Full Sail University - Attending Online

So I thought it would be appropriate to make a blog as what it's like to attend Full Sail University as an online student. I have had people ask me about it and I want to give a full break down as what you go through and what to expect.

First and foremost: I am in the Game Art Bachelor of Science degree so what I am going to show you and tell you may not apply to every degree and if you do chose the Game Art degree, what I tell you may vary over time. Any of the work I share is my own original work, and they do check for plagiarism. If you are thinking of saving and copying the work, good luck because I will be adding a copyright watermark on it. This is just simply to show everyone what it is like to attend Full Sail as an Online Student. I won't go through the process of signing up for college and all that jazz, this is simply just from day one.

Your first few months as a student in Full Sail as an online puts you through something called the Core Four. For my degree it was Creative Presentation, Psychology of Play, Technology in the Entertainment and Media Industries, and English Composition I. You had to pass those four to even move on to your degree specific courses. Everything you do for class is 9/10 done through the FSO Portal. The FSO Portal looks similar to what I have posted here, don't worry, I blocked out all the sensitive information on the page as well as some other stuff that doesn't need to be seen. This was my first class, Creative Presentation. If you click here it will actually take you to a direct video of an assignment that was done for Creative Presentation posted on my YouTube channel. If you're curious, there are other videos for the class as well as some other videos talking about the journey thus far. This was such an easy month, and my instructor was ABSOLUTELY amazing and I still occasionally talk to her as well as I have remained in her Discord channel so if any students need help, I chime in occasionally. My first month I went a little overboard with, but I had bought school supplies like I was on campus, and with that I had a composition notebook for class notes and assignment related notes and then during this time, was note taking in a different composition notebook as we had to read from a text book. The text books are all online, at least as far as I know, so you don't have a pile of books laying around stacking up, and it's easy to access. Note taking is a MUST still online. Be it taking notes during the live lecture or when you watch it later.



My second class was Psychology of Play and it was around the second month did I receive my first piece of my technology package, the iPad 5th Gen 32GB. This is offered to online students only I do believe, and it's sent to you before your main Launch Box to help you in case you are working with a run down computer, like I was originally.

This class was fairly easy, but it wasn't my top favorite as I had a different organizer every week. So let me break this down for you. You have YOUR instructor. That is who runs your section, who you email, who you communicate with. Then your class is ran by either your instructor, or someone else. In Psychology of Play I had a different organizer each week, different classmates, and it was just awful some weeks. This was where we did our first time block as well. Each week we had to make up a schedule that fit in our personal lives as well as school.

Third class was Technologies in the Entertainment and Media Industries. This started to push more of the college level research and they started to expect more out of you. I started to struggle more during this month on keeping up with assignments, but I never once fell behind and was late. Up to this point I was keeping a pretty solid A streak as well. This was another month we had to do a reflection video and I was starting to think we were doing this at the end of every class, which was fine. These videos are supposed to be short and sweet while basically answering a list of questions while maintaining a professional appearance.

My final class in the Core Four was English Composition I. This was where we didn't use FSO Portal as much but instead a different site for our turn in. This was also the month I thought I would fail and would end up screwing up everything for me. That was not the case, and I came out of English with an A. This class had to be the most time consuming and stressful out of the four classes at the beginning, as well as the class that required the most amount of research.

A week before my degree specific courses started was when I received my Launch Box. The Launch Box is a package you get with everything you need technology wise for your degree. It's added to your tuition unless you have a few grand to pay out of pocket. I want to say it was an extra $3,000 added on to my tuition but I could be wrong. If you add up the total price of everything in your Launch Box, you're really getting away cheaper than just going and buying it all yourself. It's yours to keep after you graduate, however, some of your licenses to certain things can expire. So don't expect to keep everything you get application wise. I believe after I graduate I will lose access to Maya, Z-Brush, and my Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. Am I mad about that? A little. Am I okay with it? I have to be.

As you can see, I've kept pretty good grades. I hit my first snag in Model Creation when life got the better of me and I started to fail. With that being said, I took my last week off of that class and took the retake. You get your first retake for free, otherwise they can charge you for retaking the class. My first B came in 3-D Foundations when I also encountered software issues and Maya kept crashing. I was calling in to support almost every day with issues. The F I will be erasing at the end of my degree with something they offer called "Grade Forgiveness." The F will no longer exist and will raise my GPA and then I will be adding points to my Model Creation C+ and make it a B (or maybe it was a B+) and help boost me there. That is something pretty handy that Full Sail offers.

