Mog and Chips

Because you just press a magic button and the computer does it all for you! That’s entirely why Disney and Dreamworks uses it! Not because having thousands and thousands of animators and colourers is more expensive than a few hundred modellers, texturers and riggers. Or that they’ll save an insane amount by not buying materials such as acetate and inks and so on, or get as many continuity errors.

Oh no. 2D and Claymation are the only real animations. Not that CGI crap that you don’t actually create, you know, or as they emphasise the word animate comes from/is close to “to breathe life into”.
Just something one of my mates said that drove me absolutely up the fucking wall.

Which then gets me into thinking: What the fuck am I doing?

We haven’t actually learnt that much in our course. The lectures… have mostly been covered before in my A level film studies. Animation skills: “Watch yourself walking! …ok, now do it!”.  And the animatics we did… what learning? We got in and got told “Animate this.”

And digital skills for photoshop… the pass mark is 20% because the lecturers only turned up half the time. Enough said.
I went to the university I’m going to because I thought it would be better to get experience in the different types of animation, and leave my options open. To learn animation as a concept so that when I did 3D I’d be getting the movement right and so on.
Turns out, it’s closing my options instead: We have one unit of one semester dedicated to SoftImage XSI, in the second year. Considering they’ve royally fucked up our second semester this year giving us a grand total of three life drawing sessions which is half a unit, and if they’re lacking people in photoshop and the people teaching us that weren’t actually animators anyway, god knows what a catastrophe the second digital skills is going to be like.

In addition, chances are the same mentality runs through most of my class, so if digital skills does go wrong, I’m going to be the only person going “Erm, excuse me…” out of 60.

Hardly enough to make them bend over backwards to get a few workshops for it.

And in that digital skills, what’s it going to be? Low poly modelling because we’ll only have a few hours a week if not once every two weeks? Texturing isn’t even included in the course outline and that’s the stage I’m currently stuck at - not because uni’s got me modelling, because I’ve been looking it up myself.

And even in the third year… if I’m part of a very small minority doing CGI for my final project, if I’m lucky there’ll be one member of staff to ask for help. Hopefully one that doesn’t turn up and say “I’m not currently employed yet, wait here while I go sign my contract so I can legally teach you.”

I’ve learnt walk cycles and we’re going to do lip syncing. That’s £3000 tuition fees, £3600 student loan, and money from my parents, to do something I could have covered in a short course.

And now what? I don’t know whether it’s too late to go through UCAS (whose bloody site isn’t even working! ) and even so, that just fucks up all my plans for the next two years and I really, really don’t want to do that.  Ideally, I’d like to move to a CGI-animation only course that doesn’t take advantage of the fact everyone knows how to hold a pencil so they can just say “draw, I want in for the end of this semester”, and into the second year, while staying in the south east preferable somewhere convenient for Guildford. If I end up in the first year then I’ll have to take a year out to gather the funds (£3000 tuition plus rent plus living costs etc) for the third year, which the SLC won’t give me a loan for since technically it will be my forth year, and I don’t want to have to go somewhere away from here because I’ve been looking forward to the next two years so much.

And then there’s telling the parents. “Hi mam, dad, by the way this course has been a complete waste of your money, and despite the fact I can’t tell the future and I’m human and make mistakes like everyone else, it’s completely my fault and I’m stupid and a disgrace to you all. That makes me feel so much better. Thank you for crushing me to the ground when I tried to make things right.”

Admittedly it’s taken me this long to realise it. So maybe I am fucking stupid.

I mean, why should I spend 3 years doing something that so far has been a blatant ripoff (considering the average week this term is 2-3 days, which is meant to be 12-18 hours because most lecturers are denying that they’re only half days, so 10.5-12.5 hours.) and then pay more to do a masters before I can do CGI, rather than just do CGI, now that this year is the last of the basics they’re going to teach us?

If I had to take two years working then go into uni I would. I’d also have to completely cut contact with my parents and family until I then finished whatever course I went into (so… 4 years later) to say “I couldn’t bear the fact you’re going to tell me I’m a fucking disgrace and I’m throwing my life away and I’ll never go back into college if I take some time out, so I thought I’d wait til afterwards so I wouldn’t have to go through all that stress needlessly.

I don’t even know if it’s too late to transfer if there’s one thats not too far. The UCAS site, helpful as it always is, isn’t actually working.

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