degree show was just horrific. I think that worried a lot of us. And for RMIT to not realise what the staff and the students are saying about the course is so blind and ignorant.
In the end, this all revolves around how much money the university makes, and they do that by putting as many people on the course as they are legally allowed to do. Writing a letter won't change that, but at least I hope that I can get through to somebody who has some kind of influence over what is taught there, or just warn some poor kid who is thinking of going into that course and coming out satisfied.
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i am handmade i am i am
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