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What's missing in Illustration education? - Thoughts please!

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*hesir:iconhesir: Apr 17, 2008, 5:53:19 AM
Okay.

I'm potentially going to be involved with running an Illustration course at Degree level here in the UK.

As a practitioner currently "out there" working, and often working alongside recent graduates, I have my own ideas as to what needs to be addressed by creative courses of this type (having also taught at degree (BA) and higher degree (MA) level

But I'm interested to know what you guys and gals think.

So what would you want to see taught or looked at on an Illustration Degree.

Cheers. Any thoughts would be very helpful at this point.

h.

--
‘When I’m not drinking, I’m thinking about drinking / When I’m not thinking, I’m drinking about you.’
- The Meat Purveyors from Thinking About Drinking/ All Relationships Are Doomed To Fail ~ Bloodshot Records.

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~RyMantys:iconRyMantys: Apr 20, 2008, 6:08:45 AM
Gee I wish you taught at my school T.T We didn't have an illustration course. I'm doing illustration myself, but I'm mainly self-taught, and there are many things I don't know.

I would have liked to learn about composition. I know we get that in painting and all, but it's always theoritical as hell. What I would have liked is for our teacher to make us compose pictures, then tell us what's good and what's bad, and what would have worked better and why. you sorta acquire it intuitively over the years, but myself, I'm not always sure if my pictures are ok.

Then there's something very difficult for me, it's compositions with many characters.

Oh and I wish my teachers "forced us" to use different techniques. We all like to experiment and all, but when there are deadlines, one tends to stick to the technique he's most used to, to be quicker and have better results.

But maybe you know all that... Sorry, my school had a lot of problems so standards are a bit low...
*hesir:iconhesir: Apr 20, 2008, 6:46:15 AM
Hey, thanks for the imput... its really useful to know what students want to take away from a course...

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

h.

--
‘When I’m not drinking, I’m thinking about drinking / When I’m not thinking, I’m drinking about you.’
- The Meat Purveyors from Thinking About Drinking/ All Relationships Are Doomed To Fail ~ Bloodshot Records.
~Ianlaundry:iconIanlaundry: Apr 20, 2008, 3:13:53 PM
Lack of anatomy, both my daughters illustrate and when they try something even slightly different they find it difficult because they couldn't be bovered studying anatomy.
*hesir:iconhesir: Apr 21, 2008, 12:43:53 AM
I have to agree with you on that one...

Thanks very much for the response. Much appreciated.

h.

--
‘When I’m not drinking, I’m thinking about drinking / When I’m not thinking, I’m drinking about you.’
- The Meat Purveyors from Thinking About Drinking/ All Relationships Are Doomed To Fail ~ Bloodshot Records.
*kafine:iconkafine: Apr 24, 2008, 9:44:30 AM
Well, what's missing on mine is... any instruction. At all.

There needs to be instruction in life drawing and anatomy, other drawing basics, composition, perspective, techniques, mediums (or is that medias, I never know) colour theory, how to use the various software and so on.

There also needs to be help with knowing what is actually involved with going freelance and technical stuff like what "bleed" means, because I had commissions where I had to go and ask my tutor what on earth the client was talking about, and my tutor said, "come on, why don't you know something simple like that?"

Basically on my course they expect you know everything already, and anybody who came in straight from highschool gets really lost. I am lucky I had a good background in drawing and painting skills from college beforehand.

I understand of course that we need to all the legwork on this stuff ourselves, but there's not even feedback suggesting we go and teach ourselves any of those things like possibly "that composition is a bit weak, go and study composition".

I'll stop before this turns into a rant about my course, lol.

--
|kafine-ated|
*hesir:iconhesir: Apr 28, 2008, 4:42:31 AM
That's actually really useful...

What about a "jump start" course during the early part of the first term that covers some of the basics that are expected of students who have studied to pre-degree college level, perhaps with a design/illustration glossary etc for people from a non-design education background to use as a "bible"?

As for life drawing and anatomy, I think they are ongoing skill strengthening exercises that should definitely be encouraged in the students... with good instruction in the life class too.

...and I definitely think there should be a "business practice" angle to a degree course.

Thanks for taking the time to feedback on this. Much appreciated.

h.

--
‘When I’m not drinking, I’m thinking about drinking / When I’m not thinking, I’m drinking about you.’
- The Meat Purveyors from Thinking About Drinking/ All Relationships Are Doomed To Fail ~ Bloodshot Records.
~Ianlaundry:iconIanlaundry: May 2, 2008, 3:32:54 AM
I wish I had you as a teacher