Our ✨exciting news✨ is finally here!
We’re paws-itively delighted to announce that Little Kitty, Big City will be coming to Steam, Xbox X|S, Game Pass, and Nintendo Switch on May 9!
We've made an adorable trailer to celebrate, so please give it a watch! 🐈🏙️
insane how arcane characters with their non perfect teeth and eye bags look a million miles better than the standard i was taught for "appealing" character design lololol
Calling this out. How DARE you call yourself an art school when this isn’t your approach. Dismissing the magnitude of anime’s contributions to the art form is staggeringly bigoted and ignorant. Stop controlling student lives bc of your feelings. RT from ringling pals appreciate
Little Kitty, Big City is coming out soon! I couldn't wait to share some of my work, so here's a spoiler-free, behind the scenes look at animation you might find in the game👀
I have so much more work to share after May 9th. Preorders are available now! :)
Hi 3d artists and animators, I have an ANNOUNCEMENT! I made a rig! And you can have him! He's a very good boy just waiting to be brought to life! Thread for links!
Since I know a lot of young animators/animation students/high school students follow me, I think It's time I just made a thread about Ringling College. So, in my opinion, is Ringling College a good place to go to learn animation?
@meganroseruiz
my biggest pet peave is "It needs to be more appealing"
heard this SO much in college. This is not a specific note? What is the flaw? What do I do? "just make it more appealing" But... it is? It appeals to me? I swear they said "appealing" when they meant "conventional"
Here's a general list of really bad stuff that I slowly grew to hate about their approach to teaching-
1. you have to learn HOW to do something at the same time you're expected to do it WELL. There is no room for growth and mistakes. Every assignment feels like do or die.
Some of the most successful grads got pretty bad grades at school and weren't well thought of by teachers because they went "fuck this I'll just make side projects for me, and do the bare minimum for school assignments." GOD I WISH I HAD THAT MINDSET
No. In my opinion, absolutely not.
I hope my experience can help explain why. I was a young artist who drew like crazy in high school, and I knew I wanted to animate since about age 15. I did research, Ringling College came up often as the "best" school for animation.
Fittingly for
#WholesomeSnack
, our last game is a real treat! I haven't laughed this hard at a trailer since Untitled Goose Game 🤣
@LittleKittyGame
put together a good one and I couldn't resist saving it for last. Thanks to all the devs who brought this showcase to life 💖
Instead, my entire four years at the "best" animation school, I got a grand total of TWO animation demos. TWO. You get lots of crit and stuff- but I wasn't given a workflow. I had to set up private meetings with teachers to be told how to actually... like fucking do the animating
My work on this trailer includes the animation, editing, and about a thousand miscellaneous tasks. I had loads of help from the LKBC team in the process and can't thank them enough. Hope you all love it as much as I loved making it!
This is the meowment you've been waiting for! Little Kitty, Big City is coming to
#NintendoSwitch
on May 9th, and you can pre-order the game today!
#IndieWorld
🐈:
The workload is insane. INSANE. Maybe it's improved since I've been there, but christ, kids skipped meals, couldn't get their laundry done, broke down in class, NEVER slept a full night, and I mean NEVER. I think at my best time management I was averaging 4/5 hours a night?
2. There is no time allotted in the curriculum to learn and perform at the same time. Usually students had to make time from their already insanely cramped schedules to go back and fix their work if they wanted nice reels. Just not enough time to learn.
Want to be an animator? TOO BAD you will still have to storyboard your thesis, model, texture, light, and composite it. Do you know how much time that sucks away from you? Literal months and months. Learning to do that stuff takes hours and hours away from your passion.
this is the "best" animation school??? I got TWO animation demos and graduated with honors but no portfolio for what I wanted to be? Do they really make their students industry ready? Or do the students bust ass above and beyond to make reels DESPITE the curriculum? hmmmm
The last thing I will say is that I did have some truly incredible teachers. Unfortunately I think the curriculum is so fundamentally flawed that individual teachers couldn't turn my experience around. This just isn't a program that works for a lot of people :(
I had SO much passion for animation. Finals week my sophomore year I stayed awake for five days in a row (it's true, ask my friends, I was a fucking machine). I didn't like any of my work. I couldn't focus on making any one assignment shine. My time was so divided.
It fucked me up, guys. I'm not sure if I want to get any more specific. I am no longer capable of things that other people can still do. I'm not a machine anymore. I cannot summon willpower like I used to. I don't know where the passion went. After i graduated I was just.. a husk
It sounds overdramatic, but the best word I'd use to describe my time at Ringling College would be "suffering." Like truly, I am not the same person I was before. I wouldn't wish it on anybody. As long as this thread is, please know it barely scratches the surface.
This guy lost the home he was building himself for his family. Please donate! It's hard to see innocent people caught up in collateral damage, even for a worthy cause. If you support riots & defend looting, make sure you don't leave ppl like this behind!
Detroit father of five loses home he’d been fixing up & work truck after raging blaze: “I’ve done everything right. How am I gonna tell my kids?” MORE:
@FOX2News
6PM. DONATE:
I set my sights there and I wouldn't let myself think about the insanely high tuition (200k!), or the rumors floating around even then that the workload was almost insurmountable, even dangerous. I was SO driven and ambitious. I was not worried about having to bust my ass.
