Emmy M.
This is a complex review but here I am…
This is a complex review but here I am at the end of a 9 month game art course and I find myself wondering if I made a mistake trying vertex. The answer is honestly yes and no. So let's get the good. In terms 2 and 3, you get to work with an in industry professional and the one I worked with was easily the best part of the course and Patrick easily would be worth about 4k of teaching alone to have his expertise around. The negative is that's all you're paying for. The course videos are weak, you are far better off just googling and self teaching each and every snag you hit. After a while, most of your time learning will just be self teaching and it'll look about as good as you are about self teaching. Many of the other staff, mostly semi employed to unemployed ta's which are Discord guys hanging out on an Unmoderated discord server. (For example some users had hentai pfps, and had fake names where students are asked to place their real name in discord.) And sort of awkwardly talk down at you. Most students in my cohort completely dropped out. I managed to keep in to the end via long nights in internet tutorials and just sheer volumetric trial and error. So, here at the end of 9 months, I have about 9 months of self teaching plus some awesome zbrush skills that fit Patrick's highly practiced skillset, which again, are worth paying for. So is it a scam? Uh, it's more like if you need a something to do that keeps you self learning and if what you're doing lines up with the thing your teacher happens to do professionally, they can teach you that thing. So I'd say it's like a garage band project over that of a scam. Not a lot of professional content, the pre recorded videos are often long sprawling lectures with less features than a paid teaching box tutorial, no chapter areas to jump around the video, random references to outside of school materials, and much of the staff are former students who kind of just rock a job at a studio somewhere and teach what they do there. Even in these reviews you have current teachers leaving 5 stars, and in reddit search results, those glowing reviews are employees too. So, make what you will. For me, I need to find some teachers after this course wraps up. Edit: Hey I should probably put. I am a nonstandard to this school. Most of my peers are kids, college hopefuls coming into this fresh. I myself have been working in games and entertainment for a long time. I'm literally writing from Redmond, Washington. Thing is, I haven't heard of anyone from the school and most are East Coast or Europe located. So think the playstation store game companies and that particular look. If you like that look, and you're like "Aw yeah I want that! Beard guy let's go!" then you probably have a lot to learn there. Especially if you're looking to use Unreal and its blueprints. But if you're looking for like, anything else. They don't know it.