Your Career in Animation (2nd Edition)

How to Survive and Thrive

David B. Levy

• Publisher: Allworth
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781621537496
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Animation

A Newly Revised Edition of the Go-To Guide for Any Animation Artist! " Your Career in Animation is the most comprehensive and valuable book on animation careers that you'll ever need." —Bill Plympton, Animator / Producer Whether you want to break into the animation industry or "toon up" to a better career, this comprehensive guide will show you how. A leading animation professional surveys the field and shares the advice of more than one hundred and fifty top talents in the business of making toons— including Brooke Keesling, head of animation talent development at Bento Box, Mike Hollingsworth, supervising director of BoJack Horseman; Andrea Fernandez, art director on The Cuphead Show! PES, Oscar-nominated stop-motion director of Fresh Guacamole; Linda Simensky, head of content for PBS Kids; Minty Lewis, co-creator of The Great North; Ross Bollinger, YouTube sensation with his Pencilmation channel, and executives from Nickelodeon, Disney TVA, Titmouse, Inc., Frederator, PBS Kids, Netflix, 9 Story Media Group, Cartoon Network; and dozens of others. Learn how to: • Get the most out of your animation education
• Build a portfolio, reel, and resume
• Keep your skills marketable for years to come
• Network effectively
• Learn from on-the-job criticism
• Cope with unemployment
• Start your own studio or build an indie brand online
• Pitch and sell a show of your own
• And more! Also included are invaluable resources such as animation schools, societies, film festivals, events, Web sites, and publications. Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

CHAPTER 1

So You Want to Be in Pictures?

“I’d recommend any art school that will give you a good understanding of the basic principles of animation and access to good film equipment is a good start. However, some of the most successful people I know went to a state college and made animated films in their garage in their spare time. The thing that will teach you the most is experience.”

—Eileen Kohlhepp, stop-motion animator

Eileen Kohlhepp, on set, making magic one frame at a time. Photo by Richard P. Ulivella

TODAY, IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ANIMATION ARTISTS to pick up the skills of their trade without going to a special school to study animation. There are numerous great books that teach animation techniques, such as Richard Williams’s The Animator’s Survival Kit and Eric Goldberg’s Character Animation Crash Course! By following the exercises and instructions in these books, you can conceivably teach yourself the nuts and bolts of animated filmmaking. Taking the home instruction idea even one step further, there’s Animation Mentor: The Online Animation School (see appendix), which is looking better and better during a worldwide pandemic. Throughout this book there will be listings of recommended reading and online resources that I hope will become a part of your toolkit. Richard Williams was famous for saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Believe me, he wasn’t speaking exclusively to the beginners out there. He was talking to everyone, including, amazingly enough, himself. The best talents in animation know that there is always more to learn. In a healthy career, we don’t reach a point where we throw our books or our tools away. We need them too much. Our journeys are over when we stop, not when we think we’ve learned all there is to know.

So, if books and online resources play such an important part in our learning and development, why the need to enroll in an animation school? Why should one put in the time and expense required to get a degree in animation from one of the schools listed in the appendix of this book? It would be hard to imagine a field where a college degree or a good grade point average means less than it does in the animation industry. When it comes to finding a job, talent, enthusiasm, and relationships can take precedence over where (or if) you got your degree.

WHY GO TO SCHOOL?

Yet, before all the school recruiters faint in shock, I’d like to make the case for going to school. While it’s true that there are many great opportunities to teach yourself the art of animation, a book or online exercise cannot critique your work. It is the trained eye that can help advance your skill by leaps and bounds. With the structure provided by instructors, assignments, grades, the availability of equipment, and the inspiration supplied by peers, one has a good shot at getting a worthwhile animated education. A great book sits on the shelf until you read it. Online exercises do not do themselves. Left to one’s own devices, it can be all too easy to fall into the habit of picking and choosing what you’d like to learn and in what order. Even with a valiant start, one can lose steam because there’s no one there to cheer you on. Nobody cares if you stop midway through or never even get started. Learning the animation arts is a discipline. It’s not always fun. In school (or on the job, for that matter) we’re not always drawing what we’re comfortable drawing. We are pushed to go beyond our safety zone.

