"India needs’n’ number of animators by 2010. Animation industry is booming in India. The basic salary for a fresher is 10-15K. You can even work as a free-lancer. We dont just teach Maya, we make you a complete Animation professional".
If you are planning to join an Animation college or course heeding to these lies from the petty institutes in India, please dont.
I made the most regretful mistake of my career to join "Picasso Animation College", Hyderabad. The details of the course are-
The course STAR Program(18 months duration; fees 2lakhs 2thousand) would yield me a certificate from Centennial College, Canada.
Upon completion of the course I would get an internship in a real time project.
The first module of the course was ’Art & Design Foundation’. I was expecting to learn much from this. But not even basic things like pen or brush strokes was told. All that we did was use a colour pencil on a regular paper. And yes, the support we got from the faculty was a couple of demonstrations, a handful of photostatted reading material and lots & lots of images from Google projected onto the board for us to see & draw! All the materials required were procured by the students; and the worst is the management had no estimation of the inventory required. We were made to buy things in huge quantities and even things that we never used in the class. The better part of this module was our scores were told to us so that we could improve or know where we stand(the following modules were completed without any assessment).
Then came the second module of the course, 3D Modelling. But wait a minute! Is something missing here? Yes, ofcourse! Why were we made to draw for 3months? If drawing is important for modelling, then why didnt we do that in sync with the modelling requirements? Mere drawing is different from what you draw for Modelling or Animation. Well, the second module was very chaotic. It went on for ages. Not because the contents of the module required that much time, but merely because of the faculty. The college doesnt even bother to check even after repeated complaints.
Then came the third module -the fastest one of all. Rigging & Skinning -it is supposed to be the most intellectual part of the Animation Film Making Program, but it was wrapped up in just 4weeks!(This was to compensate on the days lost during the second module)
When the fourth Module Animation started some of the classmates were conspicuously missing. They skipped this & started with the next module(Specialisation) because of their proximity with the faculty! & the other students who are dutifully attending the 4th module are surely going to miss alot during their specialisation as the basic & initial classes for the Specialisation were already conducted & would not be repeated. The management is not bothered!
The Specialisation & Group demo-reel making arrived. There was a clash of the titans(read faculties) and things turned sour. I have never seen such an unprofessional & egoistic people before. The students suffered the most as we had to learn everything through our own means. And had to make our showreels without any help or guidance from the faculty.
When the internship part arrived, the worst part was the management arguing that they had never talked about foreign certificates nor real time internships. The sick attitude of the Center head was the ultimate. She went ahead to ask us, ’how could we believe in whatever they say! Since there is no written proof for that, whatever is mentioned in the prospectus would only be adhered to’. Things mentioned in the prospectus is far different from what is actually offered. But there was no point arguing with a fool, moreover the major concern was the certificates -valid international certificates. One smart move that the students did was boycotting the classes, calling the CEO regarding the certificates and recording the whole conversation and threatening to involve the media.
Finally they gave us all a written document that we would get our certificates from the said Centennial College, Canada. We were promised to receive our certificates by December 2009, now they say Feb-2010. But the irony is the internship has not started yet and also on what basis would we get the certificates’cos we have not appeared for any exam. The internship offer that the college brings requires us to pay an additional 30K rupees, to which all the students revoked. Now only time will say whether or not we would get our certificates.
There are so many cons about this college, that things like no basic ventilation in congested labs, no proper toilets, unclean labs & systems, pest infestation, no properly maintained systems, no professionalism, visible discord amongst the faculty members, racism(regionalism), no proper information flow to the students, no proper checks on plagiarism, etc seem petty. If only they could have imparted knowledge and the students got any valuable inputs from the faculty, it would still have been a course worth 2 lakhs. We paid 2 lakhs, spent 18months at the college but have gained knowledge from the Maya Textbook by Darush and Google!
A general advice that I would want to give all Animation aspirants is never join Picasso Animation College, ’cos they dont teach you or guide you and whatever they promise they don’t adhere to and conveniently change their words at their own will. You are expected to learn by yourselves from your own resources. Most of my counterparts from other institutes have similar problems. So its better to buy a book on Maya, download your student evaluation copy of the software from Autodesk website(or from the CD that comes with your Maya textbook) and rely upon Google, than to spend lakhs of rupees on institutes like this. Once your demoreel is done, you can join companies as a trainee to gain real time working knowledge by paying them 20-40K.
(PS: I wouldn’t recommend this product even to an enemy)