[JConway]

My names Justin Conway, I'm a 16 year old freelance artist. I'm currently building my website and experimenting a lot with art; however through all my research I still haven't found the perfect classes to take in college. I'm a Junior and plan on going to a local college in Philadelphia. Could anyone lend me a hand and share (in your opinion) the best major/minor, and what classes you should take as an aspiring concept artist. And furthermore if you are familiar with the colleges in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and can give recommendations, could you do so?

Thank you very much in advance for replying to this, It means a lot getting professional advice.

[AlexTLe]

Studio/Visual Arts for a basic foundation. Game design/Interactive media for concept art i believe. There might be Multimedial Arts, but i dont know about that one.

[Frankie]

okay.


since you want to be in concept art, i suggest you look into a school that's a little more practical in what they teach when it comes to art. for example, i went to an art school in boston, and while it is a nice school for artsy fartsy people who love deep meanings and large scale installation pieces, it will not help an aspiring concept artist. even though i dropped out because of this (and because i thought spending anymore than 30k on art school was ridiculous), i now love the whole conceptual side of art....conceptual art is different in concept art. but hey you may already know this.


I don't know what to say for classes, but I mean whatever major you choose, picking the classes should be pretty obvious from that. i can tell you that you will not get an education that will perfectly fit concept art unless you go to the west coast where they have the "Entertainment Design" major at ArtCenter in Pasadena. The next best thing is illustration.



you know, if you have the drive, you could just not go to school and search out other means of education. read books(loomis, bridgman, hogarth, gurney), do studies, paint from life...but don't just copy what you see...try to understand WHY and HOW. you could take online courses at schoolism, gnomon school, the art department. you could attend workshops. visit crimsondaggers.com...there are a shit ton of people who are in study groups, help each other in mentoring programs, there are podcasts/livestreams where concept artists are interviewed by Dan, and Dave, the creators of the site. you can listen to previous conversations and a lot of concept artists talk about how their major never really helped them become a concept artist or that they didn't even go to school for it.




but if you do go to school.....make sure you're getting your money's worth.

[Zentrope]

Hey Justin..
I would suggest you to look into something that will provide you an insight about design.

It's a FREE course at COURSERA(a MOOC)
And they started a course on basic design(Today)...What is Design in general and it's implication.
Karl T. Ulrich is Vice Dean of Innovation at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
Take a look below and sign up

https://www.coursera.org/course/design

I am also taking this course and would suggest you to take a look at this and understand the basic concepts of design so that it will refine your understanding.

Even MIT's EDX started a course on Fundamentals of computer Graphics but it require some programming skills like Java or C,C++ etc..

https://www.edx.org/courses/Berkeley...012_Fall/about

Hope this helps

[JConway]

Thanks guys I really appreciate it!

@frankie My parents really want me to go to a college so I don't think not going is an option but thank you for the information!

@Zentrope I signed up for the classes but am really confused on how to get started!

[Zentrope]

When you sign up...
-Go to class
-Left panel window is dedicated for different options.
-Just go through the basic course structure and you are good to go.
-Watch lectures and ask question in Discussion Forum
-And there are different assignments as well(Home Work)

Hope this helps