While many great and successful artists have attended art school, the fact is many have not. Census data shows that in the U.S. only 16% of working artists have arts-related degrees, and 40% of working artists have no degrees whatsoever.
If you're European, free school earned through a lifetime of paying a 25% VAT on everything you buy besides bread and water means that you may as well attend whatever ambiguous institution is at hand, but if you're American things get more complicated.
We all know that a genuinely good art school would hypothetically be a great thing for a sincere artist's development, but the financial burden many of these schools place on their students is criminal.
Did you go to school or know anybody who has? Are you currently enrolled? Discuss your personal experiences relating to art school success, failure and debt in this ITT.
This doesn't just apply to art school. This is a common conclusion to most upper education in general. BTW this entire post is about the United States, so if you live in a country where post high school education is free, you should absolutely continue your education.
The problem in the US is that a college education costs ridiculous amounts of money. Unless you are going into a field that requires board, state, or federal licensing there is really not reason for you to go to college. Going to a university for a bachelors or masters has become less about academic studies and more about getting advance preliminary job training to do X task. The cost is a problem because we live in a time of infinite information. Anything you want to learn you can learn online, you buy the exact same textbooks that they use in colleges, that you in fact have to buy yourself for said classes, and can get help and any questions answered online for free from people actually working in said fields. In areas such as art, or skill based professions where doing X task is needed or services provided, more and more employers are finding that education level matters little if the person they are hiring can get the job done and more importantly can show proof of them doing said task with previous employers. It's a bubble that is soon to burst for sure although soon is subjective.
>>2476522
>This doesn't just apply to art school. This is a common conclusion to most upper education in general.
I don't know if that's true, though. Many solid jobs you actually do have to have a degree to be taken seriously, don't you? I don't know how common it is to get employed as an engineer without having the credentials of one.
>>2476522
Art education in most of Europe is fucking awful though and it's a complete waste of time for most. Just because it's free, doesn't mean you have to take it, actually that's the main reason you shouldn't do it. Good things are never free.
>>2476887
nope, as long as the government doesn't point a gun at people's heads and force them to require college degrees. It can be however harder to acquire and prove skill without college education. Honestly I think a "testing" company would be a viable thing, they give you a test in a subject, you do it and they give you a certificate of knowledge so it's like a uni without any teaching. If there is more companies to provide competition, there will be incentive for the company to be as objective as possible because if a company gives certificates to people without the knowledge the value of the certificate drops. This already happened to higher education in my country, companies literally have a blacklist of shitty colleges so that if a candidate for a job is from there they are written off immediately.
I dont know why any of you guys would willingly go to a uni for art
Without mommy and daddy putting at least a thousand in your bank every month, you will suffer a lot.
Also the people are jerks. Its easy to believe that youll make friends. But no, a lot of jerks.
The faculty will likely disappoint you too. As well as the bureaucracy you submit yourself to when you are finally "enrolled"
Yeah no. School anywhere right now in the US is hit or miss
I'm western european, went to art school for illustration for a year, it was absolutely shit education-wise and I'm paying off the student loans I had to take to pay for tuition fees because single mom parent. Would not recommend. I've gotten pretty gud through self-study. Crippling anxiety issues however which keep me from putting my shit out there so I'm not quitting my day job just yet. Hope I can do so some day.
>>2477110
Don't you have 'free school' in the EU or is it conditional?
>>2477219
It depends on where he lives. EU isn't one monolithic country.
>>2477110
>>2477219
I don't know where you guys got this idea of "free school". School is "free" until you're 18 in most countries. College and such? Not free.
In my country we have very cheap colleges (300-500€ a year) and there is Uni (1000 or more a year). I'm from Belgium and lot of French people come to our art school because their are 2000+ a year/very hard to get into/have only classic courses.
So Anon from Western Europe, where did you go?
Personnaly I'm a drop out from one of these cheap art college and while I learnt some things and made some great friends, I wouldn't say that it was absolutely necessary. All the knowledge or techniques covered in this school, you can learn them by yourself. But some people work better and harder when they have assignments, grades, deadlines. I'd say it's totally your choice to go to Art college or not. If you're a lazy blob, or if you're totally clueless at how to improve yourself, go to college. Doing good by yourself? Stick with it.
