Dear Class

September 8, 2011

I‘ve developed a reputation at school for being a demanding teacher who expects too much and grades too harshly. I had a particularly lazy class a couple semesters back, and gave them a good tongue lashing via email.

To all,

Attached are your updated grades going into the final exam.

Most of you did terribly on your environment rough and final. This may
cause some of you to fail the class. In the future I would suggest
that when you have something due finished, that you turn it in
finished. Deadlines are not in progress check ins. If you carry on
with this attitude about what it means to turn in something finished
by a set time/date, then you will not only do poorly in your
schooling, you will stunt yourself as an artist, and make it nearly
impossible to get a job let alone keep one.

If you are unhappy with your grade on your environment rough or final
ask yourself the following questions:

1. Were both projects complete, well done, and on time?
2. Did you incorporate everything I lectured about with respects to
detail, reference, transition of surfaces, key light, ambient shading,
local color, perspective, layer organization etc.?
3. Did you check your file against my environment or character demo
file to make sure you had the right kind of layers in the right order?
4. Does your key light layer when viewed in isolation mode (option
click) look like your scene is being lit by realistic lighting coming
from a specific direction?
5. Did you incorporate tips I showed in my painting demos?
6. Did you email me early in the time you had allotted to work on the
assignment to get my feedback?
7. Did you ask me for feedback last class to help you work in a more
efficient direction? (Jenny was the only one to do this)

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions then realize that
you chose to undervalue your work and education and missed an
opportunity to create an attractive image for your portfolio. You
won’t have another chance to focus on 2D painting under the guidance
of a professional artist in the rest of your program, you should
regard this a considerable loss.

After last class there was a movie night at the visual effects studio
I work at with a number of industry professionals as well as your
program director. I was going to invite the student with the best
environment painting to attend. You would have had a chance to explore
a local visual effects studio, network with professionals, eat free
food, see a beautiful film in a film quality screening room, and I
would have personally introduced you to my art director and praised
your artistic abilities. Instead I found that no one had their
assignment finished, and even worse no one turned in anything of high
quality. And so I chose to not mention the screening. Realize that
when you don’t apply yourself to your art you are unknowingly turning
down countless opportunities like this that the more dedicated of your
peers will benefit from.

For those of you who do fail this class I expect you to have an
entirely reformed attitude and respect for your work and project
parameters next time around.

-Ali