Perhaps most importantly, animation schools often employ instructors that are working in their field. While this does not automatically make them great teachers, it does help students have the opportunity to make those first vital connections with professionals that they’ll need if they’re to break into the industry. Animation director and South Park animator Jonathan Eden thusly benefitted from his time at CalArts, emphasizing: “I studied in the Character Animation program, and the skills and connections I obtained there were a definite factor in getting to where I am now.” Of course, CalArts has the added plus of being close to a world animation capital in Los Angeles, but even across the country while attending Boston’s Lesley University College of Art and Design, Unikitty! animator Joshua Pinker reports, “One of my classes allowed me to get a tour of an animation studio. From that tour I was offered a summer internship.” Farther up the East Coast, Addams Family storyboard artist Keely Propp studied animation at Sheridan College, leading to numerous helpful connections. The school’s strong relationships with studios allowed Propp to present her work to the industry and be chosen for internships during school and jobs after graduation. As a result, she explains, “I was a 3D animation intern at Sony Imageworks, and then after my graduation showcase I was a storyboard revisionist at AIC Studios for a short time, then my first full storyboard job was at Bron Animation a couple months after graduation.”

Schools also provide the animation student opportunities to meet some of the legends of the business. During my time as a faculty member of SVA, I presented events featuring Ray Harryhausen, Debra Solomon, Al Brodax, Richard Williams, Emily Hubley, Paul Fierlinger, Linda Simensky, Tissa David, Yuri Norstein, Nina Paley, Chris Wedge, Signe Baumane, and Bill Plympton. In addition to guest speaker engagements, schools also often host festivals and special events. For instance, Parsons School of Design in New York has hosted the ASIFA-East annual Animation Festival as well as annual events with SIGGRAPH (the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques).

Whew! That’s a lot of opportunities. It’s no wonder the Beach Boys sang, “Be True to Your School.”

Job Placement

“We have an outstanding career services office that works with graduates indefinitely as a career placement resource. They provide services online as well as in person.”

—Judith Aaron, vice president for enrollment, Pratt University

Animation schools, particularly those in or near animation hubs, offer students valuable job placement assistance. Schools receive frequent job postings from neighboring studios and often host annual recruitment events with the big studios such as Pixar and DreamWorks. These services are open to both students and alumni. Perhaps even more useful to the student are school/studio internship programs. With internships, students have the opportunity to venture into the industry while still accumulating credits toward their graduation requirements. According to Parsons School of Design’s Anezka Sebek, students in her school’s animation sequence are encouraged to spend one or more semesters in internships with animation studios. As internships are largely prolonged job interviews, many students have snagged their first job fresh off a successful internship.

Peer-to-Peer Connections

One advantage of going to school to study animation is that you’re automatically in the position to make connections with your student peer group, as well as with your instructors. The school becomes your first animation community. Here, the seeds you plant or the bridges you burn set the direction your career will take post-school. Some schools promote a sense of “healthy” competition among the students. A better idea would be for students to learn that each member of their class is a potential collaborator, partner, ally, and friend. New York–based animator and SVA graduate Angela De Vito adds, “I would say school was extremely important! Not only did I learn all the basic skills necessary to land a job, but my classmates became my colleagues. I’ve gotten jobs from and have recommended former classmates.”

The author interviewing famed Yellow Submarine producer Al Brodax at an ASIFA-East event held at SVA. James Corden, eat your heart out!

Everything a student does affects the reputation he has among his peers. As a guest speaker and an instructor I always encounter a moment when everyone in the whole class rolls their eyes or grumbles when a certain student talks or asks a question demonstrating tactlessness or an oversized ego. Such students are usually oblivious as to how they’re really perceived. Students also keep watch as to who regularly botches homework assignments, delivers lazy work, or is sloppy and careless in his or her craft. Students and instructors make mental records of such behavior and work. These evaluations stick to people long after the school grades have faded. These are the marks you can’t erase. So, why start accumulating them in a negative column? A word of caution, though. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt and assume they have good intentions. Some of us are late bloomers and need some time to show our skills and strengths. Don’t give up on anyone or count them out based on first impressions. You may end up working for them some day.

