Natural Habitat

The rumor that animators are actually a bunch of 20-40-year old men that spend half their life in a secret cave and huddle close to their computer for light and warmth is an exaggeration, but not by much.

You see, animation, film, and anything related to making something move on screen is hardly ever just a job. It's a lifestyle. You can send someone home from work to rest, and while they're at home, they may just sit there and edit their own work related to the exact same media. Or while they're resting, they watch other movies and get inspirations for future projects. It's in our blood. We speak in Adobe program terms, and any normal person just stops listening when you start to mention words like "CGI" and "b-roll." It translates into a foreign language that only people in your field understand.

In fact, I recently found myself with family during the Christmas holiday, and it was ultimately frustrating to me, because we all studied different professions. My mother being a minister, my brother a preservation architect, and me a filmmaker/animator. The frustrating part was that I'm not interested in old buildings, my brother's agnostic and therefore not interested in religion, and my mother has a hard time with technology. Learning to deal with frustration is key really. So, how do you communicate with the outside world after a while if you've been so specifically educated that you can no longer think in the same context as the rest of society.  You talk about things you all can relate to.  For my family that usually equates to food and the weather.

Food is a topic so neutral that just about anyone can talk about it and still appreciate either the thought of tasting it, or the mechanics behind making it.  And then there's the weather.  In our family, the weather becomes a good topic because we all live in different climates.  My mom lives in tornado alley with a climate that's the normal, blazing hot in the summer and frigid in the winter.  I live just a couple states further East in a climate that gets a lot of rain and remains fairly mild in the winter, but very warm in the summer.  And my brother lives much further North where it gets extremely cold in the winter and only mildly warm in the summer.  So, it makes sense that weather would be a good conversation topic for us.  But at the end of the day, if you're an animator or a filmmaker, because your profession is visual, your family is going to want to view your work.  So, I suppose the lesson of this story is that even though other people may not understand your secret coded language, animators and filmmakers still have the privilege of being able to let other people enjoy their profession through their creations.

~Celia

Video Games (Christmas Break Special)

So, for those who don't know, many art students (when we aren't dying from lack of sleep and overwork) are totally into video gaming. I recently started getting into it with the help of my boyfriend. So, while there are maybe only one or two games that I'm really any good at, I can say that I'm starting to get a lot better as a whole. So, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some of the humorous and interesting things that I've learned from video games...

1. The Soul Calibur universe believes in big boobs, magic incorporation to all types of martial arts, badass/totally unpractical attacks, and S&M.

2. Throwing a grenade at a closed window will not shatter the glass, but it will make for some laughs

3. The double-tap rule almost always applies in zombie games unless you use a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher.

4. Crazed men chasing you with chainsaws make normal zombies look like Bugs Bunny

5. According to Bayonetta and Donte, all demon-killing must be done in style.

6. In Mass Effect 1, you are guaranteed to spend at least a half an hour just figuring out where you're supposed to be going.

7. Men in Skyrim are much more polite to you if your character is a woman.

8. Dragons in any game are always cool and hard to kill.

9. The name Ezio is to always be highly respected.

10. Leon and the merchant from Resident Evil are actually the same person (now we know how he randomly pulls out rocket launchers).

11. Men in video game world usually have two things - dashing good looks & impossible bad ass moves

12. Military character customization for women equals a choice between ugly and uglier.

13. Women in video games (save for Bayonetta) are usually grossly underestimated.

14. Death is made funnier whenever Toby Turner is the one playing.

15. The meaning of life is a moldy squid sandwich.

16. Cool characters usually have issues

17. You can build anything.... and I mean anything in minecraft.

18. (in response to 17) said object built in minecraft may end up crashing your computer.

19. If your character can jump, the laws of gravity don't usually apply.

20. The hero can fly before laying down an amazing and outrageous finishing move.


So, I think that's about all I have. :) Merry Christmas, guys!

~C.Mitchell

Internet Censorship

I hesitated spreading this post all the way to this channel because I wasn't sure it's appropriate, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it couldn't be more appropriate. The internet is the artist's life blood.

