Is that true?
I want to enter the Illustration course, so I felt TOA is the choice. or any other good college can introduce?

I'm doing Digital Animation, so far I'm in my 2nd year entering my final term. I can tell you that most of your time will be on your projects / assignments, but there is still time for gaming if you manage your time well. Of course, there will be those sleepless nights regardless esp if your work is pushed to the last minute.

In my first year to 2nd year 1st term, I was damn semangat, can spend whole day without rest and sometimes skipping meals to finish up an assignment. Whereas it can be done in like, 2 hours actually. Why I took so long is because we're still studyin, so the time is actually spent on experimenting. So it depends how far you want to go, of course if you spent all your time experienmenting and exploring, later in the future it'll be easier for you.

For example I've been studying alot on figure studies and life drawing, I just love doing them, during my life drawing classes / figure classes, I went beyond my limits, now when asked to draw figures or so, I can sketch 10 to 20 in a jiffy. Of course, it isn't a gifted talent but something I've worked for.

Though now the fire is dying out, so my everyday life during college is like:
-Attend class
-Have lunch / dinner talk c*ck sing song with friends
-Go home finish up some assignments
-Play game
-Sleep

Yes, I still get sleep, maybe 4~6 hours? Sometimes less sometimes more. Depends on how fast you finish your assignments. Which is why I said, during first year, don't slack, just give it your all so that you won't struggle much later on, cause basics are very important.

That's about it la, if you want to know more and got any questions just pm me. =)


I haven come across such lecturers before, except one. But he's exceptional as he is a tutor. Lol, true, TOA students are more or less zombies cause they dont get enough sleep. You know, we could get enough sleep if we kill our gaming time / shopping time / chores and etc, but no, I don't think we can survive without them.

As for those rich arses in TOA, I agree, I would highly suggest that if you can't make it through first term and second term in the first year, just quit TOA. It's not for you.

For those zombies you speak of, who only spend their time on their art, those are the 'A' students who have receieved Dean Awards and scholarships and sponsorships from TOA and other companies or so. So there is compensation for their sacrifices.


Seeing that you only have 2 figures a week, I think you are my junior? Because I used to get 4 figures to draw a week, and same like you, 4~6 hours on one piece. And ofcourse, that's nothing for me to complain about to as my seniors and your seniors got it worst, they had 8 figures a week to complete.

On the girls part, there is hardly any head turning chicks around to look at, no offence. And again, I haven't come across any lecturers like that.

I agree on the work hard and play hard and you will get your results. Everything reflects on what you have done, if you put effort, you'll be rewarded, if you didn't, then don't expect seeing your classmates again.

Yes, those who fail deserves it.


TOA is not worth your time if you don't plan in investing half your time in your assignments / projects. =) The other half is on those other stuff like games and sleep. xD


All in all, I'm not being biased about TOA cause I'm from TOA. I'm just sharing how my life has been for the past 2 years in TOA, what I've seen, people I know, and etc.

In summary :

Zombies : People who sacrifices their time and life and put all their dedication into their artwork, but in compensation they get recognition and sponsorship / scholarship. These are the people who actually gets to work in those big ass firms or are hand picked by the companies such as Ubisoft, Pixar and etc. I got no idea how many companies have come down to TOA, but I know recently Ubisoft made a visit here.

Balanced : These are your average students, they don't get much sleep, but they still got time for games / movies / shopping and etc.

Weirdos : Those who keeps failing, no offence but most of the time they are people you wanna stay away from, failing once is alright, as shit happens. But being in 1st year 2nd term for 2 years, that's just a waste of money and time.

This post has been edited by Kengraphy: Dec 21 2008, 10:11 PM

Seeing that you only have 2 figures a week, I think you are my junior? Because I used to get 4 figures to draw a week, and same like you, 4~6 hours on one piece. And ofcourse, that's nothing for me to complain about to as my seniors and your seniors got it worst, they had 8 figures a week to complete.


