Redpill me on AM and other similar programs. Do you get anything out of it that you wouldn't be able to learn on your own? Are you actually just buying connections? Have you done it? what did you think? I can already guess that the general opinion here will be pretty negative but I'm interested to hear your insights.
>>981147It’s a scam, learn from a real school as they are trained to deal with problems you never get questions about, unlike AM that makes you follow a series of YouTube tutorials.
I'm about 1/3 of the way through class 6. Knew nothing when I started and have become pretty decent at character animation. Many people who started at the same time with the same skill level as me are much better because my dopamine receptors are fried and half my struggle in learning to animate has been spent fighting my completely cooked brain. But I'm definitely borderline hireable at this point. No I'm not posting my assignments here because doing so could conceivably hurt me and can't possibly help me in any way. I like to come here to have a laugh but I imagine this board appears to be such a worthless cesspit for that very reason. People in the industry probably lurk here but wouldn't dare actually post their work because of the negative connotations of being associated with 4chan. All of the lectures can be found on cgpeers so what you're paying for is in part the connections but moreso the critiques. Having someone from pixar critiquing a new version of your shit animation once a week is pretty invaluable. There's also dailies throughout the week + you get an upper classman or alumni assigned to you every term, as well as private tutoring sessions from a different alumni once a week and usually have a discord group of all the people in your class. So if you're not a turbo autist and actually take advantage of everything the community offers you can get someone who is at the very least more advanced than you or usually someone who has actual industry experience to give you notes on your work every day. You're expected to pay that forward and mentor lower classmen which also trains your eye. 1/2
>>9811842/2Person above me has no idea what they're talking about (most people on this board don't). I don't know how many people I've met through AM that come in from multi year college animation programs and literally know absolutely nothing, to the point that I genuinely have no idea what said college programs actually teach them because they don't even move the characters clavicle when they lift their arms. The contrast between this place and AM and I'd imagine animschool as well is night and day. Nobody is talking about blender or asking how to make their animations look like ps1 graphics, nobody is dooming about the latest AI slopmachine or telling each other they should sepoku because le industry is dead. People are generally just positive and helpful and actually talk about animation and improving your work. Unless you're a really rare type of person it's also much harder to motivate yourself to do something tedious like spend 2 weeks nailing the physics of a bouncing ball if you don't have assignments to turn in or people to encourage you. All my teachers have been really helpful and most gave everyone in the class open offers to continue sending your reel to them for feedback forever.
>>981147>>981185And to answer your question everything I've learned at AM I technically could have learned elsewhere or by downloading the lectures off cgpeers but it would have taken so exponentially longer that I would have given up and even if I didn't my skill level would still have ended up much lower, and I don't think there's much room in this field for having stuff on your demo reel that "almost" looks right. If your body mechanics aren't right the best you're going to get from most places is an email telling you what to work on before you apply again.Anyone who is going to tell you being mentored by pixar/dreamworks animators is a scam is coping because they can't afford it
>>981184>All of the lectures can be found on cgpeers so what you're paying for is in part the connections but moreso the critiques.peers is a virus infested shithole
>>981184>Knew nothing when I startedhuh, was under the impression they required some level of experience beforehand or something. assuming they taught you maya too then, which is something I was a little concerned about since im a blender guy.>my dopamine receptors are fried and half my struggle in learning to animate has been spent fighting my completely cooked brain.i struggle a lot with this as well, at least im not alone keka few other questions:i work full time, do you? if so how hard was the load? if not, do you think you could have handled a 40 hour week on top of it? are they accommodating to that at all or what's the deal there. especially the live stuff. I can do pretty much anything offline while im at work but I can't be in a call with someone, ya know?can you still access prerecorded stuff/chatrooms/whatever when you're done? like if you want to review past stuff or something. would it be smart to screenrecord everything?
>>981189I took their maya workshop first before I did any of the character animation stuff. You can get away with skipping it if you know blender, I'd just spend a few days - a week doing maya for beginners stuff on youtube. You'll find pretty quickly that in animating learning the software is like 5% of the work. The overwhelming majority of what you're learning is how bodies move, how to analyze video reference and how to push things to make it look appealing/apply the 12 principles of animation to your shots. You're basically using maya to create a series of 2d images by posing the rigs instead of drawing them. The more you think of 3D animation as 2D animation without needing to erase the better off you'll be and the more you'll realize it's not actually about learning software at all. If you know how to drag the rig controllers around and press S you're most of the way there as far as that goes. For the first half of the program I worked retail and had a fixed 40 hour schedule and a really high maintenance girlfriend sabotaging me and I didn't think it was too bad. The second half I've been working a job where I basically make my own schedule and can dick around a lot and in many ways find it harder because I'm bad at self regulating and have become borderline narcoleptic. Working 40 hours isn't going to be a problem but if you find it hard to come home from work and focus on animating that can be challenging. But it got easier for me over time because once I was out of the boring fundamental stuff animating became the most fun thing I do. There's only 1 time a week where you have a scheduled zoom call with your teacher and classmates, and there's a pretty big range of times to pick from so you should be able to coordinate it pretty easily. There's dailies all throughout the week at different times of the day as well. Your critiques are all recorded, there's a bunch of pre recorded lectures every week, but you're not supposed to record your weekly Q&A.