>>2477219
I pay a couple thousand a year. I'm from one of the rich countries.
>>2477253
>College and such? Not free.
In some European countries, university is cheaper too as long as you are dirty poor. The richer you are, the higher it costs. Still it's capped at pretty low figures, averages are like the ones you posted which would indeed seem "free" to a Murrican. Just like if you went on Mars and bought a car for 0.01€. You might as well call that a free car.
>>2477253
>>2477275
>tfw living in a European country where universities are free for everyone
>>2477287
Enjoy your worthless education because of less money to invest in quality.
>>2477287
>free shit
kek
>>2476507
Education only gives you better or proper tools.
But you can easily express things on low level.
This thread >>>/tg/46528220 on /tg/ for example, mimicking evolution on a theoretical world spawned many interesting species. Without any art degree.
Art degrees cant give you creativity, feel for what is interesting or trendy.
The beaten child will turn into a beaten adult and find no fault in that or the beating.
>>2477308
Sorry, that wasn't profound at all.
>>2477318
There is nothing profound about culture.
>>2476507
the big reason I went to art school was for me to get far away from my home town. I grew up in an incredibly small farming town that's not even close to a major city. I needed to get away from there and be on my own.
College too me was more like a transitional period. I lived in the dorms for my first year and ate at the commons. My second year I lived in school owned apartments but made all my own food. My third year I moved into a cheaper apartment further away and in the city with 3 other roommates. My senior year I got my own place and traveled to school on my own and did commuted by my own car. When I graduated I got a job and lived in my own apartment in a completely new place.
It was like easing into working and living on my own.
>>2476941
Its called certifications, a lot of fields have them.
Computer science for example is a big one, often times people have to get certifications from outside companies on top of getting a degree.
>>2477275
Hypothetically I prefer the american system to having to pay VAT throughout my entire life so that a bunch of degenerate dingbats can go to art school. I wouldn't be against subsidized trade school or STEM, though.
This whole conversation kind of beggars the question of why it's so expensive to begin with so I did a little research. In the 70s a high-end college in the U.S. (Harvard!) was $15,000 or so when adjusted for inflation; expensive, but obtainable. These days it's well over $40,000. Why?
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/16/why-college-costs-are-so-high-and-rising.html
>Higher education payrolls have also been rapidly adding non-teaching jobs in recent years. Public and private colleges and universities expanded their payrolls by 28 percent between 2000 and 2012, more than 50 percent faster than the previous decade, according to an analysis of higher education staffing by the Delta Cost Project. That build-up largely tracked the rise in enrollments.
>"Many of these new positions appear to be providing student services, but whether they represent justifiable expenses or unnecessary 'bloat' is up for debate," wrote Donna Desrochers, the report's principal researcher.
It appears these incredible costs have accrued in the US because of overpaid worthless staff like diversity councilors, safe-space enforcers etc.
Look at this shit, there are 326 names on this list and like 3/4 or more of them are paid probably $50,000 minimum to promote "youth organizations" and spread the joys of food stamps to the alumni.
Just look for
>SNAP-ed
EFNEP
>4H
To see what I mean
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-education-snap-ed
This is no doubt the same problem with art schools where there needs to be dozens of staff members on hand to protect the delicate sensibilities of the histrionic art school personalities dwelling within.
WAKE ME UP!
>>2476507
does this include those "contemporary" artists?
okay memes aside degrees are the not the reason many go to school, but rather, to learn and network
many drop out before graduating when theyre satisfied
>>2477974
Of course it does; no memes, those people are absolutely unemployable.
The data is a bit muddled by the preponderance of unemployable contemporary artists/performance artists and because it doesn't consider designers or architects (what I'd consider "applied artists") as artists, nor does it count educators.
Granted, the field of education itself is so widely open-ended that you can't say for sure how many of these people are teaching art in the 'practical sense' (i.e. like Vilppu); I can imagine a lot of the beleaguered degenerate art kids end up pushing their intellectual capacity to its limits teaching english to pre-schoolers for example.
