I was like you, although I started learning earlier due to my passion. Science actually helped me in certain way, including my painting skills. I guess you just have to know how to make use of your knowledge, only if you don't that it'll become disadvantage.

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.'

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

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.

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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