Massive Rant warning. Good luck.
Right now I'm sitting here ranting when I should be working, but I've all but given up on this stupid thing.
Here's the situation, although most of you probably know this quite well by now. I study Game Design at an Art College, primarily because they were the only college offering a 3 year course which I needed to fulfil some requirement for my external scholarship payout. I did the research, studied the class list, went to the Open Day and everything seemed find at the time. I applied for a scholarship at this college (and other colleges which didn't accept me at all); I came in 3rd place for all of design, which net me...half off the final term.
To shorten down everything, I came into the college at a bad time. Since I started back in 2013, we've gone through 5 Game Design teachers (and hundreds of other staff changes), an entire campus change, multiple college fires, big restructures of the course and so on, so forth. As you may know, I was extremely irritated with the fact that a GAME DESIGN course didn't offer any Programming Classes until I begged for it, at which I point I learnt everything (and more) in the 2 weeks proceeding the class. Clearly, stuff's forgeted up yo. I've had more classes on art, philosophy, psychology or movie making than I have on anything related specifically to the making of games. Even my Business and Internship classes failed to be specifically about games.
My course is divided into "Core" and "Elective" subjects; the idea is that Core subjects MUST be completed to accept your certificate at the end and they represent the core foundations of your subject matter, while Elective subjects are things you can choose when prompted to fill the necessary credit points, and can be taken from any subject matter (if you meet certain prerequisites). For reference, Programming was made as an Elective, not a Core subject. As you might imagine, this art college has a number of art classes in the Game Design course. I agree with one of them, "Production Design", which is far less about drawing and is much more about storyboarding and conceptualising projects. That's fine, and it involved a lot of discussion about the process behind making big projects come together.
What I absolutely most object to is the last class I have to complete, "Character Design". In Character Design, we have to follow a multi-stage process; we write the backstory for a character following a brief, then we need to conceptualise it (thumbnails -> sketches -> moodboards/research -> concept image -> model sheets), 3D sculpt/paint it in Mudbox, retopologise/UV wrap/bake in Maya, then we need to rig and animate it. The process sounds simple on paper, but in practice it's a loving LOT of work, even for someone who enjoys it a lot.
I don't. I want to be learning programming. I want to be learning math. I want to be submitting resumes to get work so I can pay for my next course (teaching degree, $5000). I want to be playing games or going out with friends. I want to loving graduate already. But here I am, stuck with Assessment 2, where I must sculpt and paint the character from the reference images. My teacher, the most loving awesome teacher at the college, has tried his absolute hardest to help me (he did a lot of the base mesh and sent me many inspirational messages over Facebook). The simple fact of the matter, however, is that I really do not want to do this.
It's the night before the assessment is due, and my character looks like this :
I'M forgetED. I have no understanding about the composition of humans or whatever the forget, and I never wanted (and don't want) to dedicate my time to learning it, since I know what other things I want to focus on. Unlike High School, I made the choice to do this choice under the presumption (based on what the teachers told me) that I would be doing things that further me in Game Design, not Art Design. I cannot loving comprehend how this class is a CORE subject in the Game Design course, yet PROGRAMMING is not. And this isn't something like Maths class in High School; maths is a very basic set of skills, whereas this kind of digital art demands both physical skill (you need to have good eye/hand coordination and the ability to look at reference images and transfer that onto a blank canvas) and a deep understanding of physiology, lighting and other concepts. I'm not a visual person at all; I write and code for a living.
My question; am I wrong for being so upset? Yeah, I need to suck it up and get it over with, but does this situation sound bullstuff? Does it sound like this class should be important to Game Design? Does anyone have an idea why they'd have this class as a Core subject? I'm struggling to understand for myself.
I think the one saving grace is that my teacher understands my situation well, and said that so long as I hand something in that's painted and resembles the reference image, I can get a passing mark (which is all I truly want). I'm hoping this will be true, but I'm still stuffting myself that he may really mark hard and I'll come under. I've failed this class twice already (once my fault, second time the fault of the college); I don't want to have to do this whole class a fourth time.
Sorry for the amount of commas too; bad habit I've picked up while trying to get better at writing.
