I am wondering, are any of you considering an animation degree because you “don’t care about animation but want to make a comic”? It’s the closest thing to learn that will benefit me, right? Compared to biology 101, business, or liberal arts etc. You see those “Final Year Projects”, hey, they do comics and had the guidance of teachers! That would be what I seek in a school!
Greetings to all random people who stumbled across my random post. Outside of talking about “how you all should read my work” I see in a lot of posts, I would like to talk about this topic. I am unsure if this is an issue anybody is facing, but when I was feeling down, I had hoped to read something like this. but I couldn’t find any article that relates to me well enough at that time, so here I am creating this post in hope someone who might need it see it.
Recently ago, my pea-sized naïve brain who was conditioned to do “art” ever since young had thought : Why should I enter art university? Because I want to learn “storyboarding”, ‘concept art”, anything, anything at all to make a comic!. I am born and nurtured “all my life” to dedicate myself to the art world, changing anything is a “waste”! I spent about 7 years total anyway in learning art from schools before university, being in “design sector” so I should continue in this “industry”! So art university it is! I probably cannot do anything else!
Alas, I had my nose up high thinking : I must be great, getting inside an art university would be easy! Ah, art school would be so easy! They would want someone as talented as me! I submitted my application with my nose up high. And guess what? BAM! _
“we have better candidates than you. sorry”.
_
I felt so dejected. I appealed. And I was still rejected. Nevermind that I had 3 years additional working experience compared to those fresh out of highschool. A lot of negative thoughts swarmed inside. “They rejected me because I must be untalented”, “I must be lousy, a failure”. “Someone like me probably cannot do any good work compared to “them”. With my pea-sized naïve brain in chaos, I suddenly stopped drawing. What was the point, right?
But I still could not let it go. Well, “art university” was out. But “art learning” is not. So what if they did not allow me inside their campus? Instead of the grand sum of $xxxk to be inside a campus to “learn”, I bought like, $200 worth of art books. Well, most of it turned out useless anyway. But, some of them had really pretty pictures and I was stuck staring at them. And it triggered the yearn to draw again, because I draw pretty women.
So what if I am rejected? It does not stop me from drawing pretty things! They closed a door on me but I have a lot of channels! So what if I was rejected from that “campus”? I couldn’t learn “storyboarding”, “concept art”, “original character” etc etc. but you know? You do not need to go to university to learn those things! Especially if all you want is to make a comic. You do not need university to make a comic. You learn those things on the job itself. All you need to do, is to start a comic and draw Chapter 1. Nevermind not knowing anatomy, perspective, flow, etc etc. I repeat, you learn on the job. When you do Chapter 1, or 2, or 3, you will definitely come up with areas where you go “crap! I don’t know how to do this! my brain hurts!. And you force yourself to look up examples and do a “rather bad job” out of it. But that’s it! That is how you learn! You do not need a teacher to teach you those things, your brain is smarter than you think it is.
Well, to any of you who is wondering, what happened to me after being “rejected from art school”? Being left in the lurch, I scrambled and went to do a webcomic. My head hurts until Chapter 4, but I got used to it and become comfortable at Chapter 5 onwards. Fast forward and it has been almost half a year, I have 28 chapters and I think, with my nose up high, that “it is beautiful”. (Hey I get that right to think my work is pretty!).
Well, ironically, all the art universities rejected me and only a liberal arts university accepted me. Well, I just went for it and I did not look back. From there, I realized I was really naïve thinking making art = need to get credentials and proper instructions from the art university, or that “I was meant to do art from start to finish”. The world is big, you are not meant to do just one thing.
Oh, this is my webcomic.
and on tapas
Peace out and let this be buried in google. I shall enjoy other things outside of art talk.