Color keys by Angela De Vito for her Disney Digital Media short Heartless Prince. Copyright 2017 Disney.

Happily, positive behavior is also noted by our peers. Humility, interest in what others are doing, and hard work are qualities that win the respect of others. After graduation, when the students scatter like billiard balls, who are they going to recommend for a job when in a position to do so? Our reputations matter as much, if not more, than the portfolio or reel we carry around. Learn to value relationships and you’ve already taken a major step towards a successful career.

My First Key Moment in School

One day in my second year at SVA, instructor Mark Heller, who ran a successful animation studio with John R. Dilworth called Streamline Film Manufacturing, popped into the small pencil test room I was occupying. Closing the door behind him, Heller asked me if I would be interested in doing some paid work on a commercial. If I’d been wearing a beanie with a propeller on it, it would have started spinning up into the air. Instead, I had to get by with smiling widely and nodding my head “yes.” For six bucks an hour I would be doing mat-inking for a thirty-second commercial for Land O’Lakes butter. In the days of traditional animation, this was one of the techniques used to add depth to flat animated characters by adding controlled shadows. Mat-inking is a process by which shadows on characters are drawn on a separate level of paper. The shadow areas are filled in with a black marker. These blackened-in drawings would then be shot under the camera on a separate pass from the backgrounds and character animation. The blackened-in areas could then be set to any desired opacity or softness by means of a digital process.

This was my big break into show business and I don’t think I’d ever been happier to pick up a marker in my life (and no, the marker fumes had nothing to do with my euphoria). As I knocked out the work, balancing speed and accuracy, I was able to finish and deliver the job on schedule. I wondered why I had been selected by Heller out of the twenty other students in the class. I knew I wasn’t the best draftsman, but I certainly projected a lot of passion for animation and the class itself. That attitude and enthusiasm had a lot to do with success was an epiphany. Employers want to work with people who are enjoyable to be around. The opportunity to work while I was still in school made me realize that being a student was my first chance to make the right impressions on potential employers (my instructors) and future collaborators (my classmates).

Instructors were looking at us as a pool of potential hires. They searched us for signs of enthusiasm and talent. This was both exciting and nerve-wracking. Wasn’t school supposed to be a sanctuary of learning, free from commercial and industry tampering? Most students want school to be a safe haven before they are forced to strike out into the big bad world. Schools deliberately blur the lines by using instructors who are working in the industry. Unsurprisingly, this brings a great deal of “the industry” into the school and into the teaching process itself—students enjoy access to and information about the industry while also being nurtured as independent, thinking, artistic filmmakers within the safe confines of a learning environment.

My Second Key Moment in School

Mark Heller continued to throw good opportunities my way during my years at SVA. One day he announced to our class that his company was bidding on some spots to promote The Flintstones’ return to prime time as reruns on cable TV. He offered the sum of $500 to any student who proposed an idea that landed the job. As a student with a full load of homework, my available time was fairly limited, but I still wanted to come up with at least one idea for Mr. Heller’s project. I used my only window of free time: my daily commute. Living on Long Island, New York, provided me with a two-hour ride in each direction. As kids, my sister and I would sometimes go to work with my dad, and we would watch him use the commute to fill every bit of paper he had with ideas and designs. He might be working out a new campaign as a creative director or maybe figuring out a design or a logo as part of a freelance job. From my dad I learned that I could use any time and any place to work out a concept or idea. What better a time or place to be creative than when you’re stuck on a bus or train?

On the subway I came up with a fun idea for The Flintstones bid: a live-action family of four is warily driving home in their station wagon. Suddenly someone in the car remembers that they’ve got to race home to catch The Flintstones in prime time! Bare cartoon feet grow underneath the car and the family drives “Flintstones feet–style” all the way home.

Now that I’m a dad, my creative time outside work hours is extremely limited, so I have focused on creating quick “dad”-inspired single-panel cartoons for my Instagram account, DavetheDadJokes.

Mark Heller liked the idea, had one of his artists draw it up, and showed it in his bid meeting. The promoters didn’t end up using Mark Heller...