Hi there, I can give you this bit of advice.
1. Don't quit your studying and give up 2 years of hard work just yet.
2. Do some research to see if there is a University near you with a
good set of courses centered around traditional graphic design as well
as computer graphics and basic programming skills.
3. Avoid online schools that offer degrees in graphic art & design.
Most of them are scams which in the end will charge you plenty for
a worthless peice of paper.
4. If the school you are already attending offers any courses in
the field of graphic art or design. Sign up for a couple of those
first to see if it is really something you want to pursue.
5. If it's game design you are interested in "good luck".
Graphic artist's who work in the game design industry don't last
long. They are usually underpaid and extremely overworked and under-
appreciated.
6. Surf the net and do some research on sites like DAZ/Studio or
Cineversity.com, they have some very good tutorials that can give
you some idea ofthe skills you need to know in order to do graphic
design. Whether it's 2D or 3D. The more you know the better prepared
you'll be.
Some good starter programs to get and give a try are DAZ/Studio(free)
and Bryce for 3D work, and Corel PaintShop Pro 10 for experimenting
in 2D design and texturing. Blender is a good free program if you
want to try 3D modeling and game environment design.
DAZ/Studio and Bryce can be found at the DAZ/Studio site
http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?,Blender can be gotten from
http://www.blender.org/ and Corel PaintShop Pro 10 can be ordered or purchased through
Amazon.com and most other online software sales sites.
One last piece of advice: be prepared to spend a lot of time on
projects that are very unrewarding to work on and not have your
really brilliant ideas accepted. Besides that, the field of computer
graphics and design is a very competetive one.
Working in computer graphics and/or game design can be very expensive
when starting out. The good middle to high production software can be
quite expensive and there is also the cost of having a really good
computer system with a high-end graphics/video card. I work from 2
networked PC's and a laptop. The laptop I have just for testing
stuff. The 2 PC's are set up for production: 1 for scripting and
doing some 2D work and the other for heavier 2D and 3D graphics
work. Both have an exceptional amount of hard drive storage and
are custom modified with middle of the road graphics cards. Even
if you only intend to use 1 computer, a good one for doing graphics
work you can expect to cost around $1,500 plus the cost of any
upgrades you may want to make.
Here's a link to my web site in case
you're curious as to why I'm giving you
so many of the negative aspects of working
in graphic design and computer graphics.
But there are also positive aspects. As
you noted above - doing something you love
doing, possessing a driving passion for it.
Setting your own hours, that is if you are
only working for yourself. Sleepless nights
when the ideas and solutions to problems just
refuse to let your mind slow down. You will
also find a link there to my Bio-page which
lists my educational and professional quali-
fications, along with a bit of my personal
history.
http://www.charctercreationsanddesignworks.us/sitedirectory.html
