Feb 04, 2010 07:23 PM
17099 Views
(Updated Apr 26, 2010 07:37 AM)
When I completed my std 12 I was caught in a terrible dilemma.what to take as a career, engineering or animation.majority of my friends went to engineering and I thought why should I follow them and I choose animation over engineering.the next step was to choose an institution.there were only two choices arena animation academy and toonz animation. I pick arena because it closer to my home.i took arena's flagship course the aaasp(arena animation academy specialist program), which covers all the important areas of animation and designing in 31 months and the fee was 90000 rupee which was quite reasonable.its nearly 9 months since that day and this is what I found about our institution.
The pros:
+small batches: most batches consist of 8-10 students and it fells like sort of individual tution.its a unique experience which we don't get in college.
+class timings: classes are conducted 2 hour per day and 6 days in a week with theory and practicals simultaneously.+atmosphere->doesn't feels like a school or college, no strictness and everybody are friends even with seniors and teachers.
The cons:
-outdated faculty->its the problem of every institutions.animation is a field which needs constant upgradation and some of our teachers are not up to the date.we were taught cs2 versions of photoshop and illustrator(current version cs4)for flash we were taught macromedia flash 8.macromedia has been taken over by adobe and the current version is adobe cs4.{I think our teachers are living in ice age:)}
-inexperienced faculty->most of our teachers are former students, we only have a few experienced tutors and I think its a common thing among Indian institutions.fortunately our 3dmax and maya teachers are good.
-exams: we had our semester exams and I was wondered to see only one question paper with 38 questions, if you under perform in it;its all over.and the questions we too difficult even my teachers didn't understand a word.we studied 3 software in first semester and I expected atleast 3 question papers.sadly I didn't get that.
Conclusion:
Thank god for Google and torrents;so that I can download the newest versions and search Google for tutorials.now I am upgrading my course to bsc multimedia and animation with ms university Tamil Nadu{never heard of it before}and my fee increased to about 1.70 lakhs. I know its a risky move but the only option left with me is to study hard{which includes google hard}and achieve good scores.
Final words:
What I heard was arena animation is the leader in animation institutes in Asia and I predict that its future wont be nice if they continue to(un)educate students in this way like they do now.