This is a very important issue guys. There's a bill thats on its way to passing that will take the free Internet from Americans and flush it down the toilet. It will ban certain websites w/ copyright content and throw certain people in prison for use of copyrighted materials (including people who make amvs, mmvs, and any other fan based video that holds copyrighted content.). Here's why you should be concerned:

If this bill passes, here are some of the things you may want to expect:

- If you're an amv, mmv artist, expect to have your video channel banned at the very least, and prison time at the very worst. Up to 5 years of prison per video.

- If you read copyrighted materials online (manga for instance), expect those to get banned

- If you watch anime online, expect that to go away too

- You'll have to watch what you post: No longer will you be able to freely post copyrighted images as examples if you're an artist (this will be a big issue even for professional artists who keep a blog).

- Anything: video, web page, etc. with a copyrighted music track could be at risk for being banned.


And yet though the worries that have caused for this bill to be proposed are not unfounded, there are even bigger reasons to oppose it. Namely because everything in our society is a remix of something else.


Everything Is A Remix: THE MATRIX from robgwilson.com on Vimeo.

Everything's a Remix - Part III: The Elements of Creativity

Furthermore, it would give the government the confidence to start proposing other bills to take even more freedoms from us. And if you think it isn't possible, look at our current government policies regarding airport search and seizure, detaining of possible terrorist members, and phone and e-mail tap procedures. If the government isn't stopped here, with this bill, there is no telling what they may take next.

Don't let it happen without a fight: StopCensorship.org

And on a note of rather negative practicality... The nerds who spend their lives on the internet enjoy a free atmosphere. If you put a limit to where they can go and what they can do, organized criminal hacking is not far behind. This is a serious matter. Don't let it get that far:

For a more thorough explanation of what exactly this bill will cover, go to the article from the Verge

What is Art?

So I was sitting in an artist lecture last night with a man who started a movement. It had to do with making neighborhoods colorful, which is an amazing idea for the city he lives in. Detroit is a city that is fast turning into a town of ghosts. And what few people remain are usually embedded in a less than stellar lifestyle. So this project is a saving grace to the people of this city. That said, I don't think I would want polka dots and huge lots of painted trash where I live. None-the-less, his movement is spreading.

But then he said something that made me think about how insane artists really are. He said "everything is art." Is it? If so, why am I in art school? If everything is art, couldn't I just point a camera at the sky, press record, and call it art? This idea bothered me, so I told someone in one of my classes about this and he told me, "Yes, that's art."

Come again? So, you're telling me that pointing a camera at the sky, and pressing record is art? I dunno about you, but I think if I suggested that to my video professor she might actually kill me (for real). And yet we have people painting polka dots on buses, squares on canvas, and putting upside down urinals in museums. We call that art. So what is art really? Is it our ability to convince someone of an idea? Then wouldn't being artist actually mean that we're being con mans? There's a thought. We con people into believing the illusions we paint on canvas, the ideas we sell on paper, and the tales we tell from our imagination. A perfect example of this illusion is the 3D movie experience. The selling point is that "you feel like you're really there." But you aren't. In fact, you never were. What you're seeing is an illusion of light, projection, and digital manipulation of audio and video. So is that what art is? A chance for someone to experience something other than their immediate environment? Maybe. That would mean though that our lecturer was wrong. Art isn't everything. It's only something that exists in our imaginations and memories, but made tangible through talent, materials, and hard work. This theory would also state that my theory of pointing a camera at the sky and pressing record wouldn't actually be art after all. Because, that doesn't exist in my imagination.

So what is art? Who knows really. I couldn't tell you for sure. No one can. No matter how art historians try to tell you that they know the answer and artists try to prove that what they do is art... well, I have news for you. No one has the answer. It's a question that has no right answer, so all I can tell you is to use your best judgement and decide for yourself whether something is actually art.

~ C.Mitchell

Humor In The Strangest Places

I imagine every school has that class or major where the students band together to survive, or simply just like to hangout. Yeah, my major is like that, but not in the traditional "we like to party" sense. Because we all work in programs regularly that only a couple of us can actually afford, when classes end in the evening, we usually end up together. Not all of us may be doing work for the same class--although many times, that's very much the case--but we're all in it together.

