Experiencing FullSail
It’s been two weeks since I took the 1,000 plus mile drive down 95 and embarked onto what I can call nothing short of life changing experience. While there is a lot to talk about, I’ll try to focus this blog primarily on what it took to get to FullSail and what it’s like once I actually came down to visit.
The FullSail application process is not a difficult one. Although I hold the school in high regard, anyone with a High School Diploma or a GED can get in. Their requirements aren’t all that difficult but the school isn’t for everyone and the price tag is one of the biggest obstacles to overcome when applying for a school like this.
The Application
At first I had a little difficulty getting a hold of an actual application for the school. Although I haven’t checked the website recently but I had to contact Admissions and they had e-mailed me the official application.
The application requires the following:
- The Application Form
- $150 Check Addressed to FullSail for the Application Fee
- $500 Deposit (Refundable) to reserve your seat
- High School Transcript or GED Test Scores
- Game developers must provide transcripts for Algebra I & II
- Two Letters of Recommendation
- 2 professional or 1 professional and 1 personal
- 5 Essay Questions:
1. What aspects of your prior educational experience (high school or college) did you appreciate most? Where did they fall short?
2. What characteristics make for a good entertainment industry employee? A good student?
3. Each of us has a left and right brain that fuels our logic and creativity. Thinking of your creative side, what areas come naturally for you?
4. There may have been a specific event or moment in time that inspired you to pursue a career in the entertainment industry. Please tell us about that, or any occasion that triggered your desire to work in this industry.
5. Imagine your professional life five years from now. What would be your ideal job title and description? What would you do in a typical day?
After about a week or so time (make sure to actually call Admissions to keep up to date on the process and make sure that they received all the information). You will be sent two packets in nice FullSail engraved folders. One of them is pretty important. This is the enrollment package. There are two forms that you are required to sign and return ASAP to continue your application process.
The Enrollment Agreement
This a very brief agreement, I’m not going to summarize it because it’s very straightforward and I suggest you read everything you sign if you are planning to apply to this school.
The GPS (Global Professionalism Standards) Agreement
This is something very unique to the school. GPS works just like your GPA and will show on your transcript from the school once you graduate and be visible to possible and future employers. GPS is quite simply a gauge of your professional etiquette. What does that mean? Well, if you don’t hand in your assignment on time, if your late to class, or if you quite simply misbehave, than expect to see a drop in your GPS score which starts out at 100%. There are also ways of raising your GPS score above 100% by getting involved in the community.
Lastly you are required to complete a Math Self Evaluation. I highly suggest you do not skip this as this is almost exactly what you will see during your assessment test once you begin your program.
You can also send in a $10 security card deposit. This is optional; you can pay this at registration. I did.
After another week or so you should see your final packet from FullSail. This is the general packet which will include housing information, potential scholarships, financial aid information, loans, and a bit more. For me this was mostly review of things I have already done or completed so you don’t have to wait if you contact FullSail and get involved.
Financial Aid & Loans:
This process is very straightforward and is pretty scary for a lot of people.
Step 1: Apply for a pin# for Fafsa
Step 2: Fill out Fafsa and retrieve your ECT score (your expected family income score; I really don’t remember the proper acronym).
Step 3: Go to Sallie Mae website and depending on your financial situation apply for loans. Obviously the best loan you can get is the Federal Parent Plus loan. Get your parents to co-sign and your done.
This wasn’t the case for me, since I had no co-signer. The alternative is the Student Signature Loan and the CampusDoor loan. I suggest you call FullSail Financial Aid. Get to know your Admission’s advisors, and your financial aid advisors early!
There are three terms in FullSail. Each term you need to take out loans. The terms are 8 months + 8 months + 5 months. Finally the maximum you can request is $40,000. This is the maximum the school can issue you for both living expenses and tuition. Disbursements also start after the first 45 days. Expect to pay all living expenses out of pocket until than.
Housing:
This is a problem since there are no dorms in FullSail. You will get a listing of others looking for an apartment. After two unsuccessful attempts at a roommate, I opted to get my own apartment. This is the best decision I could have made for myself. This is also a very personal decision everyone should make for themselves.
Things to remember about housing:
- Rent
- Water/Sewer
- Electricity
- Internet (Go with BrightHouse over Embarck)
- Distance from the school + Gas (6 miles is too far)
- Furniture (Wallmart is the best)
- Rentals Insurance * (AllState is really cheap)
Upon Arriving
Two days before classes begin everyone in your program will gather during the same time in the lobby and get processed through registration. This is a very painless process that takes no more than 15 minutes depending on how long you take to fill out some last minute forms and surveys (ex. what radio station you listen to, what’s your fav. movie and so on). You also get your picture taken and given an official student id. This badge you can use to get into any building on campus. It’s official! Your now a FullSail student.
