I am currently a sophomore at a very good, respected art school, but their digital program is very lacking, and since I want to go into games/movies I've decided to suck it up and transfer out. There are several out-of-town schools that I'm considering, but I am also looking at Art Institute's Game Art & Design program http://www.aiw.artinstitutes.edu/programdegrees.asp?pid=9&dtid=5&display=program. Is anyone out there in or a graduate of this program? Has someone hired people from this program? What I need to know is: 1- Is the program worth the money? 2- Is the instruction interesting and related to games, or is it more generic art courses built around software used in the games industry? 3- Are any of the instructors involved or retired from the games industry, or similar industries, or are they just art teachers working for the money? 4- When you're hiring people for jobs where skill is as or more important than a portfolio, does this program provide a skillset that would convince you to hire a graduate?

I'm also considering the program at the Art Institute, anybody have anything to say about it? I'd hate to pay all the fees to find out it's a waste of money..

It used to be a good school (SF campus at least) until about 10 years ago. It's gone downhill since then with the instructors getting worse and the admin only caring about collecting their exhorbinant tuitions.

A good friend of mine went there for 3 years after leaving Parsons. He left AI after they got rid of a lot of talented teachers for basically TAs that they could pay less. He put a lot of time in studying, practicing and applying his craft and was fortunate to get a gig with Lucasarts for a couple of years. He now works for Disney doing storyboarding and prelim animations. I don't think there was a time in those 3 years at AI that he wasn't constantly with a sketchpad drawing everything in site. He was more of the exception than the rule as far as getting something out of the school.