Hey EZ! I was wondering what you think of a BA (Digital arts) at WITS and it's courses? I really want to study but I am really confused and I'm not sure if I want to study a BA in fine arts or digital art. I would love to hear your opinion!
Wow, I didn’t know there are actual courses in Digital Art nowadays. I had to drop out of Graphic Design (I forgot the exact course’s name) at Tuks after a week because I couldn’t paint traditionally. That’s when I switched to LLB.
You’ll undoubtedly get a good education at WITS no matter what you study. It’s a decent University. From the website it looks like BA Digital Arts provides a basis and then you get your Masters in animation or whatever else you’re into. Seems solid enough.
However, a trend I’ve encountered in Art courses in South Africa is that the Graphic Design and Web Design aspects are fantastic, but Illustration tends to be lacklustre. So it depends on what career you want at the end of the day.
I’ve always wanted to draw for animation (at present I work as a Character Designer in animation). Everywhere I've been, I found that the lecturers were worse at character drawing than I was, even with my lack of experience at the time, so I didn’t actually learn anything from them with respect to my current career.
This is nothing against said lecturers and teachers. I sought a mentor with a niche skillset that’s terribly uncommon in South Africa.
However, what I did get was access to the vast Tuks campus library, where I learned a LOT about drawing, animation, character design, figure drawing, and period costumes. Almost everything I know today, I learned from books I found in the campus library.
Art’s tricky that way. If you study Fine Arts, you can just learn digital methods on your own. If you study Digital Arts, you can just learn traditional methods on your own. Heck, if you study BCom, you can learn Digital and Traditional methods on your own. Either way you can learn both and learn them well. Depends on what degree you want in your CV and what art field you plan to enter. It also helps to network while studying — that’s the biggest edge you’ll get over non-arts-graduates like me.
I do believe Fine Arts will be the more difficult course, though. Folks teaching there tend to be draconic and clamp down on students something fierce. Digital folks are more your laid-back hipsters. But hey, WITS could be different.
Keep asking around, though. Try to find students and graduates who actually studied art courses. They’ll fill you in far better than I can. My view of things is a bit jaded because I’m an outsider looking in. But at least I don’t suffer from confirmation bias, which is an epidemic amongst art students, lemme tell ya! xD
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