Which college is best for learning video game animation?

#1

Someday I really want to be a video game animator or modeler. My big wish is to that, exept in Japan. I love the video games made there and I want to be a part of it. I am already learning Japanese and I’m planing to take Japanese classes all four years in high school. How can I become an animator and possibly work in Japan? I have some things sorted out but I want other opinions on this.

I first looked into ringling. It is possibly the best animation college in the United States. Although it mainly focuses on Pixary/cartoony animation and that doesn’t sound good to me. Plus, it is extremely expensive and offers no connection with Japan.

Digipen on the other hand has a bigger focus on video game animation in particular. Plus it is a little less expensive. And also, it even offers courses in Japanese, plus it has some affiliation with Nintendo. Although, I feel that their students thesis projects aren’t very great and the college itself isn’t known for it’s animation program

I finally looked at vfs. The students have amazing works of art which focuses primarily on video games. It is a one year institution which worries me. To live and work in Japan, you need at least a bachelors degree.

Overall, I’m not sure which path to take. I really need some advise. But I’m sure all of these are better than full sail or the art institutes.

#2

Getting a job in Japan as a foreigner is always difficult. It’s mostly about the social barrier… Japanese have very strong social structure that are not very open to foreigners. You might have heard before how Japanese start working as an entry level position and slowly work their way up the ladder. The same applies to animator and game studio, too. English speaking studio also haven’t much interest to relocate there since it’s very expensive.

This is just my opinion. But your best bet would probably to gain all your skills and experience from the US. And when you apply to Japanese studio, you can apply as director or senior right away. They have a lot of respect for foreigners in that respect.

By the way. Don’t worry if the collage offers pixar style animation, the same principles and knowledge can be applied to games too. I have many classmates who started their first few jobs on feature animation and moved to game studio at the end.

Some alternative you can look at are Academy of Art University Pixar Animation class. It’s really good. Also some online animation classes such as animaitonmentor.com, I heard it’s geared towards game animation.

#3

Which college to you suggest? Would the game design program at the academy art university work? Or Ringling, or something else?

#4

Animation Mentor isn’t geared much toward game animation (although some people have certainly gone through there and moved into the game industry). The principles of animation are certainly the same for feature animation or games or any other fields, but game animation is actually surprisingly technical and has a lot of unique aspects that make it quite different.

There is a series of Game Animation Workshops though iAnimate that are pretty fantastic if you’re interested in an online program. You need to be at a certain proficiency level before starting them though, you could go through a few of their Feature Animation Workshops to get to that point (which is what I did).

#5

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