TL;DR are art schools bad here?
Not going to attend art school in Japan or anything, this is purely due to my personal curiosity.
Maybe this is not the place to ask, but I found some information online in regards to animators that work in Japan. Supposedly, according to someone who claims to be a US trained artist, there are a lot of foreign talent working in Japan due to the quality of local art school graduates being subpar, which sounded weird to me since Japan has over 100 art related universities and at least a few should be decent.
However some other people at animation related subreddits told me that there aren’t all that much animators working in Japan in the first place, and since a lot of modern art schools in Japan are vocational schools (junior colleges) that don’t require any admissions exam, seems like the ‘average’ graduate is going to vary wildly in quality.
4 comments
Do not go to school for art. You would be better off just burning your money or throwing it in the trash because it will have the same outcome. This statement applies to every country.
Sincerely, a former art student.
I don’t know if this is relevant to this, but, there are a huge amount of people who graduate from cosmetology schools, work in the field a year or two, then quit because of how low the pay is and how demanding the job is. Lots of people also have teaching licenses, but then quit and do something else because of similar reasons. I wonder if art school and work in the arts is similar? Though, that wouldn’t explain why the working artists aren’t “good”–seeing as, you’d think the ones who stick it out would be the ones that are particularly talented/successful? Or maybe they’d rather do freelance stuff, leaving salaried positions filled with the more “subpar” artists?
Likely reasons why there are many foreigners working in the animation or game industry are
* demand
Given the size of the anime and game industry (which is still growing), the demand for good or the best artists is simply outpacing the rate at which the schools can provide/the artists available. This is extremely prevalent in the anime industry where productions get greenlit with the expectation that staffing can be solved later. It doesn’t, and that’s why we get really crappy anime with terribad production values, despite showing some promise. If you’re good, the industry wants you regardless of where you are from, because they’re so short of people.
* interest
lots of artists around the world grew up playing Japanese games and watching anime and decided to come to Japan to pursue their dream ^(yours truly included). Some of them turned out good artists enough that Japanese companies were willing to hire them. Also, lots of animation work outside of Japan are often lame children’s shows or mostly talking heads, not really exciting work for animators. The kind of work that’s being done in Japan is so much more preferable compared to those.
And also, a lot of the vocational art schools（専門学校） teach just the bare minimum to get you a job. Often, they are 2 years, and the 2nd year is job hunting year. Think about it, if you have kids fresh out of high school, who know nothing about art and design, you gotta teach them foundational skills like principles of design, anatomy, and draftsmanship, ***and then*** CG art or animation skills, all within 1 year. Many of those who are good often have some form of background knowledge before entering the vocational schools already.
Some art universities have CG or animation courses, but not all do. A lot of them are still teaching fine art, and the graduate from those that enter the anime and game industry often acquire the relevant/required skills on their own.
My gf went to an art school in Japan, and it was so shit she rejoined one in the UK.
Basically art schools in Japan don’t teach any kind of creativity, they have their own set method of doing things and grade students on how well can follow rules.
Obviously this method produces a bunch of art students that are not creative, but can produce a bunch of illustrations that are very similar to their peers.
Many companies hire creatives from overseas since they actually want a new style/new ideas