Lol.....only 2 figures a week? A2 sizes ? omg how can they do this?
as you guys seniar... we was handing up bout 8~10 figures sketching during the foundation.
Was CD9 then IL9 in 1999. same class as konghwee (wondering still lecturing in toa or not)
p/s: he used to hand in 5xA2 and 5X A3 every weeks pencil sketch during the first year.
never mention the self-explored colour-pencil + mix-media on figure =_=a


as your worst imagine....my senior used to hand in 12 figures every week......think about it.








2 figures a week? lol.........

Lol, see what I mean? xD

Even 4 sketches from me a week I don't think I have the rights to complain.

Ouch, I just checked TOA's new fee structure for January 2009 intake and received quite a huge blow after seeing their escalated fees.

This post has been edited by Dhang: Dec 25 2008, 07:51 AM

is TOA good in interior designing? i've heard loaaaads about sleepless nights trying to finish the homework.

I used to be in same class with Junning, Zhe Lin and Wei Chuan (all of them are illus lecturers, not sure I spelt their name wrong).
We all compete furiously for atleast 16-24 pieces (we experimented with various sizes) a week and try our best to get it picked for best of the class.
8 was our minimum for the submission in class.

I'm not really happy with the leeway for new students. I don't understand what the student can learn with 2 pieces a week.

for some of the ppl mentioned above about lecturer pilih kasih.... I don't think that's the issue. Student usually fail for not handling their work, done very badly in their projects or didn't do well with attendance.

sigh... seriously sad for students nowadays.

when they came out and start work. they'd blame the school for not teaching them enough to be good artist. in contrary, students should learned to learn from their job instead of spoon fed.

Perhaps I should play the devil's advocate here.

First of all, I very agree to your point where students should learn from their work instead of being spoon fed. In my contrary opinion, it's just down to what you want to learn in the end. Not being the 'almighty', the slaves' free time would be dependent to the work given.

Here are the flaws for giving the students too much work:
1. It's breaking the creative work flow and individuality. It's setting the same style. No time to explore as the student religiously follow the modules.
2. It's setting a bad work culture. People do art because they have the passion, making it too hard for them will break their motivation and their very reason to continue. Hence this will continue to the industry, those who succeed will complain the failures who can't. It's discriminating, it's harsh and artists have a heart, if not a fragile one. If you want to preserve and strengthen the industry, strengthen their heart by encouragement, not force them to do what the 'almighty' wants.
3. On top of that, the workloads also reflected by their intention of treating students as professional workers. Look here, it's true that we will have lots more work from college, but your focus will not be that diverse as you were in college. You'll be handling single intense task or multiple similar tasks, in college you'll learn diverse multiple tasks. So just think how you can manage them all well, and obviously you need more time to learn and explore.
4. Setting too much work, most students will be dependent to the college's work. They will not devise their own motivation to learn their own, because they are used to work with them. In reality, this is the most important quality if you seek to become better. I have been through this as well, even if I say there's no stress to myself, my subconscious mind keeps telling me something's wrong, and I'm thankful to have the time to think it through when I was in a more relaxing semester. I was no longer dependent to someone else's plan, but my own. You guys should too.

Well, you can give a counter, I'll reply for sure. To make it simple to your reply, I feel it utterly useless to do 16-24 pieces a week if you don't know what you are learning but to create a great piece of figure portrait. Let me ask you a question, are you a painting portraits as your job? Are Junning, Zhe Lin and Wei Chuan painting portraits too? There are greater aspects to learn other than form, light & shadow, lines, strokes, composition, proportion, anatomy, observation, aesthetics and performance, even within these contexts they can practically different for other subject. So as I say, it's still what you want to learn at the end. Is giving lots of work without strong foundation and objective is that plausible?

Hold on, let me ask Craig Mullins if he paints that many portraits. kfc, I respect you for who you are really (still at CM?), if you want to get personal you can pm me. But I can't stand the modules and your harsh views on the juniors, so I'm sorry if I get a little too agitated to you. But I'm sure some are struggling hard to be as good as you are, they need more time to explore not just do what the college asks however.

