Are animation classes worth taking?

[Zack]

Next year I've been considering taking a computer graphics and animation class at Cart. It's like like a school for ROP stuff. I met with the teacher at a conference thing and he said that the classes were small so that I would be getting lots of help and attention. He also said we would be mainly working with Flash 8-9 and Photoshop. He had a couple of animations that he made on his laptop and I must say I was really impressed. I told him that I really loved flash animations and the only thing that has really kept me from learning them is that I totally suck at drawing. He said that was one of the first thing that we would be working on... So do you guys think that it would be a good idea to take and animation class or are there better ways to learn on my own?

not sure if I should post this here but it does deal with art so =/

[Dark-Spark]

you can't get into animation untill you learn how to draw dude, take some art classes first. or at least go through some art books

[Senti]

I have learned to animate and use Flash completely on my own and I'm sure many people here have done the same. Of course, even with 3 years plus of learning the program myself, I know that there are vast aspects of Flash that I haven't grasped yet.

If I were you, I would definitely take the classes. Whether you can draw or not, there are parts of Flash for everybody. Your teacher knows what he is talking about, it seems...drawing is important, but as long as you get the basics down, with Flash (since it's moving) not every drawing has to be perfect. Many people find this out the hard way after painstakingly drawing every single frame perfect until they give up. I've been guilty of this myself on far to many projects.

If you have the resources and are dedicated enough, I say you go for it. Good luck!

[Raguel]

If he says that drawing is one of the things you'll work on then there's no reason not to go for it.

I studied animation in college and when I started I was the best artist there. We had nude models posing three times a week and everyone was always impressed by mine. Our teacher asked us to draw in certain styles using different techniques that he taught us.

I wasn't really fond of changing from my own style, and so I didn't really work on them.

At the end of the year half of the class were far better than me because they were willing to follow his instructions and my work was exactly the same as when I started.

So I'd say that you should go for it if you're serious about getting into animation. I've seen some pretty useless artists surpass me in skill in a matter of eight months.