SCAD - A pre-Senior Year Retrospective

O Alma Mater

So, I know most people will probably never see this or care, but if you do have any thoughts about what I’m going to say, feel free to share.

For those of you who don’t know me, I served in the military for 6 years to help me get to the next step of pursuing my dream - working for a big cartoon studio, making a name for myself on TV and pitching an amazing animated feature that I will one day hopefully take home an Oscar for. You might say that I had stars in my eyes on my first days of school at SCAD (or, the Savannah College of Art and Design, for the uninitiated). I had big goals, definitely, but I knew where I wanted to go and how I wanted to get there. 

Almost immediately, on my first quarter, I was exposed to the good, the bad, and the ugly about SCAD. I had three classes (a full-term at SCAD), and each professor was completely different from the other. The good - My Drawing I professor was amazing and really cared about challenging people who had drawing skill and mentored the people who were falling behind. This is the standard that I have come to expect all of my SCAD professors to try to meet, which thus far I’ve had mixed results with. The bad - My Western Art I professor, I am convinced, did not give a fuck about his job or what he was teaching. He was not engaging, and he made learning the course load a chore. I haven’t had way too many professors like this after that, but the fact that SCAD hires professors that are obviously entirely flippant about their job is alarming, to say the very least. The ugly - Design I. Oh my fucking god. This particular professor made class unnecessarily difficult, and it seemed to make him happy (?). He contradicted his own instructions at every turn, he made sure the entire class knew when one of his students did something he didn’t like, and this old boy made no bones about picking favorites. Long story short… this class made my very first quarter of SCAD a disappointing experience (as I said on the class review), and this professor still holds the title of the worst instructor of any class I’ve ever had in my entire life.

Don’t worry, guys, this is not going to be a detailed listing of my experience of all of my classes. I wanted to give you guys my first taste of what SCAD was like to set the tone for the rest of this post.

In the past 5 quarters since my Fall 2012 class, I’ve had one other professor who has demonstrated the same amount of concern for his students to understand the course, and actually learn / improve on their skills as my Drawing I professor: that would be my Intro to 2D professor. I learned an immense amount from his class, and I look forward to having his mentorship for the remainder of my time at SCAD. I’m happy to say that my worst experience has stayed with my Design I professor, though there was one other class that came close… that came from my Design II class.  I learned a hard lesson about some SCAD classes after my Design II quarter, one that I hopefully should never have to experience again: if you don’t have the money to get the top-quality supplies you need immediately on hand (and by this, I mean your Pell grant or any other aid money you’re getting had better not have a glitch affecting when it hits your bank account), you will either fail, or come dangerously close, and no amount of trying to explain this to your professor will save you. I digress, though… through it all, I’m just happy to have made it through, even if sometimes it was by the skin of my teeth.

Being an animation major, though, the most useful and pertinent lessons I’ve learned through my SCAD experience have been through my major curriculum. Among those lessons have been the fact that I have no skill in 3D modeling or animation, and the farther I stay away from Maya, the better. Dead serious. There will be no 3D work in my demo reel, it’s all terrible. I knew from the beginning that I wanted my focus to be on 2D animation, and going through (most recently) Intro to 3D Animation reaffirmed this. 

In spades.

On a more serious note, though, I feel that all of my animation classes up to this point have given me a fair grasp as to how things move and how to make appealing and believable characters on screen, and this is probably among the more important lessons you’ll ever learn if you want to pursue animation as a career. It’s not an exaggeration when I say that you learn from the best at SCAD, most of them being veterans from Disney and Dreamworks. I cannot lie when I say, and express concern, that a few of the professors have no problem flaunting this fact in a way that does not drive a useful point home and only serves to intimidate or just show ass. Regardless, though, they know their stuff, and when they are teaching, you’ve got to pay attention, because you will learn from them. 

The most important lesson, and I think the one that has completely altered the direction I’m going to take my career, was recently learned during the past spring quarter. Conversation about the notion of 2D animation being dead and 3D animation becoming the primary vehicle that moves the studio filled the halls of Montgomery Hall for a short while, and it wasn’t long before it reached the classroom. (this is where what I said about coming to SCAD as a starry-eyed dreamer shooting for a career at a major studio comes in) Among the uncomfortable, disturbing revelations was the doubt that 2D animation would have any major precedence in features or TV for the foreseeable future. The most optimistic prediction that came out of these conversations was a possibility of full revival in about 50 or 60 years. I had a feeling before hand, but I knew for a fact right then and there that the industry and I were going in two different directions. Accompanied by the fact that I had attended last year’s SCAD career fair where I got to talk to one studio but spent most of the time calming myself down before I had a claustrophobic panic attack, knowing that only a handful of the people who were around me would even be considered for a job, along with seeing that my style of animation / drawing doesn’t fit the mold of what was popular and in demand, I realized that any notion of pursuing studio work will be a waste of time, talent, and money.

In a nutshell, I realized that if I’m to have any meaningful work, I will have to venture forth as an independent animator, which is a scary notion… one certainly brand new to me, not until recently having been worried that I don’t have that “thing” the major studios are looking for… mastery of Maya… the cool, popular Adventure Time / Regular Show / Steven Universe / Gravity Falls look and storytelling… I don’t know what exactly it is, but I know that I don’t have that “thing.” I’m both okay with this, and a little annoyed about it at the same time. I’m a mixed bag of feelings about the direction of the animation industry. Oh, and about winning an Oscar… ha ha ha, they have have that bullshit until someone who gives a fuck about animation will come in and judge work. Do your homework if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

In summary… I don’t know if anything will change this year while I’m working on my thesis film. I do know that I’ve met a lot of awesome people that I will hopefully keep as friends and contacts for the rest of my career / life. I’ve met a lot of amazing artists, and I received mentoring from the best, most talented professionals in the world. As of now, though… all of the plans I thought I had together when I came fresh out of the Army to SCAD have been derailed because of all that I’ve learned. I’ve become a bit jaded to the notion of industry work before I even got in… and it’s a little bit of a frightening notion.

I still have my senior year to go, though. Who knows? some bit opportunity might come to me (doubtful). We’ll see. I’ll just do my best and try to figure out the best plan for me from there. See you on the other side!