Because of senior thesis, I worked myself to the absolute bone and graduated with great grades and literally NO ANIMATION REEL whatsoever because I had NO time to polish any animation that I did for my film. It was all first/second pass anim at BEST.
4. Senior thesis, which you are required to do, is a monster that swallows your growth. You have to do EVERY part of pipeline. Your senior year will not be spent honing your reel and portfolios for what YOU want to be, you will be wasting it doing things you don't care about
But then there's the other cost.
I have a hand tremor that still isn't gone. I don't remember huge swaths of time from those four years of my life. I worked harder than anyone I know, and I don't know how to explain the effect endless, consistent sleep deprivation had on me.
5. The teachers are needlessly restrictive. For instance you HAVE to animate in stepped keys, not spline (this is stupid, the best animator I know has a spline workflow, it's fine). Designed a cute character with button eyes? NOPE we "can't empathize" (Winnie the Pooh??)
6. Poisonous culture rewards sacrificing health. In fact, it requires it. You CANNOT deliver high quality in all of your classes without restricting yourself from human necessities (sleep, hygiene, literally food). Why do you think I was crazy enough to stay awake for 120 hrs?
I basically re-taught myself how to animate in a workflow that works for me after graduation. What did I pay all that money for? I just re-taught myself how to do things with video tutorials and a wayyyy cheaper online class. I remade my entire reel.
Not to mention critiques are often delivered with callous disregard for the strain students are under. For instance, I once had a story teacher dislike changes I stayed up all night to make to my boards, so he implied in front of the whole class that I was lazy. That shit hurted.
3. I have a BFA, and boy do I not feel like it. The college knows the workloads for the majors are ridiculous, so any gen ed courses you take (AND PAY FOR BTW) have to be really watered down and light on studying and work. So they don't really... adequately teach you stuff :(
I am two years out from graduation now, and I was JUST starting to feel recovered from burnout before covid 19 hit, and US politics turned ugly, and sent me back to square one. I keep trying but I did damage myself because of that school. I still can't shake it.
Every year the rising juniors sit down with the rising sophomores to mentally prepare them for what the next year will be. I was prepared for it, but just like everyone else, I got my ass kicked. The prevailing mindset is "just get through your sophomore year."
I ended the year in a delirium and thought "ok fine, well that was sophomore year, now I know the software, junior year I can finally make an animation reel and get off the ground."
LOL no. I thought junior year would be about honing in what I wanted to be, sharpening my skills.
8. Tuition, and subsequent debt, IS NOT WORTH ALL THIS.
There's the pragmatic look- I paid 200k for two animation demos, the most miserably unhealthy work environment I've ever been in, a bunch of knowledge I never wanted and never used, gen ed courses I couldnt recall if forced
7. Some faculty can be downright dehumanizing. I heard students get told some of the most disrespectful things about their work. Professionals crit my work all the time- they don't struggle to be kind about it. Ringling faculty DOES. (small disclaimer some are very nice)
Faculty often claim students create this culture, not the curriculum, but that's absolute bull. You could do the bare minimum for all of your classes and still feel totally exhausted and swamped. Might as well push hard to get anything remotely decent out your suffering lol.
Oh i should mention senior thesis is such a hungry beast and takes so much work to make that you have to start it in your junior year, yknow, when youre still supposed to be developing skills. It eats your growth. It will steal hundreds of hours from your life.
Some general knowledge is an asset, very useful, but it shouldn't trump artistic growth. I couldn't learn to animate because they were too busy teaching me everything else you need to learn, all for the holy grail of thesis, which was so much work I couldn't polish my anim!
The worst it ever got was those 120 hours. But I recovered from that. I couldn't recover from weeks, months, of only sleeping 3 hours, 4, 5, 2, none, per night. Working all available hours of your weekend. Feeling physically unable to hold your eyes open, for day and days
ok ok listen. If you didn't play Skyward Sword on wii, you MUST play it on switch. It's not BOTW2, but it's got:
creative dungeons (MUCH better than BOTW shrines)
beautiful cutscenes
unique, insanely fun combat
FLYING
the origin story
some INCREDIBLE music
so much heart
@nikkifishy
theyre all so unique too??? Hilarious that its groundbreaking, ppl were so weird about "ugly" features in animation. After watching arcane baby face designs on adult characters look like ass to me
Alright alright, it's
#PortfolioDay
! (again???!!! already??!!)
I'm Micah, I'm an animator/rigger who likes to make cool animals come to life, but I do lots of different things. Here's some stuff, old and new, that I've made.
@impiousimp
Not really a weeb but that shouldn't matter. The teacher in this case is literally discouraging animation students from learning about a subset of the animation industry, and one that has a massive global impact. As animation students we should learn about all animation styles.
