Hello all. I am a Senior in highschool and I know I am going to be going to college but I am not sure where or what degree I want/need. I sort of need your help to understand what degree I should be focusing on. Heres what I want to do and am interested in: I want to create a intricate 3D model from a refrance picture using a program like 3dMax(I currently use Blender). I want to create a base mesh and scuplt details into it using Z brush. I want to "Unwrap" the model and create a UV texture, bump, specular, and color map. I want to "rig" the character with "bones" using a 3d modeling program. And finaly I want to import it into a a game to be played by someone like you. So after reading about what I want to do I have 2 questions: 1. What kind of degree do I need to presue a job doing this? 2. What are some major colleges that offer a degree like this?(Will I have to go to a more technical college or would a more artistic college be up my alley) I have no intrests in crunching code in the background to make the game happen. I really only like creating the things that you will see and interact with in the game. So can someone tell me what kind of degree/colleges I should be looking at? Thank You!

I have a friend who wants to do the same thing, and he is taking game design classes at his college. It might help if you took some computer modelling and animation classes at whatever college you are planning to go to.

If you want to move from Blender to something like 3ds Max, go to Academic Superstore. You can get 3ds Max 2008 for about $380. I emailed them about this a few weeks ago, and they said this student version is the same as the full version, it just isn't licensed for commercial use.

Hope this helps!

If you have to ask others if something is for you, then the answer is almost always "NO!"

Probably a Computer/Digital Art degree. But any basic art degree will probably do fine as long as you manage to pick up the skills along the way. A strong portfolio and great skills are much more important for an art job than what college degree you hold.

However, a word of caution. Amongst the big game publishers, a great deal of this type of art is now being outsourced to China/Korea. Each successive game I've worked on has had a smaller and smaller in-house art staff and relies more and more on outsourcing. Most of the senior artists I know are moving into management now to hedge against losing their job in the future. Who can really say what the future will bring, but it's worth knowing about. Video game art isn't really a burgeoning US industry at the moment; commercial/film work however is still in very high demand inside the US (more or less the same basic skill set and applications: Maya/Max/ZBrush/etc)

-me

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Original post by LmT If you have to ask others if something is for you, then the answer is almost always "NO!"

I am not asking others what I want to do. Did you even read my post? Yes, ok i'll admit that the topic "Is Game Design for me?" is a litte misleading; thats my bad. But in my post I described what I want to do. I just need to know the degree/college I would need to get/attend in order to do what I want to do.

Digital art and 3D animation.

Don't go for a "Game Design" degree, it will only teach you the basic fundamentals of digital art (along with basic fundamentals of a bunch of other unrelated stuff). Check out the Art Institute schools, or the digital art program in any decent university. Also worth looking at is DigiPen Institute of Technology... while their Computer Science programs are good-but-not-great, their Art programs are very, very good.

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Original post by JBourrie Digital art and 3D animation. Don't go for a "Game Design" degree, it will only teach you the basic fundamentals of digital art (along with basic fundamentals of a bunch of other unrelated stuff). Check out the Art Institute schools, or the digital art program in any decent university. Also worth looking at is DigiPen Institute of Technology... while their Computer Science programs are good-but-not-great, their Art programs are very, very good.

Thank you for the info it really helped. I am in Ohio so I think I will take a look at the art institute of cincinatti. If that doesnt work out I might look at something out in CA where most of the gaming companies are located.

Thanks again!

Any more help would be nice.

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Original post by n64314 I want to create a intricate 3D model from a refrance picture using a program like 3dMax(I currently use Blender). I want to create a base mesh and scuplt details into it using Z brush. I want to "Unwrap" the model and create a UV texture, bump, specular, and color map. I want to "rig" the character with "bones" using a 3d modeling program. And finaly I want to import it into a a game to be played by someone like you. Subject: Is Game Design for me?

What you describe is not "game design." It's 3D art, level design, modeling, rigging, animation. Go to art school.