During admissions, I was told that the ETC recruits 40% artists, 40% programmers, and 20% of random people that are the “binding glue.” I was to fall into the 20%, which meant 1) that it would be harder for me to get in and 2) that when I got in, I would be behind in skill sets.
When I got in, I found the latter to be definitely true.
I was assigned as an Artist in Building Virtual Worlds (BVW). BVW is a semester-long course where you work in two week design sprints with alternating teams of five students (two programmers, two artists, and one sound designers) to build original virtual worlds that fulfill different objectives. As an artist, my role was to provide art for the worlds, which meant that I had to learn to 3D model, texture, rig, and animate in one week.
I cried during my first week. I was sick. This was hard. After having been out of school for three years, it was difficult to make an adjustment back to school mentality.
I spent the entire Labor Day weekend trying to complete my first assignment: 3D modeling a dragon. Which is just about as hard as it sounds if you’ve never done it before. I spent four hours just trying to open a file in Photoshop.
While I struggled to complete this assignment, many other artists around me were done in a few hours. Some artists even made two dragons! I had strong doubts that I didn’t belong in the program.
But at the end of the weekend, with a LOT of help from my peers, I did it.
Since that weekend, I’ve become a much better artist. I modeled an entire purgatory underworld, Evel Knievel rubber ducks, and an office scene with at least 30 inanimate objects. Granted at first, my models weren’t so great (my 3D clouds looked like literal poop), I learned a ton, and I learned it really fast. I’m really surprised about how far I’ve come, and I have to thank my peers for that.
While being the dumbest person in the room can be scary and intimidating, it helps when you’re surrounded by people who are willing to teach you. One of the most valuable resources that we have at the ETC is actually our peers. While I’ve learned high concepts from my professors, my peers have been the ones to explain to me how to correctly UV map, paint skin weights, and keyframe animations.
As a lifelong learner, the scariest thing for me isn’t being the dumbest person in the room, it’s being in a place where I have no one to learn from.
TL;DR Not knowing what you’re doing is ok.