Getting a job in entertainment?

Concept Artist Education and Job Market?

• I'm just ending my 2nd year of high school and am extremely interested in becoming a concept artist. I am currently looking at art schools but am unsure what degree I should be going for. As education in entertainment art/design isn't a common thing to find what is the best alternative (or what are some schools that offer entertainment art/design) as no school I have found seems to have it as an option I am also a little worried about after I have finished my education, as I am hearing that getting a job is a little bit more that difficult. Is this true? if so, should I be learning something else alongside whatever I happen to get a degree in (3D, textures, etc.)?

• Answer:

  Scope out schoolism.com and theartdepartment.org for starters, they do online classes but they're really tremendous and they're all industry people. From what I understand there's a good school near the Bay-ish area that ILM snags a lot of concept artists from as well. Degrees are out there, but they're largely subsets of programs like Illustration and Animation. As for the job part...yeah it's not a shoe-in by any means; with just about any visual arts career the key is networking and promoting yourself. The broader your design set, the better. If you find a sweet concept job illustrating an rpg, and your characters and vehicles are solid but your guns and your mechs suck, it might get ugly. =p