>>2476507
Art school is a meme unless u go to some Russian slave school
>>2477291
Enjoy your worthless education that wants to drain loans from mindless drones
>>2477291
You go to art college to broaden your views as an artist, triying new thing you wouldn't try otherwise, not just grindinding your loomis which you do anyways afterschool. Free life drawing ? Fuck yeah. Free photography tools, paper, screen printing tools, sculpting tools. Fuckin yeah. Discounty to all art galeries as a student? Nice. 7:3 girl:boy ratio? Fuck yeah. Stay happy in your basement, pleb.
>>2480145
>$40,000 art school
>"Free life drawing"
Bernie please go.
The only really unique things art classes have to offer are a group setting, a teacher to give you instant feedback, and maybe "connections". All of the knowledge can be found online or in books.
But there's no guarantee you'll git gud/a job after art school. Too much money to be worth it imo desu senpai. Unless you're loaded.
>>2479604
Russian slave schools are also memes.
You'll learn how to perfectly render things but never be able to draw from imagination
>>2477446
>like diversity councilors, safe-space enforcers etc.
i work for the company of my school that handles housing, so i can tell you first hand how all that "sjw safe space shit" is mad important. i wouldnt be surprised if its being done inefficiently, but its new so thats expected. and i doubt that thats the reason the price of college has risen exponentially.
i go to LSU, and its worth it , only because im not paying for school. im an RA so i dont pay housing and im registered as a child of a single mother so i get government assistance. because im not paying rent + car + getting 3500 bucks a semester i get from state scholarship, im technically making
money. its fucking wild how i have to do all of this to avoid loans tho. i was considering trying to go to a "real" art school but paying in state tuition is the wave.
pic related, me in my intro 3d modeling class.
>>2480481
>logitech controller
>oculus
>socks and sandals
Nigga wut
>>2480484
aye dont hate on the socks + sandals combo my guy. and we use the controller for the game we were playing, probably cause we were in a classroom. idk, it was my first time with vr, super lit.
>>2480481
>rastas and virtual reality
Cyberpunk is real.
>>2480509
>rasta
>90% artists I follow have art education
>meanwhile in /ic/
>>2476507
By the odds. You've got a better chance if you self educate.
im currently enrolled straight out of high school
i think what art college does is that it points me in the right direction. Sure self education is an option but isn't it daunting?
You want to reach a goal, theres a million ways of doing it and you can easily pick the wrong path or side tracked.
my art school for the most part is a tried and true working path to success for a lot of people, and the faculty are all industry pros who have experienced starting as a beginner to being payed for their work.
I can always go up to a teacher and ask them what the industry is looking for and what I need to focus on improving in order to find work and mostly likely get a definitive and insightful answer.
I went to art school in the 90ies in the Netherlands. I have no idea how is the situation now, but at that time the government paid students money every month, and it was enough to basically say that art school was free. I dropped out in the last year.
Was it worth it?
I'd say yes. I had an opportunity to do things I would never have done otherwise (photography, various printing techniques, scuplting, forging & welding), I met like-minded people and most of the teachers were actual famous artists with a huge amount of practical experience. Also, a lot of the trial-and-error stuff you have to deal with on your own is avoided.
Did me dropping out impact my career negatively?
Not at all. I originally studied traditional illustration but, because in that time the market was dying and oversaturated with illustrators, I moved into the game industry, which was the best thing I could have done.
My advice would be, if it won't settle you with crippling debt, go for it, but find a school that employs known, professional artists. If it will put you in debt, don't do it, because having a diploma doesn't really matter.
No, 15+years onward, I actually enjoy having a traditional education. Nowadays younger game artists sometimes have a game design/game art education provided by art schools, but they have huge gaps in their experience and skills.
>>2480546
Are they employed?
I was studying fine arts at a uni for 2 years and realized it was bullshit, quit, and now have only high school graduation. Learned all what i know on my own and got full time work as a lead artist and loads of past freelance gigs. Schools are overrated.