@meganroseruiz
OH, THIS is why people love this movie. It's piecing the timeline together + understanding Howl's motivations. It took me a few watches tbh. But once you get what happens it becomes really sweet
@jaimedraw
@meganroseruiz
not me remembering my self caricature assignment with my pointy witch nose💀
i literally made my nose so fucking big because i was that mad about it lollllll
@lextheglider
@electronicdruid
@7thHeavenWorks
Yes, it's just a google search away. But for the sake of this thread specifically, could you delete the tweets containing his email? I totally get where you're coming from, but after mulling it over I'd rather not go there. By all means reach out if you feel passionate!
My hope is that he can be a resource for young animators and animation students who would love to practice animating quadrupeds but have a hard time accessing quality rigs without paying for an entire animation course (oh hello past me). For this reason he's free to use!
@PuccaNoodles
High school teacher tried to convince me to take his AP Chem course. Told him I wasn’t going to because I needed room for my art courses. Deadass looked me in the eyes and said “I hope you like ramen noodles” and turned on his heel
A majority of American dog owners are now expressing “concerns” about vaccinating their dogs— including for rabies— following MAGA conspiracies about COVID.
Nearly 40% were baselessly concerned that vaccines could cause their dog to develop autism.
🔗
@ShoodyFlah
@lextheglider
if this was a drawing course it could be a different conversation. It's a liberal art. He's literally discouraging kids from studying the history/impact/conventions of the way half the globe does animation.
I worked on him on and off in my spare time for about a year, so this was quite the labor of love. I used the Advanced Skeleton system to get the body going, but the face setup is entirely my own, and there are many other custom features.
@JohnnyKhawand
@MediumIQ
@jaamestrevor
it would be better reference to have actual footage of a performance and just observe it. Mocap data looks bad before animators clean it up anyway, so it's pretty pointless as reference. Tbh the animators were probably watching footage of lizards for this anyway
@strawberyoolong
I wanna wish you good luck, but also make sure you know what you're in for at that school. It's a high tuition price for this much bs. These emails only scratch the surface of the schools problems.
I was once in a dire situation w a roommate who was a paranoid schizophrenic and in the middle of an episode. I felt she was a threat to my safety and she wouldnt let me get help for her. She was going crazy. I wasn't trained for that shit.
@gilestelscanvas
Yeah this is why 'i can't carry it for you, but I can carry you' hits so good for me. Few people have a person who could do that for them in their lives. Frodo is a perfect metaphor for any dark burden that you don't want but is yours nonetheless
@yawntyy
thank you... if you do choose to go back my advice would be always always prioritize your health, grades don't matter as long as you pass, make your thesis as short and small as possible, and it's totally ok to blow of schoolwork to do portfolio pieces!
@meganroseruiz
And then if you watch it again with that in mind, you notice so many little winks and clues about why howl was acting how he was. He's awaiting her part to play in his story before she knows him...And he realizes love is involved and has angst.. IDK IDK it's good 😭
Seems almost every time scientists learn something new about neaderthals, it points to sophistication. Public perception isn't updating at the same rate, though. They had societies, art, culture, and we carry their DNA to this day- they deserve a little respect
It's sooo important we support
@MeganRoseRuiz1
right now. Ringling has subjected their students to horrific conditions AND ignored concerns for YEARS. Like, I myself met with administration multiple times trying to get sympathy and change, that was years ago, THIS IS A PATTERN
It's been a trip seeing the animation in LKBC highlighted by journalists and players! I am so beyond glad people are enjoying it❤️ Still lots of work to do, and more to come!
Want to take a minute and say thanks to everyone who replied to me with their own stories, corroborated mine, and showed support ❤️ I think these dialogues are vital to changing the art school culture for the better. What we went through wasn't right, and we should say so.
I used to go into the horse pasture when I was a kid and just start running, the horses look at you funny for a sec but then they all join in, it's pretty cool. They just love to runnnnnnnnnn
What a time to realize that I zipped up the Jacko Rig with the wrong texture file. Jeez. I fixed this so if anyone wants the good texture just re-download him for free!
Sometimes it seems like Ringling administration gets together and decides what the most callous and inappropriate response to criticism would be and then just does that
@meganroseruiz
ugh i feel you. I literally cannot make to do lists. I lose the list, I forget to look at the list, I forget to put things on the list that should be there, etc. Then beat myself up because I can't even make a list. Not to mention knowing what I need to do was never the issue.
animation friends: *talking about "the industry" for seven hundred hours*
me, trying to change the subject to literally anything else: Ok but what are your favorite soups
animation friend: So this one supervisor I had at work...
Does Ringling College not have like either HR people or some damage control branch of administration who can tell the faculty to stay off social media?
I think they're trying to defend the integrity of faculty but they're so bad at it that instead they showed their whole ass
@KyleTsetso
I watched arcane and knew immediately they worked the boards and script heavily before animating. You can just tell! And I'm a big fan of good planning. I HATE getting revisions on finalized things
@CheVanDuzer
I think that’s true but I can’t accept it as a reason to discourage students from deepening their knowledge of animation history or styles
@Sideways440
one time I got a painting I worked super hard on into a showcase, so they printed it out HUGE and hung it in a gallery. I was really proud until I asked if I could have the print when the gallery was over and they fucking said no 😂