So I've had a couple potential Emily Carr students inquiring about the program and asking for advice, so I thought I would post this little summary of my courses at Emily Carr so far. I agree that it's way too hard to get information about these kinds of things if you don't have a friend on the inside, so I'll be that girl!

They change the classes around pretty much every year, so things may be different next year when you start, but here's how mine has been going:

Well for one thing, you probably won't be doing the specific kind of art you want to until at least second year! They have a pre-set stream that forces you to try new things, which is great for giving you a wide breadth of experience of different art styles and medias.

First semester you choose either Design or Sculpture, no other choices. With that comes some bog standard drawing, english, and art history. Plus a course called creative process where the teacher pretty much teaches whatever they want to, in theory about the process of making good art.

Design funnels into communication design and industrial design, and involves a lot of conceptual thinking and building of little bristol board sculptures, as well as focusing in on the real basics of communication design, like line and form. Presentation is really heavily emphasized, and the ability to communicate a concept abstractly.

Sculpture is also pretty conceptual (concept is big at emily carr), but also gives some intro into ceramics and other types of sculpture building.

I took design, and really liked it, I'm even trying out industrial design next year. Many of my friends who were planning to go into animation or even more like traditional painting type stuff really hated design though, so it's kind of based on the person.

Second semester you choose three options, one being either drawing, design, or digital media (Digital media is like photoshop and computers for dummies). Why isn't sculpture one of the three? This totally screws over the people who took design first semester from taking sculpture second semester if they want to try out other options. I'm taking drawing.
So you choose one of those three, plus two other options, and english and art history.

I am branching out and trying new things, Print Media (like old printing presses, stamps, woodcuts, etching) which I adore, and Animation which I find really difficult, but I just wanted to try it. I don't ever plan to do animation for a career, but it's a good thing to understand. We start with really basic flip books, move up to drawn animation, then puppets, and then we get more freedom in media to try and communicate feelings and a story.

haha wow that was long, but hey I hope it helps! I'll try to answer any other questions anyone has.