So what do a bunch of sleep deprived computer nerds do to pass the time together, you ask? Well... :D

There are several things that end up going on in our lab. Most of it includes youtube in some fashion. There's the occasional tone-deaf sing-along and the grumpy "old" man who screams "SHUT UP YOU NOISY KIDS!" Hehe, just a joke (kind of). And then you have people from other majors who wander in and ask for you to show them your latest work. They get all googly-eyed and then go back to their own major's hells.

And then... you have the odd ones in other majors who give rides home only to their friends and ultimately pick and chose who they consider to be a friend. They may even create their own monologue in the process, deciding who gets to ride in their car and who gets hung out to dry. I kidd you not.

And then of course, the humor doesn't end when you actually get into class either. Since artists are visual, sometimes the professors use visual aides like a piece of chocolate to describe the layers of HTML code. Even better, I find are the times when students' minds have obviously been elsewhere and they start talking about their favorite TV shows and outrageous findings. Among them are subjects like Twilight porn and how high that pile of cat shit was in "that dude's" apartment on Hoarders the night before (right after lunch no less).

Art students have no shame. They are taught to let ideas flow and never kill even the most ridiculous thought right away. Their mental filter has been turned off, so they talk about everything and anything, and expect other students and their professors to join in. And the funniest part is, hardly anyone ever notices that normal people aren't like that. In Art school, everything is fair game, so be sure to laugh at the craziest of it.

~ C.Mitchell

Finals that Never End

I've been told that for the normal college student, finals are like hell. And while I can relate in some ways, I can honestly say that in most ways I really can't. In art school, there's normally a period of maybe the first week where you get some really minor stuff to do and you still have time to eat normal meals, sleep eight hours, bathe as long as you want to, and get ready for a new semester. And then because everything seems so minor, you put stuff off... and then you get behind. And then when the professors start piling it on, you're still swimming in the small stuff, so you're struggling to pull off the bigger stuff. And thus, the endless lack of sleep begins.

In normal colleges, you have homework, and you even have a few quizes, but you don't really study until you have to take the test. And you'd think, "Well art school is the same, right? You have a big project and then you have like a week or two to do another one."

There are classes like that. Sculpture is one of them. The beginning class consists of several very small projects to start out (not more than a couple hours each), and then three larger projects. All of them are back to back, but not overlapping. In the other departments, however, this is not the case. Many professors want you to learn a technique and practice it while they assign a larger project.

In painting for example, in a single week (all due the very next week), I was assigned a color wheel, five small paintings (each taking maybe 2-3 hours), and a large scale personal project (on 4' x 5' canvas), as well as to finish the painting I was working on in class. You may think, "Well, yeah, but you had a whole week." True. Very true, especially since I only had class once a week. However, keep in mind this wasn't my only class. And the class was oil painting. Yes "oil." Oil takes several days, even weeks to dry completely. Couple that with trying to transport it all, and you've got a massive pain in the butt. Now imagine that, but with more classes. While this was going on, one week I had to study for two tests, sculpt and make clothing for an armature character (from scratch) for my stop motion animation course, and finish carving the body for a self rendering in sculpture.

That said, it was the easiest semester I have ever had at this school.