After the Registration takes place there is a scheduled Assessment Test. Do not take this lightly! I did and I’ll explain the repercussions in my next post. This test determines where you will be placed, if allowed to enter the program at all. The test is not difficult by any standards if your on par with your Algebra and Algebra II and your basic graphing.
The following day everyone goes through orientation which is a long four hour long session in the Auditorium. This is where you will get your schedule and your Assessment Test score. The score determines where you will be placed.
I’ll stop here. I hope this was at least somewhat informative. I apologize for poor grammaticism and flow, it’s 2:13 am right now and I’m very tired.
Book Wish List
Right before entering high school I would read a ton of technical books. The list of books I’ve read was immense but the books I wanted to read was even more ambitious. While digging through those same archives this is what I stumbled on.
My Book Wish list
Here are some of the books I’d like to recommend to the CRSD Library. I’ve broken these books into categories and provided a small rating next to each. Most of these books are under $30 so I honestly hope the library can obtain them.
ANATOMY
Dynamic Anatomy (*****)
Dynamic Figure Drawing (****)
Dynamic Wrinkles and Drapery (***)
Drawing Dynamic Hands (***)
Drawing the Human Head (****)ANIMATION
Digital Character Animation (*****)
Digital Character Animation II: Essential Techniques (*****)
Digital Character Animation II: Advanced Techniques (*****)
Character Animation in Depth (*****)
Animation Facial Features and Expressions (****)CINEMATOGRAPHY
Film Directing Shot by Shot (****)
Film Directing Cinematic Motion (*****)COMPOSITION
Type in Motion (*****)
After Effects 4.0 Classroom in a Book (*****)LIGHTING
Digital Lighting and Rendering (an absolute must)
3D Lighting: History, Concepts, and Techniques (*****)LIGHTWAVE
Inside Lightwave 7 (*****)
MAYA
Maya 4 Fundamentals (I personally recommend this book)
The Maya 4 Handbook (*****)MOVIES
The Making of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within (****)
Art of the Matrix (****)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Portrait of Ang Lee’s Epic Film (****)PROGRAMMING
Graphic Gems I (****)
Graphic Gems II (***)
Graphic Gems III (****)
Graphic Gems IV (*****)
Graphic Gems V (****)
This is a must series
AI Game Programming Wisdom (*****)
Real Time Rendering Tricks and Techniques in DirectX (*****)
Game Programming Gems (*****)
Game Programming Gems II (*****)
3D Game Engine Design (*****)
Introduction to Algorithms (*****)
The C Programming Language Special Edition (*****)
Effective C++ (*****)
Physics for Game Developers (*****)
Multiplayer Game Programming (*****)
Computer Networks: Systematic Approach (*****)
Internet Game Programming (*****)
OpenGL Programming Guide (*****)
The Mythical Man-Month: Essay on Software Engineering (*****)
Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules (*****)
Code Complete (a must)
Game Developer’s Marketplace (out of print but one of the most amazing books)
Game Architect and Design (***)TEXTURING
Digital Texturing and Painting (a definite must book)
MAGAZINES
Game Developer
Computer Graphics World
ieMagazine
Mr Whitesell
I was going through some of my old archived folders and stumbled upon an e-mail I sent to Mr.Whitesell. My first programming teacher. While I wont comment much on it I felt it would be appropriate to put it on the web.
Dear Mr. Whitesell,
I’m not sure if you received my e-mail on my project because I never got a reply from you confirming so. So please let me know if you have and if it worked ok.
Also I’ve realized that I haven’t sent you my address book program which turned out nicely. It has its own font, and a lot of extra features even a calendar that reads days of the week. Well I’ve included that program in the attachment just in case.
