Animation School or Mentor?

Over the last year, I’ve been working on a couple personal projects and I’ve just fallen more and more in love with animation with each one getting bigger than the last. It’s After some thinking during that time, I’ve decided to start pursuing animation as a career choice.

Although I’ve thought about trying to be entirely self-taught, I’ve decided to start looking into colleges to transfer into for animation. I’m coming up on my 3rd year in college and I’m signed up for some transfer requirements for a Cal State school at the moment.

Recently I got to talk with an animation Mentor on Instagram after following him and we got into a discussion about whether going to school for animation was worth it. He answered with a resounding “no” explaining that you don’t learn the skills you need along with how it’s just wasted time and money.

His answer got me thinking about whether I was making the right decision about going to school. I always thought that being in an environment like that, learning from instructors and peers along with being able to receive a variety of feedback could be valuable.

Maybe I could be wrong about going to school but I’m just not sure at the moment. I’ve heard of programs like Animation Mentor and AnimSchool being good routes adjacent to college.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.