Happy New Year all... My message to you all artist here, 'Just do what you think is right.'

morning dude.
Perhaps this isn't a good topic to get in to a debate for it. I won't get personal for this but I guess it's a good time to share my personal encounters at work.

students used to trained in to old way tends to be a stronger work force because they know the amount of work that they have to handle and be able to take more pressure.

The students are not necessary to strictly drawing portraits for the rest of their college life. I think they can somehow gets creative from the 2nd year and starts using their sketching skills on other subject like concept art.
back in the old days, I only see people who has the habit to draw more than 8 pieces has got better sense of experimenting with composition. which is another thing that u can't learn by just observe by eye. We can learn better when we have the hands on experience and get critique by lecturer and college mates. I don't see previous students are any less creative by drawing more in a week.

I believe u are missing the point for the training. Drawing isn't an obstacle for creativity. Instead it's a great exercise to learn for putting visuals in ur mind on to paper successfully. U should see how hard our work can be when we meet art directors in the industry that can't even draw properly.

Some of the recent graduated that I've met has got very little idea about color and mood study, composition and even photography (shutter, f-stop, bokeh and other stuff). How do we explain to that? does more time make them a better artist?

With the lower standards that have been set. students are free to decide how good they wanted to be. But for people who wanted to gets better, please don't take it for granted.


Now here's the reality. When u are new to the industy, there's always someone above u that is going to make the creative decision for u. to stay competitive in ur beginning of career, u have to be a good artisan before u are recognised in the industry.

I agrees to ur comment on greater aspects to learn from other than the traditional skills. Choosing ur skills based on subject isn't wrong either. I wasn't trying to be harsh on anyone in this thread but seriously what's left in their skills when they are starting to be selective with stuff that they learn? are they going to start regret it when they got rejected in a job interview because the other applicant has got better skills than themselves?
sadly the art industry has always been hiring people based on their skill. that's how cruel the industry is.

For interviewer, it's always great and delightened when we see applicant who can show us a creative idea in their demoreel or artworks. However, creative works that doesn't exhibits strong skills are only easier to get hiring in advertising firm rather than game industry, feature films and post production house.

Sorry for speaking too much in the tone like an industry people. that's why I might sound harsh for u. I only hope to inspires more people to practive with their drawing to stay competitive.

Hi,actually im in the center of choosing animation or hotel management. U post really just freak me out.
Well,do u know whats the payment for advertising? Do u think this art job payment will be better than hotel management? Please help. Cause theres not much time left for me.

When it comes down to money, I don't think it relates to the profession you are going for or will be doing.

In the long run if you have passion for it, eventually you'll be successful and money will prolly start rolling in.

I'd suggest you just enter what you like doing best, and you shouldn't rush into a course of education, you should sit down and think about it carefully. If you need help, seek those consultants or something. Because, if you can't decide and decided to enter a course because you are being rushed prolly because of parents or so, half way through you might decide it is not for you and quit. It'll be wasting both your money and time.

So trust me, don't rush, take your time, but don't take too long neither. The other solution is try talking to the students of these specific courses you are interested in, or even better with people who are already in the industry working. Ask them about their work life and how it is like. It sure helped me the last time. =)

Drawing is not an obstacle for creativity, that's true. It's the baseless amount of work that does, really what is the objective? I've already mentioned that the things that you learn in portraits vary in other subjects, if you want to be a portrait artist, that's fine, yet most of us don't. Then what is the point? Just competing to get better marks?

For instance, if the workload is overwhelming, you will not have time to do other things. You learn to draw great portraits, but you can't draw a figure correctly, how's that credible? If you realize that, tell me where do you get the time to do anatomy study? I chose to walk away and screw the marks mate, I make my own plans until now. Even after school, I'm still striving to be a better artist. It's not just because 'I pass the high standards thus I'm safe' way, it's because of what you really want to be and learn how to be that way, not by just following without a thought. Now, I'm starting to thank that we got Malaysian Studies.

Well, if you really think that by giving lots of work can make one a good artist, the students would be at international level by graduation. Because we work 'harder' than them right?

That's the irony truth, although he might have put it in negative tone. You are choosing between animation and hotel management, that's a huge difference in passion there. You should listen to Kengraphy.