The hardest semester I've ever had in this school was when I put two liberal studies together with a film course, a digital animation & effects course, and a digital photography class. There would be days when I would be on the computer doing homework for 20 hours, and be awake for a total of 23. And then I would get up the next day, take a shower and go to class, only to realize that I would have to do the same thing the next night. In fact, it was a normal ritual that between Tuesday and Thursday I hardly slept at all. And as finals approached and I had to film and edit, I found myself staying up even longer. The free time I had was spent sitting in on training sessions with actors and my fight choreographer, spending a few precious minutes with my boyfriend, and sleeping. What made it even worse was the intense nature of a professor in my major that I saw three times a week. I was so exhausted that I was ill for much of the semester. I ate about half of what I normally did, and I was constantly frustrated and stressed. There weren't enough hours in a day to get everything done, so I made time. I borrowed it from the nights I should've been in bed, and even a time or two when I should've been in class. And since I hadn't had time to clean my room in so long, I ended up doing my work on my bed instead of at my desk. I started to associate my bed with work, and I started to despise it... as crazy as that sounds. But no matter how crazy it got, things always end eventually. And while I'm still so crazy pissed about the last digital photography project I had to do (at the last minute) that to this day I have trouble looking at the images--even though a good lot of them include my boyfriend--life goes on. And while we always say, "If I could do it over, things would be different," the truth is that they probably wouldn't be. All you can do is work until you break down and cry, and then just keep working. Because when it's all over, regardless of professor's opinions, disses and encouragements from classmates, and the help of all the people who helped you along the way... the only thing that really matters is whether you like how it turned out. And no matter how sleep deprived and miserable you were, did you at least laugh a little in the meantime? Because no matter what the circumstances, I find that if a person has both love and humor in their life, they can endure. That's always how college should be. I know that's how it is for me.

~C.Mitchell

Artist & Patron

No matter how long I stay in art school, there is something I will never get used to, or even understand. There are constant art openings, and as a result regular art openings for the college sponsors/patrons are held. During these events, students are shoed away from the front entrance and made to keep away from all the rich people dressed up in fancy clothes. And while they walk around all high and mighty, gawking at student art and drinking lots of wine, the students themselves are greeted by locked doors. There was once a time that I actually entered in the main hall during one of these events, and got weird looks from many of the patrons.

Now, you may be thinking, "Well yeah, it's a suit and tie event." But I never understood why we weren't allowed to attend these events, being that many of the students were the artists for these pieces. What's more, you have to remember that each person pays about $30,000 a year to go to school here. Being that there's at least one day every month that we can't even get in the front door because of these events, I would call that an insult. But that's just how art is. Art is a luxury item, therefore we cater to the rich and turn away the poor. And everyone wants to take a bite out of the artist. It's difficult enough to get your work into a private art gallery, but once you do manage to get in, the gallery takes about half of the money from every piece you sell. So, in other words, if someone sells a painting for say $900, the artist will get less than $500. No wonder you hear all the time about starving artists.

Where the real money is, is from commissioned works. These are opportunities that the artist gets to build up their portfolio, make a solid pay check without involving a third party, and learn how to deal with people. The downside is the lack of freedom. Because it's a commission, you have to do what your customer wants, which may not be anything like what you want to do. But money is money, and sometimes you can't be picky. On the flip side, digital artists have it a little different. We get even less love because we can't physically tack anything up on the walls. Everything is computerized, and usually the only commissions we get are web related or requests to do family slide shows. Our real success comes from internships. So in the end, no matter the major, we all just hope that our stuff is good enough to land something. That's all you can hope for. And in the mean time, don't be afraid to make faces behind the snobby patrons' backs. It'll make you feel just a little better.

~ C.Mitchell

Sex on Canvas

I'm going to put a cautionary note that this may not be suitable for people under the age of 18, but it's not like I can stop you from reading, so use your best judgement.

When I first got into art school, I thought that I would be learning how to paint and draw from life. I figured I might get a model at some point, but I really had no idea what to really expect. After all, "art school" is a really vague term. But as I sat down in my first class with the most obscure name in the world (Idea Process Criticism), I began to think, this might actually be fun. And then they asked, "Draw ten things you think of when I say the word, 'love,' and then write ten words for the same thing." And so I innocently drew a heart and probably a smiley face, and god knows what other flowery things. And then I wrote a couple words like "soul mates." And then after about twenty minutes she had us tack our results up on the walls. What I was greeted with, I was not ready for. Clearly, the rest of the word had converted itself into the art school environment long before I had, because if I could count the number of penises on that bulletin board, I would need more than two hands. And the class seemed to continue to challenge me like that. Now, you may laugh, but it sure as hell didn't end there. In fact, this one little shocking moment was just the tip of the ice berg. Not even half a semester later, I was in a printmaking class and there was a girl who's entire body of works related to her vagina. It was extremely graphic, and so the one or two boys in that class spent the entire critique attempting to be fascinated with the sink next to her, only to squirm when they were finally asked what they thought of her piece. The fact is, sex is a huge part of art culture. For women, it's called feminist art, which is in my opinion a load of crap. Whether its a painting symbolizing a sexual organ or a photograph of a nude woman, there is no censor here. Even in my film class, my instructor has a strange fetish for sex. Pull out a hot dog, a bun, pour sauce on it, and you've got a dude sticking "it" in a girl (yes, there really was an animation like that). But no matter how uncomfortable you are with the idea of talking about sex in a public setting... after a while, it's just water under the bridge like everything else. Although, I have to say that I still have trouble looking my thirty-some year-old art history professor in the eyes when he starts talking about how this one patron Saint statue was supposed to be having an orgasm.

