The purpose of Maclab Media (MLM) can vary person to person but the whole goal of the class is to provide students with the ability to forge their own paths and give them the chance (or the ability) to learn some serious skills that can help them in the future. Seems simple right? Practice does make perfect, but sometimes practice is much rockier than in print. For example I've never used Illustrator before and used a program similar to photoshop, to be put it best I didn't have much practice before I got here. So, I practiced with Illustrator in making my gravatar and my desktop picture.
The final products are...good...not great but certainly not bad.
But that's the point of practice. Your rough draft will never be your best draft and your final draft will never compare to the paper you'll right a month after it. It's because you get better. The purpose and job of MLM is more evident when you think about it every time you finish a project or something like that. You'll be practicing so that next time you'll do even better than before. It's a healthy way for a student to get better at something. The work in here we do will work more and more to working us into doing even better work the next time.
Even if someone takes this class as a hobby, this hobby can earn them some money in the future. The markets always willing to hire or buy from people who sell the products they want. Not to mention that if a student gets really good at this and makes great quality work, that they can get picked up by a major studio or company. Think stuff like the VFX artists or Art Directors, MLM can get you in there.
Though the catch with this whole thing is this: You have to work hard, learn from your mistakes, and play by the rules.
The best analogy for Maclab Media is to think of the class as a trade or something similar to that. A student comes in a novice and over the time becomes more adept then they'll learn to become an apprentice. Then if they learned well, worked hard, and played by the rules, at the very end of the road they will become a master or expert at the craft.
