Led by the Blind Part 5a- Educating the Educators
In the previous post, I had talked about how local institutions are selecting candidates for IDM courses based mostly on their academic results- certainly placing it at a higher importance than artistic ability. IMO, this is probably the dumbest thing one can do and contribute in no small part to the problem. With all the hype IDM is generating these days, this problem is only going to get worse since lots more people are going to get conned by all the empty promises and fool’s gold at the end of the rainbow. People who ordinarily has no intention of ever pursuing a life in the creative media industry may now be tempted by all the talk of a supposedly booming industry.
This is made all the more worse by the fact that a lot of these lemmings will be people with excellent academic results (but little ability to think for themselves) who can’t draw a stickman to save his life. And what is going to happen is that far more deserving candidates with talent but poor results will be squeezed out. Places in the polys will be limited and if more apply, logic dictates guys who are not academically inclined will be the ones that pays the price.
So now, comes the next ingredient in this unholy mix of official incompetence, ineptitude and hubris.
Lack of a Coherent Syllabus
Our media likes to brag about the excellence of our supposedly world class education system. I don’t know about the rest, but when it comes to the digital arts, it is anything but world class- more like world’s last if you ask me.
First off, there’s a lack of focus and coherency in our IDM syllabus. In their greed to cram everything and the kitchen sink into the courses, what they end up producing is a whole bunch of graduates who are jacks of all trades but a master of none. It is not so bad if they are at least a somewhat competent jack, but the problem is compounded when they are usually barely competent in the most simple of tasks. So what you have is a whole lot of graduates with nice looking diplomas but are as useful as a pair of testicles growing on your forehead.
Step into a graduation show and the results are plain for everyone to see.
We can no longer afford to cram too much inconsequential subjects into the syllabus. Standards have risen, no longer is it impressive to simply know the software, one must be a master practitioner as well. You need to be both artistically and technically sound and lets face it, 3 years is just too short a time for the students to be learning every single unrelated and inconsequential subject.
Instead when I step into a graduation show, I see students who majored in animation desiging posters, websites and corporate stationary. What the hell is going on? Animators should be learning about animation, acting and staging and all the rest of the things that goes towards being a good animator. Similiarly, a game artist show be learning about modelling and texturing.
Poster and website design shouldn’t even appear on a students booth. And then, you have all those horrible fan art. Why? For what? If you can’t do a better job than the original artist, what worth is it to reproduce a poor man’s imitation. Again IMO all fan art should be banned as both portfolio pieces and as submission for school assignments. Fan art don’t stimulate creatvity and don’t prove your value as an artist. You nothing about originality, creativity, composition or color theory. Instead what you are doing is just a more tedious and time consuming imitiation of a canon photocopier, only the photocopier can do a better and faster job and is probably smarter than you.
Geeze, I can go on and on. I need to take a break. Just writing this is making me angry.