>>2476932
Good thing they aren't free, then. Another amerilard with non-existent knowledge about socialism.
>>2476507
>degree
>american costs
>percentages, chances for work
>muh conceptarrrttttttttt
It's too big shit to answer with one post. But here fucking goes.
>degree
>don't have to go to school
you won't get a job from a paper, your skills are the only thing worth. school is good because social interaction is necessary for development and it provides you with a good environment.
school diplomas help once you get higher positions and go abroad. personally I've been held up by such.
>american costs
your schools are all companies. that goes for feng's little camp to. look at student graduates, not at teachers resumés.
>chances for work
look at students graduating. I took two years traditional art, two years digital.
90% of the traditional students are shit and will never work with art. one close friend became a tatto artist, famous and now tattoos music artists and is regular on tv shows. another paints oil paintings, has exhibitions all over europe and is frequently posted here.
90% of the digital course graduates got jobs. half of us in shitty low tier marketing or vfx jobs. half of us in higher positions making twice the average salary in our country.
>muh conceptart feng/noah/kimjungi/tehmeh/ruanjia/whoever you circlejerk around these days
>said this
you might want to listen less to the advice from the highest tier of artists, unless you yourself is part of it. no matter how much everyone on /ic/ practices few or any will hit craig mullins tier of painting.
that doesn't mean it's a useless career choice
>fine art in university
no
>>2480697
>90% traditional shit
>90% digital got job
meant to say, just because the traditional school has shitty rates it's not useless. the ones who made it from my traditional classes were all set on their careers back then and not fucking plebs going there to have fun with a pencil.
also forgot
>muh path, muh conceptart, muh career,
go to a fucking company and talk to people who are working. can't fuicking stress this enough if you are even considering this career.
don't fucking internet your way to this shit. go fucking make an appointment with your local game company or animation studio. they're more than willing to help. I'm fucking sure because I've done it myself.
>>2480477
To be fair, any "public" school has to be super attentive to whether they're offending any races, minority, sex, etc.. because the government gets fucked if someone brings up a law suite that they're not treating everyone equally. And since public schools are connected with the government they have to do the same shit.
>>2477446
You may have a very small point with that being why, but don't overthink it.
College costs so much because of "perceived value".
Harvard charges what it charges to keep poor people out. Plain and simple. When they do let poor people in, it's so they can graciously provide a scholarship and look altruistic.
Here's just one article on college endowments. "Endowments" are more or less the money colleges sit on to "maintain" their way of life.
Harvard is sitting on $36 Billion.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/pf/college/largest-college-endowments/
>>2480697
Your picture makes a good point, but I assure you that 90%+ of the people in the bulbous hobbyist population either feel locked out of the working artists' population because degrees are erroneously considered as a prerequisite for any kind of employment, or they are locked out because they're just terrible. When it comes to school it's not a matter of being too lazy (at least not for those that didn't drop out), it's a matter of financial responsibility or possibility. How many hobbyist artists are genuinely working towards a goal as a working artist or are simply telling themselves they are but really aren't doing anything of the sort from a practical standpoint?
>you won't get a job from a paper, your skills are the only thing worth. school is good because social interaction is necessary for development and it provides you with a good environment.
"you won't get a job from a paper" is the prevailing theme of the graphic. A good school is perhaps the best possible environment for improvement; no one's really arguing against that.
>your schools are all companies.
Yes; this graphic was created with Americans in mind more so than Asians and Europeans. If you can get away with spending >$7,000 or so annually on a good school it's perhaps worth it. Many people aren't self-motivating enough or well informed enough to improve on their own, that's true, but if they aren't there's no guarantee that they will find success with instruction, either.
>muh x/y/z
>said this
>you might not want to listen to the highest tier of artists
>unless you yourself is part of it
This is inferring that most (or even many) working artists are anywhere near any of those guys in skill. Rob Liefeld is another example of a working artist who attended no school and he continues to work.
Statistics and anecdotes like that show that a degree is mostly a contrivance and that hobbyists shouldn't feel locked out if they're unable to attend.
