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Animator and Character Designer: Do I need a degree or skill( Self taught )?

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Animator and Character Designer: Do I need a degree or skill( Self taught )?

I want to be a character designer and an animator and to be honest as much as I want to go to art school I don't have the money to pay for it and I don't want to be in debt for years+. I noticed that most schools now focus on the technolgy side of things and I realized that I need more of the traditional skills in order to excell.

I was thinking of being self taught or possibly going to a small community college to take drawing classes as well as posting work on youtube and conceptart.org for critiques.

My background is small. I've only been drawing for four months and have made decent progress ( not drawing stick figures anymore). I believe I know what to study and practice. Composition, lighting, figure drawing, perspective and anatomy right? Along with some books on acting and storytelling?

My overall goal is to work for a decent size comapany for a project or two and then begin to start my own animation studio and publishing company.

What do you guys think? Should I try to go to a big art school and self taught with books?

If with books, which ones?

I feel Skill

Well,I always think that a degree doesn't mean everything in our life.Skills are the most important thing to any jobs.

But there is a present situation in some countries that they put your degree at the first place when hiring people.Even though we all know this is not a good thought,it just become their custom.

So,if your country doesn't care degree so much,you just need to practice your skills.

Good luck!

Render Farm answered the best but Still I feel Skill is the best As I am self taught and feels imagination is the only thing required to be the best. I learned from pac-n-zoom and made many animations through it as it is free and helps you expand your imagination.
http://pac-n-zoom.com/right-turn.svg

Similar Situation

I'm in a similar situation here. I'm currently a sophomore in college and my major is traditional animation. However, because of my poor mental health, I've considered changing from traditional animation to drawing. After college, I hope to do work in pre-production such as character design, story development, storyboarding. But do I really need a degree in animation to do those kinds of jobs? Or would a degree in drawing suffice? I need to make a decision ASAP since I'll need to start signing up for classes for the fall very soon.

Skill.
There are many online school really good animation trainers like Animation Mentors.

______________________

Video scribe

Learning through Experience

I totally agree with Ken as I think he explained it in very very easy words. PNZ Cloud based software (pac-n-zoom.com) is a good example to make animation for free and test your skills. You can even paste links on this forum to discuss your animation. One of My Ammature friend made this
http://pac-n-zoom.com/i_got_it.svg

Let me distil this down to the very simplest bit of advice I can for you.

To do this professionally, all you have to do is be able to draw, to produce work at the level that the studios demand. That is to say, make your work just like the work they are producing. Once you can do that, you'll be hired for those positions.

How you get there, doesn't matter.

Self-taught, formal schooling......doesn't matter which you use.
Either will work.

All that matters is being able to produce the work.

Let me distil this down to the very simplest bit of advice I can for you.

To do this professionally, all you have to do is be able to draw, to produce work at the level that the studios demand. That is to say, make your work just like the work they are producing. Once you can do that, you'll be hired for those positions.

How you get there, doesn't matter.

Self-taught, formal schooling......doesn't matter which you use.
Either will work.

All that matters is being able to produce the work.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

Thank you so much Mr. Ken.

Well,I always think that a degree doesn't mean everything in our life.Skills are the most important thing to any jobs.

But there is a present situation in some countries that they put your degree at the first place when hiring people.Even though we all know this is not a good thought,it just become their custom.

So,if your country doesn't care degree so much,you just need to practice your skills.

Good luck!

Skill.

Skill.

The skill will bring you the money. But a degree(Wikipedia) can help you with credibility.

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2D animator & web designer at EduBirdie we are providing help; MBA essay writing service for students all over the world; https://edubirdie.com/mba-essay-writing-service. Bulldog owner, the anime enthusiast, loved husband, and father of two wonderful boys. I am open to new opportunities and am also interested in 3D, so if you have any project ideas, pm me.