Still, I have never had anyone, teacher or student, come up to me and tell me to do something sexual in my pieces. People in art college are far more perceptive than people outside it. While they may not spare you from the conversations, they can tell if you aren't really into it. Tell that to an all-conforming state school and you might get thrown out for failure to become a mindless drone. I jest, but it's kind of true. But my real point is, even within the very real insanity that is art school, there is a small form of maturity that can't be found anywhere else. And once you attend an art college, you will never be the same again.

~ C.Mitchell

The Art School Weapon Policy ~ Safety Third

I once saw an episode of Dirty Jobs (one of my favorite TV programs :D ) that explained how many of the jobs they did required them to not put safety first. If they did, they would never do the job in the first place. So they adopted the policy of "Safety Third." In my opinion, this may apply to art school as well. Many of the tasks we deem as dangerous, we still end up doing anyway, knowing full well that we could lose a finger, an eye, or cut our hands open and bleed everywhere in a matter or seconds. And yet, I have only ever come across one person here who is really very worried about it. Meet Jackie, or at least, that's what I'm going to call her. She's afraid of everything... germs, sand paper, machinery in the shop, chemicals, carpal tunnel, and even detached retinas from staring at the computer screen too long. She wants to be an animator.

I'll wait until this sinks in....

But really, even around cold season, she wears masks just like they do in China and Japan. But before you start to pick on her like we do, you should know that she likely had a very traumatic experience when she was younger which makes up for a good portion of why she fears so much. And a lot of things (whether they exceed the boundaries of common sense or not) are actually very real dangers. But what I never quite understood was, if she was so afraid, why go to art school? In an ordinary school, there are tens of majors that are perfectly safe to chose from. And yet, with all her fears, I once saw her take sculpture (only a semi-dangerous class) and metals (an extremely dangerous class) at the same time. And while I saw her carving away at a piece of foam with a 6" razor, I began to think... Forget about all the in class dangers. Did we even have a weapons policy at our school?

In light of Virgina Tech, Columbine, and the other places where insane people with guns have seen fit to go on a rampage, I am almost completely certain that most every normal college has instated a "no weapons policy."

So I looked through our handbook (given I probably didn't read it word for word, but who would?), and though it mentioned drug policies, emergency tornado drills, and even prohibited items in the dorms, nowhere did it mention a weapons policy. The only thing prohibited in the dorms were: waterbeds, weight lifting equipment, pets, heavy objects that can damage the already decrepit floor, candles, alcohol, and other fire hazards. So then I got to thinking...

Was it even possible to institute a "weapons policy" in our school? Uh... not really. In fact, make that a, "Hell No!" Why? At any given time, any or all students in the school may have anything from a 1" x-acto knife to a box cutter in their daily classroom supplies. I once even had two 6" razors in my backpack for an entire semester, along with a 1" x-acto. And you're probably going, "Well, holy shit!" But the reason we have them is because classes require them. In my case, it was a sculpture class (the same one as Jackie). I had to carve foam for half the semester, hence the razors. But even Freshman are required to carry x-acto blades, and many people carry box cutters for their own personal convenience. And yet, even with all the insane people in my school, no one has thought to use them for anything other than their academic purpose. And that also includes the film department which have been known to use "fake" guns as props for movies.