>>2480832
You're right, within a few hours of making that graphic I noticed that the college has 51,000 students paying $20,000 minimum; so a couple hundred pencil pushers or highly paid football coaches couldn't completely be at fault (though these were just a very specific example, I may well have been able to find more).
Consider however that the school only has a couple thousand teachers. It ends up being less than 10 per diversity/foodstamp commissar (http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-minnesota-twin-cities/academic-life/faculty-composition/). The previously cited article does say that these kind of staff could hypothetically account for almost 1/3rd of new costs which, considering these costs have about trebled over the past 40 years or so, isn't unsubstantial.
Perceived value definitely plays a factor and above all I feel that specifically is why it's almost imperative that american art students in particular strongly consider rejecting school and seek out alternative modes of education, so that the market can correct itself, the schools can downsize and prices can be lowered to a more ethical standard.
>>2480566
Doesn't sound so bad.
What school do you go to?
>>2480589
lel I'm a european talking out of experience. Dropped out of two different art schools because they were awful. The students' average skill level was well below /ic/ and I haven't learnt anything there. Decided to NEET a bit and learnt more in a year than I have in 5 years of art "education"
I actually hope socialism takes over and fucks you hard. If you want anything more than an absolutely mediocre life, you're not gonna be able to make it in a socialist country.
>>2480902
Its called Otis, its one of the first art schools established in LA.
most people think of cal arts when art school in LA is mentioned but during my research, otis seems to be more specialized in digital arts and concept design whereas cal arts is animation. Both have tons of alumni that go on to work for disney it seems.
>>2481257
Good lord, dude.
>>2481257
So 150,000 dollars for a 50/50 chance of becoming a professional....
>>2476507
I want to say a lot of artists got into their fields before college degrees became what they are today.
Also a lot of artists that got hired for game development in the 90s were pretty shit at the time. Games weren't the huge powerhouses that required the best of the best to create. Games were simpler with very shitty art a majority of the time. You just don't need the best artists to create a 1,000 poly character or environment piece. For fuck's sake HL was created in sofrtware mode where you couldn't have more than 300 brush polys at any time. The game would crash if there were. (this is not counting model polygons, just "brush" polys) You could be a level designer without even knowing how to work in maya or 3d studio. Everything was created in the editor. You just didn't have to be that good.
Look at diablo 1's concept art. Shit looks like highschool art scribbled on a napkin. Now look at diablo 3's concept art. It's a full on production.
Now if you want to create top quality assets you need to be amazing at multiple programs. Zbrush, maya, plugins, and more. All these 30+ artists got in when there wasn't much competition. Not nearly as much as there is today. When I was in highschool I was capable of producing assets and maps that easily looked better than anything valve could make. Not day though. I just don't have the skill sets to produce 3d models.
>>2477093
This was my experience at Pratt Institute. My family is poor, but I had no concept of money at 17 and got as much fin-aid and scholarships as I could and took the rest out in loans. Everyone freshman year was rich, cliquey, and not very friendly (not just to me, just in general). People mostly made their friends during orientation, and not gradually through classes as I expected. Many of my profs were great, but the administration was terrible and never helped me do anything, and would screw me over so much that they eventually comped a whole semester. I left later after they mistakenly put me on academic probation for the comped semester issues, then I couldn't get fin-aid. The head academic advisor said "Honestly, I don't know why you're here if your family is not well off, maybe you should try a community school." The school itself just wants daddy's money. The teachers mostly teach at many schools so there are some great ones. If anything, I learned I would rather have an apprenticeship/mentorship relationship with an artist in my field.
My loans defaulted because of that admin mess-up btw, I'm fucked financially yay :^)
>>2481309
>Diablo 1
And yet somewhere along the process line, everyone forgot how much of a masterpiece Diablo 2 was
>>2481487
nigga I still play diablo 2. The art is super fucking embarrassing still though. They only look ok-ish because of how far away the camera is. This shit is pre-rendered in the year 2000. There's no excuse.
I would say game design and art didn't get seriously until mid 2000s. Up until that point you were still able to make entire mods by yourself. Now it takes entire teams to create anything good.
