I was finishing up the Classical Animation program at VanArts when a friend told me of this small 3D school that had opened not that long ago churning out some very talented students. I’d fallen in love with classical animation, the act of drawing all day was therapeutic, but I’d heard that having a good career in classical was tough. The real money was in 3D; I had come to Vancouver to become a game designer in the long run anyway, and 3D would get me closer to that goal.
Tucked away in the basement of an old brick building was this slick little studio environment with custom workstations for each student.
First Impressions
I went by to check the school out, and was blown away. Tucked away in the basement of an old brick building was this slick little studio environment with custom workstations for each student, a sweet soundproofed theater, and a fresh new school that I felt was going to become the best 3D school in the business. From the dual wide screen monitors with big comfy computer chairs in the 3rd term room to the one-on-one mentor program they boasted, I knew this was the place I wanted to be.
Term 1: Infosponge
Things kicked off pretty quickly. Having a year of VanArts under my belt gave me a running start, as I was focusing more on learning the 3D software rather than grappling with the animation principles and technical skills. There were only 8 people in the class, so it was a good environment to ask questions. Working mainly in XSI, I learned about modeling, UV unwrapping, textures, rigging, some basics of animation, lighting, rendering, some life drawing (three hours a week), Photoshop, and basic compositing. There was even an awesome “Concept Development” class taught by a visual FX artist, in which we discussed the creative process and how to come up with new ideas. There were several lectures given on production pipeline, as well as many stories of personal experience in an attempt to prep us for the very unconventional life that awaited us in the industry. Most teachers had the tendency to get into a storytelling mode and go off on tangents, which was educational in it’s own way; even if I was sitting there wondering what the hell the story had to do with the subject at hand.
Most of these classes were taught by the two heads of the school. Lessons were 3 hours long, after which we were left on our own to work on the assignments, encouraged to ask around the room and help each other to figure out how to best complete the assignments. Though the boss-guys were around if I was really stuck, sometimes I had to really get on their case for them to come and help.
There was a period of adjusting. I was spending around 10 hours a day at school, much more than VanArts. I had moved to North Vancouver to be closer to the school, which really cut down my social life as it now took over an hour of transit to get to my friends places. However the lessons were fun, every day I had a moment where I thought “Wow! You can do that? Awesome!”
Term 2: Specializing
In Term 2, I was taught by industry professionals who came in once a week for three hours. I learned a lot about Fusion, fought with Lightwave, messed around in After Effects, was introduced to Maya, and had a workshop on game design that mainly involved wrestling with the Unreal Engine.
I had a few problems with the fact that there was no one officially there to help us understand things during most of the week.
I had a few problems with the fact that there was no one officially there to help us understand things during most of the week. If I ran into a wall, I’d ask around my classmates, and if we couldn’t figure it out I’d have to go to the term 3 students who could usually help. Compared to the VanArts method of having an instructor with you from nine to five every day, the “figure it out with your classmates” method was kind of frustrating. They try to teach troubleshooting at ThinkTank, but I think some of the instructors forget what it’s like to have no bloody clue how to work a program, feeling overwhelmed by a thousand menus.
Midway through the term it was time to specialize. I’d been leaning towards character modeling in term 1, but I was getting input from all sides directing me towards animation. I learned it faster, and would have a better chance at finding a job, so I went with it. Roughing out an animation in classical had this wonderfully organic feel; the dancing of rough pencil lines and crinkles on the paper were beautiful to look at, but with the computer you had these floating chunks of polygons, a tangle of f-curves and a cloud of ones and zeros. Animating wasn’t as fun anymore, it was starting to feel like work.
The class was now divided between animators and modelers. There were sculpting classes taught for Zbrush and Mudbox, but I was busy with animation projects in Maya and couldn’t really absorb as much as I would have liked. Prepping for demo reels began, and we were asked to make animatics for our final reel. Though no one’s final reel ended up looking anything like their animatics, it was a good exercise.