My theory is that we are constantly faced with the fear of losing a finger or a hand by means of our own stupidity or sleep deprivation (as even my roommate accidently cut off the tip of a finger one weekend working on an illustration project). Even chemical burns and extreme allergic reactions are a total possibility. We know the dangers, so we live in reality every day, and we know not to go looking for extra trouble (although, now that I've said that, just watch, next semester someone's going to go ballistic). But really, I do think so. And if we truly need an outlet, we can paint, animate, draw, sculpt, etc. God knows, there is plenty that can go wrong in this school without adding malicious intent to the mix.

~C.Mitchell

My Major

Whenever I first went into art school, a professor once asked me why I didn't go into architecture... My brother went into architecture, so it would be a suitable field for me, as far as he could see. My answer was that the work load was way too large, and I wanted to sleep. So imagine how ironic it is that I'm studying a field that ends up granting me next to no sleep, and a massive workload to go with it. Life can be a bitch.

I have just two professors that actually work in my major, and out of those two, I've only really answered to one of them for the last year and a half. I constantly find myself frustrated by the Indie nature of the film and digital department, the equipment we're given to work with (or the lack there of), and how the school kind of looks down on the design arts. It's a truly odd dynamic. But in a way, it makes the people in your field stick together. There's nothing quite like the people in our department. And I'd imagine anyone in the school would probably say the same about their own department. I've had the privilege of exploring some of the other parts of this school, just due to the broad requirements of my major and the incredibly high number of studio requirements. Each major has a different dynamic, a different teacher, and a different kind of love hate relationship. While many of the fine arts do get the much desired sleep that we all so desire... or at least have a much better chance at it, I can't say I'd really trade the fact that all I have to take to class is a portable hard drive and a notebook, versus a palate, a drawing board, a box for supplies, your painting/drawing, and whatever else they decide to tack on. I did that all Freshman year. No more.

But on the subject of crazy classes, the wrong combination in art school can be deadly. I once made the mistake of taking a digital photo class, a video class, and a 2D Animation and Effects course all in the same semester... and that didn't even include the two liberal studies classes I was taking. I kid you not... when finals came around, I slept one hour every day for a solid week, until the last night when I literally worked straight through until my class the next morning, and had to sit through a five hour critique. By then, I was running on fumes. Sleep in art school is a luxury, and not always one that you can afford. You make the mistake of thinking "things will get better..." but they just get harder. Rock in a hard place when you try to pile too much together. News flash, none of your professors care that you have another class.

Still, you learn to make choices of what is really important to you. You can do without sleep, without food, or even without bathing, but not all at the same time. I always make it a policy to bathe, no matter how little sleep I've gotten (even if it's none at all). At 7am, sharp, no matter what is going on in my life, no matter what project is due or the amount of progress I have done on it (or have left on it), I will go home and eat, and shower (if I haven't already). On the other hand, there's the other rule, food or sleep? Many people in the college try to go without both--totally a horrible idea. I always chose food over sleep. I usually have a ton of work to do, but there are no limits to my crankiness when I'm hungry. That said, I eat dinner every day, period.

But staying up can have its perks. The Mac labs have a weird sense of crazy that seems to come alive sometime between 2am and 5am. I have seen people randomly walk in dressed in full cosplay, coupled with strange music videos, and lots and lots of sobbing, screaming, cussing, and singing. Sometimes the singing even becomes a group activity. So really, it's not all bad.

But I'll stop here, because a further explanation would take quite some time. Just know that art school is a different kind of crazy.

~C.Mitchell

The Never-Ending Quest for Sleep

Four years.  That's the amount of time I spent without sleep.  Now that I graduated, I have the privilege of sleeping whenever I want - for the most part.  It's the ultimate victory against every crazy homework assignment, every insane critique, and every moment of art school that denies you the right to even an hour of rest.

As much as I appreciate the diploma, I appreciate the sleep so much more.

I remember the first day of freshman orientation four years ago.  The Vice Dean of the time looked at each of us and said "Yesterday was the last day you will ever get regular sleep."  We refused to take him seriously.  For the next two weeks we met each other in the hallways with a lively "Hi! How are you!? Nice day isn't it!? Yaaaaaay Art School!!!!" or something similar to that.