I wanted to thank you for the great year. I’ve really improved as a programmer. I’m not going to stop here, and over this summer I’ve set a goal to learn C++ and become fairly fluent in it. I’m also going to get better in Maya (a 3D Rendering Program), Flash (generally I’m good with it now but I plan to make my web site in it this time around). I’m letting you know this for the independent studies class. Besides maintaining the school web site we will also be able to take individual projects, correct? Well my ambitious goal for next year is to create a 3D demo. I want to learn how to create real 3D environments and maybe move into physics and so forth. This will ultimately lead me into creating my first 3D game. Which I believe I’ll continue in the fighting genre, since I should be fluent with Maya by then, or in fact I am at this point I can create my own 3D models and later learn a 3D api like DirectX or OpenGL to export those models into code. This ambitious goal can not be possible within one year unless I start learning C++ today. This is why I want to learn as much as there is to learn in a short period of time of 2 month. I’ve purchased a book, which will help me move along, and created an organized schedule to help me in making consistent progress. If you’re wondering why not wait, learn C++ next year, and then create 3D environment the following year. Simply by the following summer I want to start on a real game and try to actually publish it. While this seems way to unrealistic, especially for a high school student, others have done it and succeeded. Granted most worked in teams of at least three. I hope to find others who are just as interested in the programming and inspire them to work with me. Another thought that may come to mind why even bother to release a game. I want to attend MIT, that’s my dream, while I might not fit some of the criteria for the school yet by being the top student in the school (these guys have 92% of the kids at top 5% class rank, and 100% are at top 10% in class rank). That seems almost impossible, but I’m going to try my best for it. While my grades alone wont get me excepted I have to show them that I’m dedicated, and want to succeed. I’ll be able to accomplish this by showing what I’ve done. Creating some sort of visual portfolio for them to look at. This same idea may interest others (maybe others in independent studies class).
This goal is out of reach now but I can do it if I try hard enough. I’ve already taken classes at bucks in order to transfer into Hon Analysis. Analysis will also hopefully give me a better grasp of a few complex programming concepts. Well besides that goal that I have for the independent studies course we’ll also be working on the school web site. I have allot of experience on web design. While I don’t have a site up just yet, I’ve been doing web design for 7 years. Meaning since I was nine and the internet first became available to the general public (money wise). I created countless web sites slowly improving, I quickly mastered HTML, and within a year I memorized every tag. Which may be impressive and may be not, but slowly improved with each site I created, or redesigned. I became obsessed with good design. I have fluency in most graphics programs including Photoshop, Paint Shop, Illustrator, and Flash. Next year I think it would be interesting to take the south web site and make it very sophisticated. Flash animated, create a tour guide, launch a forum (I know CGI/Perl, and Henry knows PHP so whatever you prefer). Actually I think a forum would be really nice. One it could provide a place where people from south can talk freely, ask what last nights hw was or even talk with teachers about certain assignments. I mean not all teachers are enthusiastic about releasing their e-mail addresses. So I thought that would be clever. If you’re interested I’ll be more than happy to show you some of my past work, while it’s over a year old at the moment it’s still pretty good. I would like the honors to help redesign the school web site to invite more students to visit it. It’s pretty heavy in content right now, but there is no realistic reason for many students to visit except maybe use class links if they don’t know how to install it as a shortcut on the desktop. Why not release articles and tutorials like that to students, maybe combine with the newspaper club and have them post up news and events at council rock (unless you want us to do it). It’s not very hard to make a simple news script for people who are illiterate in programming to use. Yes with all these features comes the threat of being hacked because it may get so much attention. But I’m sure that things like that can be avoided. Anyway these are just rambles about next year. It’s been a real learning experience.
I was sort of young and stupid but I’ll never forget my first programming teacher. Take care Mr. Whitesell!
Zenkaikon Part 2
I got a chance last night to upload the rest of my pictures from the Anime Convention so check them out here.
I’m planning on another Anime Convention this weekend called Diplocon. This one is about 100 miles away but should a blast to attend. I need to figure out costs and if there is a hotel available or if I need to drive back and forth. They’ll be showing allot of anime, have CS 1.6 tourney, DDR, and Soul Caliber. So I think I’m going to have allot of fun there. I’m going to see if I can come up with some sort of costume for Friday and land a post-holloween special on a cool TopHat or something. Also looking forward to seeing familiar faces.
Searching
Today’s goal was to reasses the cost of attending Full Sail along with living there. I compiled a nice little excel sheet and turned my room upside down in the proccess.
I purchased these three must read books today during lunch break. I’m going to start with Code and work my way through the series.
Today was terribly painful at work. For those that don’t know I work at an OfficeMax distribution center at the moment (I change jobs quite a bit but this one pays very well 12.50 an hour with benefits and generally much more laid back than other jobs I’ve encountered). Today we had a company wide meeting about the new core values of OfficeMax and how OfficeMax wants enter the Blue Ocean and leave the Red Ocean. Our new core values are Passion, Ingenuity, and Fun. Man was the meeting fun …