College Conundrum

[Almaghest]

SCAD has the degree you want and offers generous scholarships. What you should do:

1. Get accepted to SCAD. You can defer enrollment up to two years, just get accepted, it's not hard. At the right time of year, they run "free application" days online. Apply really early and you should have no issue getting in, even without a portfolio.
2. Move to an area with a community college that offers studio art and maybe even art history classes if you can find one. Take all of the studio art classes they offer to build up your portfolio and learn traditional art skills. These classes may not transfer (depends on what you have to show for them when you're done), but they will give you invaluable skills for building your portfolio and one upping your peers in foundations courses.
2a. A state school will also work. The goal here is to get credits and spend as little as possible. Also you can ignore the studio art classes if you feel you can improve artistically on your own (EVERYONE can, but many feel they don't know what they're doing.) It's important to know SCAD looks for TRADITIONAL (figure drawing, value studies, good use of color, perspective, etc.) art in their portfolios.
3. Take EVERYTHING you can at community college. You can transfer up to 90 credit hours (or 2 years) into SCAD. Do NOT pay to take any general education electives at private art school, that is a stupid waste of money. SCAD should transfer over math, english, gen eds, etc. no questions asked. For studio classes you will need to show your work from that class. You can get SCAD to pre-approve courses for transfer so you don't waste any time. Get excellent grades, SCAD awards scholarships on transfer GPA. I say find a community college with art history because you need to take five art history classes for a BFA at SCAD.
4. Submit your portfolio over and over and over again until you get the money you need. You can submit as many times as your heart desires until you begin classes at SCAD. If you are transferring 90 credit hours, you only need $10,000/year to bring the cost down to what you need. This amount is VERY doable at SCAD, most people I know here with a lick of sense/artistic talent that applied in a reasonable time frame got that.


If you do come to SCAD (or anywhere similar), do the following:
1. FIND GROUP PROJECTS. Work on them. Even if you don't use this material for your reel, employers really, really like it.
2. Ignore classes about "game design" or "drawing for games/character design/etc." You can do this in your free time as a hobby. I have not known/heard of one single person from SCAD getting accepted as a game designer or concept artist. Design jobs are not entry level and concept artist jobs are going to illustration, industrial design, and sequential art majors. To get your foot in the door you need technical skills, e.g. modeling, lighting, texturing, programming.
3. In that vein, take all the classes about UDK or other engines that you can and all the classes about technical skills. SCAD's Technical Direction minor complements Animation, Visual Effects, and Game Design very well. Knowledge of OOP programming, LINUX, and scripting will give you a one up on others applying for entry level jobs.


Hope this helps! I am always happy to answer questions about SCAD via PM, though I may be slow at times because of school work.

[moidphotos]

Or look further afield, a degree in the UK would cost between £8 - 10,000 a year for three years depending on the university (British degrees are shorter than US degrees but have the same value). I always find it amazing how much Americans will pay for a degree; they are ridiculously overpriced in the US.

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