The atmosphere of the entire school changed after that third week.  Everyone I knew no longer had smiles... or proper bathing habits for that matter.  We had all become swamped in our classes and only greeted each other with an exhausted "heeey."  Some just looked at you with tears in their eyes.  As sad as it may sound, it is a part of the experience.  We learned about the ridiculous work loads we would have to endure.  I remember staying up every wednesday night just to make sure my Drawing 2 assignment was complete, only to receive a C+ the majority of the time.  That's life I guess.

At the beginning of every year, I would promise myself to get my work done early enough to get to bed early each night. I was determined to get the 8 hours of sleep I would always be told I needed (by non-art school students no less).  It never happened.  No matter how much planning I did for my assignments,  I would always go at least ten days a year without sleep.  It's jarring at first.  You sit in class without any idea of your surroundings.  After a while, you get used to garbage trucks and birds telling you it's 6:00 am and you have three hours before class starts.

As the years passed, the lack of sleep became less of an issue.  We didn't get more sleep each night, we just knew how to handle it better.  Whether it was loads of coffee or energy drinks galore, we did what we had to do to get our stuff done.  Most of us were in a position where we were shelling out $30,000 or more to go to school here.  We figured we would get our money's worth.

Thinking back, it could've been worse.  One of the great things about art school is the opportunities you get to work on projects that you truly enjoy.  I think about all the times I have spent up late at night doing something I love, only caring about sleep when upon finishing.  Animation gives me that same drive.  I guess that's what some people call passion.

- M. Shaw

Art School

I've been a student in an art college for about three years, so you can say that there isn't much that can really surprise me about people in that kind of setting anymore. I suppose the first thing I should say is that there are a lot of common misconceptions about art college. I know the first thing people say when I tell them, "I go to art school," is "oh." As if that just covers everything. A lot of people think that art students are lazy, pot-smoking hippies who haven't made it out of the 70s. Which for about 50% of the school is probably absolutely true. Are they lazy? Yes, probably. Are they pot smokers? I don't doubt it. Even some of the older teachers join in on this kind of action, trust me.

But then there are the other 50%. The second 50% are the ones who sit there and work their asses off day and night and probably haven't even had the time to attend a party, not to mention become a full-time pot smoker. I'm a digital media major. I fall in that category... the category that often ends up saying, "I wish I had gone to a normal school so I would actually have a manageable work load." If you think I'm kidding, you should've seen the way I had to handle my classes about two semesters back. It's hard to say we have it easy when you have people skipping class so they can finish work for a different class.

What you learn really quickly about art school is that it's not really all about the art. In fact, art school is about 75% bullshitting and learning how to convinced people you actually meant for something to be that way (even if you're making shit up on the spot), 15% learning technique, and 10% creativity. It's all about the "concept" here. There is no definite grading system. You just do the best you can, hope you're motivated when the time comes, and then move on to the next project. Art school doesn't really recognize midterms. There are no big tests or crazy extras, unless you have the misfortune of having a professor that likes to tack on extras on top of your workload. Every class is a constant array of projects on top of projects. And these aren't things you can usually get done in just a one to two hour study session. Many of the projects I've dealt with have been as many as 10-20+ hours each. No kidding. And yet, somehow it miraculously all gets done.

Though I was a little shocked the first time I took an art history class and viewed slide after slide of nude male sculptures and paintings, after about a week or two, the excitement was gone. By now I'm completely desensitized to it. But beyond the projects, the nude sculptures, random paintings of sexual organs and the rest of the crazy stuff that goes on in this school, by far the most shocking things are the students. I have seen the students in my school do, say, and wear things that I would have never believed before I came here. And yet, by now I am so accustomed to it, that it takes me a minute to realize that it's strange. Though I am constantly tested, I love this school. Having to take a foreign language class in a normal state college over the summer for a graduation requirement has made me realize just how much I actually love the weirdness of this school. Truly, there is nothing else like it...

~C.Mitchell