>>2481492
art direction and design is tops
3D technology at the time was poor
Diablo 2 is GOAT
>>2481483
Art schools don't care about making good artists. They know the majority of their students suck and will never get anywhere.
This is why teachers pick favorites. They find the couple students that are actually capable of gettin gud and focus on them the most.
When I graduated art school I was one of 5 kids to actually get an art job. The professors like to brag to one another with who had more students go professional and they all liked me a lot when I took any of their courses.
Of the 150 or so in my class that graduated only one of them was better than I was. That guy is fucking insanely good though. He had been trained since he was a little kid in special art schools his parents paid for. By the time he graduated with me he had 7 years of college level art classes and another 7 in grade school of art classes. Since middle school up to the age of 25 he was taking art classes.
Everyone else was just there as a background.
>>2481503
>Art schools don't care about making good artists. They know the majority of their students suck and will never get anywhere.
This is why they need to be supplanted by a resurgence of the ateliers and apprenticeships. These for-profit schools in america are destroying the lives of naive young people and their even more naive and trusting parents.
>>2481503
Post 'his' work
I'm just curious, you really played him up and now I want to see where he's at
>>2481818
>>2481864
what the titties the image didn't upload.
He renders in either traditional or digitals.
>>2481861
Thanks. I like it!
>>2481818
>>2481861
>>2481868
Problem is that he has no style at all for the majority of his paintings. These are probably the most "stylish" but overall he's just another sam weber/james jean copy like every other art student that comes outta that school.
>>2476887
>Unless you are going into a field that requires board, state, or federal licensing there is really not reason for you to go to college
That part specifically addresses what you are talking about. :)
>>2481869
I could post more but you can probably find em at this point.
It's insane what 20 years of art schooling can do for ya. There was another artist that graduated from the same college that was a year above me(or two?) who also trained since a child. He had like 8 years total in art college as well and his style was pretty much identical.
>>2481874
I'll just say who it is cus I'm sure you fucks have heard of him anyways
Francis vallejo. I don't know if he actually graduated or dropped out for some reason to go to another school. Guy is good but for fuck's sake how many years of art college do you need? 8 seems like enough right? last I heard he was going to go get a masters to get that shit up to 10 years or more.
When it comes to 4 year art schools there are only two you should even consider(well I guess three). Ringling, Calarts and art center.
>>2481264
im paying around 5k per semester upfront with about 7k in subsidized loans with no interest and theres a variety of other grants and scholarships
its definitely a huge amount of money but its pretty average when it comes to these types of art institutions in the US
>>2481930
>average
It's $10k more than Calarts (and Harvard). What kind of scholarships and grants have you gotten to lower the costs by over $40,000? Post your work fambo
>>2476507
I dated a girl ten years back in college. She was going to state school. Flunks. Help her in some small to apply to Pratt. Very crazy. Eventually break up. She however graduates Pratt. Still living with parents upstate. Full time junkie last I heard.
I've always loved art. However always had terrible teachers literally every stage of schooling. Only at hit the age thirty existentialist crisis did that give me the motivation to go and pursue it. Age thirty two I've already had almost ten group showings (if that's something to be proud of).
Listen kids. Work on yourself before you work on your art.
>>2481942
i got around 20k scholarship but i think everyone gets that so its just like a tuition reduction. I got a similar "scholarship" for philidelphia academy of fine arts and the tuition for that school was higher than otis
im really not keen on exact numbers atm, all i know is I have to pay around 5k up front per semester and my mom said to only take the interest-less loan because other wise interests will rape me. The whole process was a massive pain in the ass
if you still care about my portfolio its just pretty generic still lives that i was told to do in high school. my high school art career consisted of trying to create the most generic fine arts portfolio. Pic unrelated is my favorite one.
This thread makes me feel like I'm one of the few people who actually learned a lot from art school. Teachers helped me break down story structure for screenwriting and storyboards, they helped critique a lot of my work and taught me what I should be looking for in life drawing. I feel like I improved faster in the four years of college than the several years of doodling in middle and high school.
Sure it was expensive as fuck and I have debt, but I certainly learned a lot.