There are some things I don't like about being an Online student though and one is the communication with your professors. There are some that will respond right away with so much help you get overwhelmed. When I was entering English, I emailed my instructor a few days before class started and explained that I was HORRIBLE with English and failed it multiple times in high school and ended up taking both Junior and Senior year of English together in my Senior year while trying to catch up with some credits from my Sophomore year through the mail. He immediately emailed me back and told me that come that Monday when class started to look over everything, attend lecture, and send him my work before submitting it and he would help me. That I did. We did hit a few problems where I felt he got frustrated with me or even led me on wrong...(which he sort of did)...but I managed to come out of that class with an A. There are some professors who email you back right away with little to no help. Then there are professors who take more than 24 hours to email you back and they can either offer a lot of help or no help. It can be really frustrating at times. Most professors don't do phone conferences, some do. Some will even set up times to meet on campus if you live close to campus. But one thing to remember is that you have a certain way to email your professors and if you do not use the proper subject line (and some even the proper signature) they won't email you back or they email you back saying that you need to fix your email. I haven't messed that up yet, but they warn you of that. You also have to name your assignments accordingly or you can get deducted points, and some won't even grade it until you fix it. In Model Creations I messed up on an assignment name, I don't remember what I did exactly, and I got some points deducted for improper file name. That can take a hard hit on your grade if you're not careful.

Now I did get a second package for Fundamentals of Art I and that held all my supplies I needed for that class. If you read your syllabus each month before you start (or in advance really) you see what the class is about and everything as well as the materials needed. I have the unboxing videos on my YouTube channel: LaunchBox Unboxing 2018 and Fundamentals of Art I - Art Kit Unboxing

Even being an online student, you get to apply for a Student ID. I did around my second/third month and I use it when I can for student discounts. You can also sign up for a library card and access the library and take advantage of checking out books, movies, and games through the library. They send you a package with the item and a prepaid package for you to send the item back to the library. It's really cool and you don't feel excluded all the time. There are online GoTo events you can attend, and if you do live close to campus and have the Student ID, you can take part in some of the events that happen there.

What I don't like about being on Online Student is how time consuming it is. The amount of time management you have to do is insane, and I am one of those who has to have things perfect or it freaks me out. So I spend 90% of my time buried in school work and I don't get a lot of family time. It can be a little depressing believe it or not. I do sometimes feel a little excluded from the community as a campus student and the fact that it's an accelerated learning environment, you are shoving a lot of knowledge into a single month and carrying it forward.

With that said, I have included some of my final work and what to expect if you take the Game Art degree. Remember... don't plagiarize my work.

 This was from my ART I class. We had to draw a still life from a reference picture. This uses both organizational lines and shading. I didn't get the best grade for the one on the right as the pencil marking was too obvious according to my professor.

 The stamp on there should say 1808 as this was around the same time I did the still life. I sort of messed up with the whole YYMM format. I sometimes have to really think about it. Anyway, we had to take objects around us and set them up according to what the prompt was. Each study has what it was supposed to be for.

This was a final render project in my Model Creation class. I didn't put a time stamp on this but if you try to steal it, good luck actually proving it is yours because I can open up my Maya file and prove you wrong. The Sake bottle and it's lid next to it, beer bottle, scissors, and the wine plug thing that I suddenly forgot the name of I built and placed in the scene. The scene itself was built by the school.

Again, this is another image if you try and steal I can prove you wrong on. This was for my Model Creation class. I built the two cabinets, table and chairs, book case, guitar, chest, and all the other items you see. The room itself was not built by me. This was a very time consuming piece.

The guitar and the chest are two objects from the scene above that I got to bring into substance painter and paint as close as I could to the reference picture given to me. I am sad to say that I did not completely finish modeling these two assets as I ran out of time on it.

I'm currently in week three of 3DA as I post this and this is my current project at the end of the first week. We were given a bunch of reference pictures and we had to pick from that and then model everything in the scene, and in parts. So that light fixture you see, actually has light bulbs in it. The sink has a hole and a stopper. The toilet has the bowl and the hole inside the bowl.

Here is another shot in all four camera angles of that same scene.

Here is a close up of the sink after I added in some detail (and before changing a few things).