ThinkTank can be a bit misleading in that they advertise that you can specialize in visual effects or game design, but the truth is you can only choose animation, environment modeling, or character modeling, that’s it. They can bring in other mentors if you’d like to specialize in say, concept art, but you’ll have to pay extra and it’s not cheap. They also don’t give you as much creative freedom with your demo reel. The heads of school and mentors have a big say in what you’ll end up doing for your reel, but this is mainly to make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew. I’ve seen many reels where it looks like the teachers didn’t help at all and it was just the student working on random stuff.
One of the best things about ThinkTank is that every few weeks the whole school would tour different studios around town. We got a glimpse of what these places look like from the big to the small. From massive game studios to small FX houses with a dozen employees. The instructors made sure we got to see the range of studio environments and prepped us for the stress and competition as best they could. They spoke about the pitfalls of the industry, and stressed the importance of being in the top 10 percent of the workforce and staying there.
Term 3: Stress
Fun time was over. With only 4 months to animate, render, composite and burn a reel the pressure was on. This is when the 12 hours a day, six days a week, “oh god I haven’t seen the sun in forever” went down. Despite their best efforts to engineer the classroom to be as habitable as possible with the custom made desks, comfy chairs, double wide screen monitors and such, by mid term 3 I was going insane from spending all my time in a windowless underground room staring at a screen.
Everyone had a mentor at this point. All the animators in my class had the same mentor, who was a pretty big player in the industry. He knew what he was talking about, so I made sure to follow his advice as closely as I could. I never could pull off the 14 hour a day marathons of nonstop animation he wanted, and he had to tell me off a few times before I got my ass in gear and found a flow to my work.
ThinkTank boasts a promise that if you are unable to finish your reel by then end of the year, the school allows you to stick around to continue working. While this is a great sentiment and can be a big help, it also means that students don’t push themselves as hard as they should because they know they can stick around afterwords. When I was in Term 3 there were several alumni who had graduated months before me who were still there, and it was stressing me out.
I reached my goal of finishing animation by the time the year ended, but I still had to render and comp everything which took an additional month, mostly working at home. I put together the comp at ThinkTank, and one of the instructors helped me out with getting it working.
Since then I’ve been working for my mentor’s company from home doing maya animations for a few games, and it’s been a great opportunity.
Since then I’ve been working for my mentor’s company from home doing maya animations for a few games, and it’s been a great opportunity. It took a few months to get used to getting all my advice in emails. Animation can be tough to describe using nothing but text, and I think I work much better if I’m around other people. I don’t get distracted as much if there’s someone else in the room who’s also working, and I’m a pretty competitive worker. Having a sweet home office set up has been great though, and working from home gives me a lot of freedom. Also my speed has more than doubled since the end of ThinkTank, just like the instructors always said it would!
The Verdict
Think Tank Training Centre is not a school; it’s a training centre, and there is a difference. Think Tank doesn’t have the class structure that guides many schools, and the environment leaves the students to sink or swim. The instructors encourage working together and learning from your classmates, as figuring things out on your own is a far more valuable job skill than just being spoonfed everything. My main problem was that while VanArts made me feel like an artist, ThinkTank just made me feel like a computer geek. Staring at a screen for 12 hours a day isn’t nearly as enjoyable as drawing all the time.
The instructors are all industry professionals who come in for three hours a week each to share their knowledge. Some are better at explaining the complexity of what they do than others, so to get the most out of your year you’re going to need to know how to pick their brains, asking the right questions to get the right info.
Words of Advice
My best piece of advice for animators is to take notes when your instructors are critiquing your animations. Write down the exact frames that they give you advice on, and refer back to it in your work. Also, keep motivated. The big reason I worked hard was the thought that my parents had sunk tens of thousands of dollars into this education, and if I had to return to them with no job and a crappy reel I’d have felt like the world’s biggest asshole. When it comes down to it, it’s up to you to get the most out of your education, no matter where you go. A crappy school will hurt you, but you can always make good of a bad situation if you really want it.
My demo reel can be viewed on my blog http://paulzeke.daportfolio.com/.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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I’m diggin’ the website man. The review of Think Tank is impressive. I think I remember seeing you around VanArts. I was in GAD09. Let’s talk, I want to do a blog post about this review and this site in general. Good stuff here. Keep it up! I’ll be in touch.