On Potential Plans Post-graduation
...Somebody please kill me. Or squash what's left of my unrealistic dreams. Follow me on this...*paces*
So Padraig has agreed to supervise a graphic novel of an Irish myth. This is awesome, because I get to apply my mad art skills, yes? Except I'm not that good and I have no formal training. Three art courses in high school do not equate solid artistic training. So what's going to happen is I'm going to try hard and I'm going to find glaringly obvious problems, difficulties, issues with perspective and forced extreme angles, and so forth. My style will be an embarrassing conglomeration of Americanized manga and desperate attempts to stay true to the genre's stylistic roots.
So the consensus is I am woefully underequipped to even begin to dream of doing this for a career. And the field is fierce enough among the highly skilled and well-trained that a rank amateur like me has no place butting in. Cue the regret and angst of not pushing harder for an art-focused school or program as an upper and senior at Exeter. Why didn't I take more drawing classes at Exeter? Why didn't I grow a backbone and tell my mom I wanted to pursue a graphic arts career? Wah, wah, poor me.
Now cue Lillian's impatience with herself and a solid smack flattening the whininess. Yes, reality's a bitch. Deal with it, Lillian.
Okay, so I didn't have any training and still don't have any training. So why don't I fucking get some? That way I can figure out if I actually have the passion and drive to work my ass off for something that is really only rewarding in an emotional sense. My Intro to Digital Tools class has me excited because even though right now we're covering the basics at an incredibly slow speed, I'm much happier having someone explain exactly what it is I need to do to copy and paste into a new layer in Photoshop CS. This is exciting and fabulous and I'm psyched.
At the end of this semester, I should have decent enough computer skills to manipulate my images. Yay!
Except my images are of poor artistic quality. Fancy digital tricks can only do so much to mask the basic crappiness. Boo.
Now I introduce an idea into my head: art school. Art school. Art school. Go to art school after graduation. Art school. Why not go to art school? Art school could be fun. You could learn stuff. It'd be interesting. You might wind up succeeding with actual skills under your belt. Yes, art school.
Problem: where will I do this? How will I afford it? Because my parents won't finance it, and I would refuse their money even if they could offer. And I refuse to spend another four years in college taking liberal arts courses and useless junk.
Do two-year art schools exist with qualified teachers and good brand-name recognition? (I need something that will boost my resume, not drag it down.) Are they considered undergraduate or graduate schools? I have no idea how to begin looking, or even what to look for. There are majors --at two-year programs, are they called majors still?-- now in Game Design. Would I be a Computer Graphics, Computer Animation, or Illustration major? Do I want to just develop technical drawing skills or do I want to go into the whole animation shebang and be doomed/destined for a max salary of 50k/year? Or should I go all out and plan to stay in school until I'm 26? Oh, the horror. I can't afford to attend school full-time and work to pay it off at the same time. Not happening.
And do I really want to spend a significant chunk of my life trying to do something I may well just have a glamorized misconception of?
Or will I spend the rest of my life wondering,"What if?"
Thoughts and suggestions are highly welcome, though if you're just going to say "Do what feels right!" I'm going to have to request you qualify it with concrete suggestions as to where and how. And if you're going to kill the dream, help me by explaining why it's a bad idea for me.
Damn it. Between this and the recent resurgence of dreams about the football player I had a crush on in highschool, I'm feeling trapped in nostalgia and regret and it's driving me crazy. (About the guy...seriously, it's been five years since he and I had bad timing in crushing on each other. Shouldn't I be over it and him by now?)
So Padraig has agreed to supervise a graphic novel of an Irish myth. This is awesome, because I get to apply my mad art skills, yes? Except I'm not that good and I have no formal training. Three art courses in high school do not equate solid artistic training. So what's going to happen is I'm going to try hard and I'm going to find glaringly obvious problems, difficulties, issues with perspective and forced extreme angles, and so forth. My style will be an embarrassing conglomeration of Americanized manga and desperate attempts to stay true to the genre's stylistic roots.
So the consensus is I am woefully underequipped to even begin to dream of doing this for a career. And the field is fierce enough among the highly skilled and well-trained that a rank amateur like me has no place butting in. Cue the regret and angst of not pushing harder for an art-focused school or program as an upper and senior at Exeter. Why didn't I take more drawing classes at Exeter? Why didn't I grow a backbone and tell my mom I wanted to pursue a graphic arts career? Wah, wah, poor me.
Now cue Lillian's impatience with herself and a solid smack flattening the whininess. Yes, reality's a bitch. Deal with it, Lillian.
Okay, so I didn't have any training and still don't have any training. So why don't I fucking get some? That way I can figure out if I actually have the passion and drive to work my ass off for something that is really only rewarding in an emotional sense. My Intro to Digital Tools class has me excited because even though right now we're covering the basics at an incredibly slow speed, I'm much happier having someone explain exactly what it is I need to do to copy and paste into a new layer in Photoshop CS. This is exciting and fabulous and I'm psyched.
At the end of this semester, I should have decent enough computer skills to manipulate my images. Yay!
Except my images are of poor artistic quality. Fancy digital tricks can only do so much to mask the basic crappiness. Boo.
Now I introduce an idea into my head: art school. Art school. Art school. Go to art school after graduation. Art school. Why not go to art school? Art school could be fun. You could learn stuff. It'd be interesting. You might wind up succeeding with actual skills under your belt. Yes, art school.
Problem: where will I do this? How will I afford it? Because my parents won't finance it, and I would refuse their money even if they could offer. And I refuse to spend another four years in college taking liberal arts courses and useless junk.
Do two-year art schools exist with qualified teachers and good brand-name recognition? (I need something that will boost my resume, not drag it down.) Are they considered undergraduate or graduate schools? I have no idea how to begin looking, or even what to look for. There are majors --at two-year programs, are they called majors still?-- now in Game Design. Would I be a Computer Graphics, Computer Animation, or Illustration major? Do I want to just develop technical drawing skills or do I want to go into the whole animation shebang and be doomed/destined for a max salary of 50k/year? Or should I go all out and plan to stay in school until I'm 26? Oh, the horror. I can't afford to attend school full-time and work to pay it off at the same time. Not happening.
And do I really want to spend a significant chunk of my life trying to do something I may well just have a glamorized misconception of?
Or will I spend the rest of my life wondering,"What if?"
Thoughts and suggestions are highly welcome, though if you're just going to say "Do what feels right!" I'm going to have to request you qualify it with concrete suggestions as to where and how. And if you're going to kill the dream, help me by explaining why it's a bad idea for me.
Damn it. Between this and the recent resurgence of dreams about the football player I had a crush on in highschool, I'm feeling trapped in nostalgia and regret and it's driving me crazy. (About the guy...seriously, it's been five years since he and I had bad timing in crushing on each other. Shouldn't I be over it and him by now?)