[GemsaMay]

hey everybody.. first off this is my first post so be gentle :P

ok.. this is my situation.. I live in Eastern WA in a town with a population of about 300.. I just found out about the wonders of digital art this year.. I have of course known that it exhists but I only recently looked at it as something i want to learn.. and now I am obsessed.. I have always been very creative and artistically based.. and this looks like it is right up my ally.. in 2 days I transfer to a bigger school.. I am moving from a class of 25 to a class of like 300 or something.. so that should help... but I am still VERY far from any big art schools.. my other problem is I have no idea where to look for schools to go to.. the only place I want to go to really badly is the Art Institute of Seattle.. but my family is on the poor-ish side and I have shitty grades.. does anyone have any advice on schools I should go to!!! it would be especially nice in the Seattle area because thats where I want to be.. but its not a big factor.. wow this post is long... but yeah.. I need help sooo bad.. any advice you can give me about getting started in the world of digital art would be EXTREMELY appreciated!!! ok.. I will stop babbling now..

[suny]

Going to school would be a nice idea, of course.
But i was in the same condition than you 10 years ago (poor family, little town, no Artschool, no internet, no tv), and i learned by myself. And now, i work in videogames, i'm lead artist, everything is fine, life is beautiful.
What i try to explain is, you can succed by yourself: if you can't go to school, it's not the end of the world. Learn everything you can, practice, and practice harder. Read books. Surf the net. Look.
My advice would be:
The digital side of digital art is not important, it's easy and quick to grasp.
It's everything else wich is hard to learn...

S.

[Neo-MatrixX]

Here is a list of schools to pick from.
Apply to as many schools as you can, many schools offer loans.
web page

[Granite]

ello.

I go to the art institute myself (granted, in south florida) and I'm -very- happy with the schools. AII is a big chain of colleges and each has its own reputation, some are bad from what i've heard, but the one I go to (Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale) happens to be very good. I spent a lot of time looking into art schools before I actually picked one, Savannah, Academy of Art, Ringling, etc. You should look into them thoroughly if you can, take a look at that list that was posted.

The fact that your family isn't wealthy, shouldn't be discouraging, the AII branch I go to has a financial aid floor on board thats entire job is to find you the money to go to their school, and they do! There are a lot of grants to be had that dont depend on your grades at all.

Not sure if your parents will go for this, but I dropped out of highschool, my grades weren't great and it was actually recommended to me by my guidance counselour, you can actually get scholarships for good GED scores, so thats helping pay for my schooling, its not much, but anything that helps right?