>>981190hmm. given me a lot to think about. what's the general age range? I already got an unrelated degree years ago, would I be a 30 year old boomer in a room full of children or what. also i forgot to ask, what happens if you fail something? im sure its not like a traditional school with grades n shit but what if you just completely fuck something up. they make you retake or something?
>>981191Most students are for sure in their 20's but 30's-40's is still common enough that they don't stand out. There was a 60 something year old guy in my last class. You actually do get a grade from 1-5 for every assignment but they're more to give you a better idea of the level you're on than anything. They just did a minor redesign of the site where there's a line graph of your grades for every term and the ability to download your transcript I suppose because people were requesting it but it really doesn't matter, jobs only look at your demo reel and don't care if you had any formal education at all. At the end of every term you just get a pass/fail based on if your mentor thinks you can handle the next class. I got shit tier grades every week one term but still passed in the end because my final assignment was good enough. If you have to retake a class I think it's 900 bucks cheaper the second time around
Cris, you need to find a meaning for your life outside of computers. You really do.
>>981192thanks for your answers. i guess you're close to finishing then? what do you honestly think your actual job prospects arealso i fuckin forgot to ask again, but are there any restrictions on when you take classes? it's 6 total, right? what if I wanted to take 3 now, then the other 3 a year from now.
>>981196Nope nothing like that, I took a year off after class 5. If you're gonna do that I would still be animating something or take the cartoony or game animation workshop so you don't get too rusty.I honestly don't know what my job prospects realistically are right now. I don't really see how I wouldn't get a job eventually as long as my reel is where it needs to be and I keep improving it and keep making myself seen and useful. But it might take a while and that's fine with me because my needs are all met and my job isn't very demanding. I'm also all in on this to the level where I'm completely unwilling to entertain the idea of doing anything else. I have pretty schizomaxxed priorities in life and ultimately just want enough money to be able to sit in the dark and make weird shit in maya without starving
>>981198Only learn the animation side of moving models. Ya sorry but in this industry and the high demand of corporate America. You are expected to at least not only do animation but create models, UV, rig or provide programming assistance. If you can find a job that’s just animation, you’ll just have to accept the low paying job.>>981191The guy already giving out red flags, he lacks technical skills and I doubt he knows VFX which is kinda a big thing in all fields. I seen the models, they’re not professional made, it’s junk that just works as basic motion mechanics are ignored in favor of a more cheat sheet system. If you can’t become the puppet master then you’re just the puppet (some guy at college). Also, it doesn’t matter if you’re good at only animation, you’re not going to learn how clothing works, none of the models involved have clothing bones. Hair is another aspect but they don’t have it covered. If anything the number one reason not to join is the person you talk to as told you the exact Reddit like response, AKA you were talking to someone paid to sell commission like structure. Here let me prove it by telling him how to disable gravity in Maya.
If I had to do it all over again I would have just learned vfx and compositing
>>981210i mean thats why I made the thread in the first place, gather info and compile some pros and cons. not leaning clothes and hair is kinda disturbing.
https://animatorsjourney.com/ try this op much cheaper and you get feedback from a professional
>>981185>Nobody is talking about blender or asking how to make their animations look like ps1 graphics,So no one has creativity or style and you're all just churning out ugly Pixar blob people with the same ADD Tiktok mannerisms that pass for modern animation in the hopes of one day getting underpaid for it? lol
>>981269that is an interesting point. what would you consider to be a good alternative then?
>>981277NTA but you can get someone with Autodesk training with Autodesk program: https://www.autodesk.com/trainingMost of the stuff you’ll learn like Maya is freely available at youtube.com/@Autodesk_Maya/videosTry it 30 days, if you don’t like it then you just saved $10,000
>>981295>$10,000Christ, how about just watching Youtube like everyone else? 50 IQ farmers in India learn 3D, there is no excuse.
>>981297Andrew, how many times do I have to remind you that you're not welcome on this board?
>>981297Officially from Maya and they work unlike Blender that removed buttons and stored it away.
What do yall think of something like https://www.toanimate.ca/$500 for courses, rigs, props, scenes, professional feedback + discord
>>981439>Red flagsOnly blender, discord (anything commercial tie with discord is bound to be a scam), if I’m read the jump reference right, it’s asking you for a perfect 90 degree? Let me tell you; people hate perfect things, walk cycle for bot is bad, it’s just a by product of https://teachable.com and no actual professional.It’s a scam anon.
>>981443what courses/books would you recommend?
