8 Critical Life Lessons No One Tells you in Film & Art School

It’s somewhere we have all been, or are about to face. Art school is long over and your hunt for your first big gig has officially started. It’s scary, its aggressive, and sometimes, it is just too much to handle. The struggle for all of us 20-somethings trying to find our niche in the working world, no matter what your area is, is challenging. For artists however, especially for those wanting to get into the entertainment industry, the struggle is too real.

You aren’t alone, my fellow 20 something. I’m going through it too. While we can’t change our circumstances, there are things that we can take away from this process and leave advice for one another as well as for those about to graduate. There are some very, very big things our schools didn’t prepare us for that I’ve started to learn from those I’ve met in the industry. As tough as it is to face some of them, I think it’s time to take a good hard look at them and learn from them. (Read on)

I’m Graduating, with an Interest in…Everything?!

If you asked me four years ago what I would be doing on this day at this very moment, I would have told you that I would be taking my senior portraits in my over-sized cap and gown, degree in hand, ready to take on the advertising world with my super awesome graphic design poster making skills. Boy was I wrong about that life goal.

As I finish designs for my very last undergraduate course on the week before graduation, I am reminded just how quickly my dreams and life goals have changed in the course of the two years since I decided to drop everything I knew and switch my major to animation at the film school.  I’m never really one for coming up with deep, insightful, life-changing advice, but my mind has begun racing with all of the uncertainty and hopes that new college graduates face. While most strangers spend their energy inquiring what I am going to do after graduation, I spend just as much time telling them the truth.

Like most college graduates, I have no idea what I will be doing tomorrow. What I do know is that I want to do absolutely everything…and that is the problem.

“Pantomime”, my CG animated thesis film, is complete. Now what?

Critique Session: Approaching every art student’s fear the right way

Critique- it’s the single word that every artist dreads. It’s putting yourself on the front line for criticism, where the very foundations of something that you made out of love is thrown into the direct line of fire. If someone tells you they look forward to a critiquing session they are a pathological liar. There is nothing more difficult and more rewarding than a critiquing session. More often than not though, the lines between what is an acceptable critique and what is flat out uncalled for are blurred. In fact, there is an unspoken moral code that I find comes with critiquing effectively.

So what is it? How do you avoid causing the inevitable sting and burning pain that comes along with critiquing someone’s artwork?

Sleepless in Film School: When it’s okay to take a break

I’m going to be honest here; I’ve been at home in Washington for a little over a month now on my winter break and not once have I experienced a Sleepless in Seattle moment (pun intended). Why is that? Well, that’s because I have simply decided that I wanted a break from life. As in, I don’t want to draw until my hand falls off and my carpal tunnel kicks in to the point I can’t type without hitting four extra random symbols. I know what most people are thinking, why on earth are you wasting most of your time kicking back and watching the entire Band of Brothers series while you could be working on art stuff?

Well, I am indeed working on all those things, just in smaller quantities than I have been for the past twelve months. While I have been spending a fair amount of my relaxation time working on various things to ensure I can at least hold a pencil, I have been thinking a lot about my poor collegues that are still at school. Judging by their status updates, they are yet again killing themselves with only having an average of three hours of sleep a night. It got me thinking, when is enough really enough? When is the time to take a break and when is the time for an artist to just push through it?