This post has been edited by einstei: Jan 3 2009, 08:02 PM

That's the irony truth, although he might have put it in negative tone. You are choosing between animation and hotel management, that's a huge difference in passion there. You should listen to Kengraphy.

[/quote]

Dear Kengraphy and Einstei,
Thanks for both of your suggestion. Actually at first im struggling in the middle of choosing animation,business or hotel management. After i finish reading one of the post in others website,i cancel my taught of going for business cause im not that good in stuff like businessing althought i like to communicate with people. Now im left with choosing animation or hotel management. Its brain storming cause i like both very much. Its hard to make decision.

Do u guys come from TOA? Hows the environment there? One of the thing that made me worry is did the student there speak in english or in chinese with each others (almost all the student from TOA are chinese)? I scare that my speaking skill wounldnt improve and will face difficulty in the future career.

What can i work for after i finish animation? Can i survive in the salary?

Sorry to disturb you all again.

dude,
U've made ur own choice on the path that u want to take.
There's no strict path to be a good artist in the end. Masters like Davinci would definately tell his students to draw as much as they can to master the skills but Paul Rand wouldn't tell u to draw more instead of spending time to be creative.
So, it's all basically back to the question of who u want to be.

Lowering the assignment to students now would be a good way to let those students who wants to go for the design route to have time to be creative. while the rest of the people who wants to go for the skilled path would have to spend the time they have to draw as much as they can.

I hope u get the point here. I didn't say I want students to have more work from beginning. It's always nice that student can have the freedom to choose. but I always see people taking things for granted.

"It's the baseless amount of work that does, really what is the objective?"
to counter this, baseless amount of creativity which never translated to results would never make you a successful artist either. And the result would always require someone who has got talent and skills in crafting the final product that people would buy. For an artist who is passinate enough for what he does, he would never thinks that the amount of work is given to be burden or being at work himself. True artist would always thinks that creating an artist is more like having fun than grinding on mindlessly.
When u started to work in the industry. u will immediately missed those days that u can have fun with ur work in school.

if you really can't enjoy it. better reconsider the subject that u are taking.

Peace.

To begin with, I would rather to have fun in my work rather than my school's work.

And that counter wasn't base on my point, I was merely pointing that baseless action is useless, that's make me unanimous to your point automatically. Only that you have time, you can think and do what you really want. I say this again, when you have too much work to handle, you don't have time for other things, including drawing other stuffs, increasing visual library and other things that might help you to improve.

Let me give us a case, if you want to be a great animator, would you spend on life drawing or portrait drawing? It is base on our objective and passion. This is one of the flaws that I mentioned for giving too much work, because they can be baseless for some of us. If people take the time for granted then it's fine, the industry is looking for people base on their skills anyway. But at least the learning environment is pretty much self oriented, rather than what we have now, work oriented. It seems like the students are working for TOA to me. The industry is like that, but one have to distinguish between learning and working, the correct term should be we are learning to improve ourselves, not working to improve. Learning involve thinking and problem solving, once you be dependent, you can leave the school without a problem.

I'm not forcing my path, even with my current belief I couldn't even convince the school to change because I'm still a 'kid'. I only wish that students think for themselves, not to do work mindlessly, that's more important. So yeah, doing 8 portraits a week doesn't mean I'm going to be better than people who only draw 2. This isn't lowering the standard, but giving opportunity to think and do what you want for the time that you have rather than no time at all. Just like you said, there's no strict path, but giving lots of work does seem strict to me, there is hardly any choice my friend.

---

Added on January 4, 2009, 2:08 amDon't have to be that formal. If you ask whether or not you should pursue in CG industry, the people in CGTalk will always come with this answer, you better be really talented. I may not agree so. My philosophy is similar to that of Kengraphy's, if you are successful, then money just comes easily, regardless of any job, the question is how to be successful. So you really have to search what you truly like, grow some balls and take some risk.

By the way, you may want to look back at Tong1774's reply in this thread, he's got all the answer you need concerning salaries.

This post has been edited by einstei: Jan 4 2009, 02:08 AM

[quote=Kuroda Asuka,Jan 3 2009, 11:39 PM]
That's the irony truth, although he might have put it in negative tone. You are choosing between animation and hotel management, that's a huge difference in passion there. You should listen to Kengraphy.

[/quote]

Dear Kengraphy and Einstei,
Thanks for both of your suggestion. Actually at first im struggling in the middle of choosing animation,business or hotel management. After i finish reading one of the post in others website,i cancel my taught of going for business cause im not that good in stuff like businessing althought i like to communicate with people. Now im left with choosing animation or hotel management. Its brain storming cause i like both very much. Its hard to make decision.

Do u guys come from TOA? Hows the environment there? One of the thing that made me worry is did the student there speak in english or in chinese with each others (almost all the student from TOA are chinese)? I scare that my speaking skill wounldnt improve and will face difficulty in the future career.

What can i work for after i finish animation? Can i survive in the salary?

Sorry to disturb you all again.

[/quote]

You may not be interested in business now, but sooner or later you will need it. So, regardless you can't escape from it. =) But business is very generalized, it can be anything. The best way to learn business imo is always first hand experience, or you can just ask your dad.

Anyway, the environment in TOA is alright, even though it's not a campus like LKW, but I guess it's okay.

Well, don't fret about language, the lecturers here will usually communicate in the language that the majority of the class use, but most of the time they'll use English. When it comes to 1 on 1 critique they'll use the language the student is most comfortable with. Very versatile I must say. When you register into TOA, you'll have to undergo this English test to determine your power of English. This is to decide, which class you'll be heading. For example, most of the english educated and bananas will end up in XX-xxx-1, where as those you are slighty weaker in their english command will be in XX-xxx-2 and so on till XX-xxx-6 or so depending on the amount of students TOA can gather up.

Have you visited TOA's website? They mentioned what you are able to do after graduation for a specific course :
http://www.toa.edu.my/programme/diploma/animation.html

Lol, like what Einstei said, look back in the previous posts, if you are eager, you'd already have done that. =)

tong 1774. ur kinda scaring me now, but from what i heard from many people in this line out there too its not exactly what u said. they said its fun and enjoyable but pay isnt really high unless, yeah u got ur own firm or ur in some big company as the creative director. i think advertising now is really on demand. btw, im from the one academy and yeah i can recommend u to go there. its great how they push students to work hard. no, u dont really need to be pro in using photoshop or other softwares, u learn it there as basics but i think u should be at least average in drawing coz its better if u do. they teach basics first in foundation level, u will learn alot of drawing, painting, making things out of materials, thinking of creative ways to do this and that, its very practical and hands on. interior designing is basically model making, and designing parts of inner buildings, multimedia is more computer work and making 2d or 3d animations, those on medias like tv/comp/magazines and so on. but no worries u dont hv to immediately choose ur major u just go for the foundation for 2 semesters until u make up your mind then only u choose. hope it helped:)

What is the difference between multimedia design and animation? It seems like multimedia design includes animation as well but probably not so much about it?

This post has been edited by Dhang: Jan 4 2009, 04:46 PM

Multimedia is more towards flash, and codes such as java and actionscript and etc. You'll be doing those interactive stuff like what you find in flash websites. If I'm not mistaken some of my friends in multimedia are going to be doing film making next term.

And 3d, well, I'm sure it is self explanatory. Just think 2d/3d movies / cartoon, and where you might end up is maybe in pre-production, production or post-production. =)

Another way to put it, MM students do not learn the basic principles of animation, most of the time from their work, it is mostly very graphic. These are the 12 principles I'm talking about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_basic_prin...es_of_animation

Whereas for animators, we must know these rules like the back of our hands.

Hopefully you can tell the difference now between MM animation and animation. Of course, there is no wrong for an MM student to learn the basic principles, but most of the time they won't be able to use it because they do not draw frame by frame unlike 2d animators[In Adobe Flash's case].

hi, any 1st year 3 term student here? is there any resources fee RM200 hav to be paid for this term?