✨ Job Roles in Animation ✨
Our first task in Professional Practice was to find research jobs within the animation industry that interest us. Using the site Screenskills, I began looking into all of the different roles available to me in animation.
This site lists dozens of jobs from product management, pre and post production, to distribution management, however the first jobs that interested me were Storyboard Artist, Character Designer and Animator, two of which are already entry level positions. My favourite of the three being the role of Storyboard Artist.
To become a storyboard artist, the most important things are:
- To have strong drawing skills and to be able to adapt to multiple different art styles
- To be able to tell stories and communicate a narrative well
- To be literate in animation, understanding things like composition, framing, layout and sequential drawing
- To be able to take initiative and work well with others in your department or company
- Most importantly, to be passionate about animation and the projects you’re working on
A lot of the animators and artists I follow are storyboard artists, so it’s something I’m definitely interested in, I personally find it so cool that these are the people that come up with the blueprints for the entire animation, it’s a really important job and it seems like so much fun.
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✨ Entry Level Jobs ✨
Our next task was to find entry or junior level jobs in animation or game design, when I heard this I had the perfect one in mind as I’d come across a job listing during the summer.
An animation studio in Derry was looking for FX Animators, Animators and Storyboard Artists for a new project.
I’d been attending an animation course on weekends three years ago visitting different animation studios in NI, and during our talk with Dog Ears, they showed us some of the concepts for their new series and it was right up my alley as something I’d love to work on. If given the opportunity, I’d absolutely love to work on this new series, especially if they’re still hiring during my placement next year! The full job description can be found here.
Another job listing I found was a junior position for a 3D Animator at Idea Box in England.
I think 3D Animation is also something I’d be interested in, but I’d definitely go with the Dog Ears listing if I had to choose between the two.
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✨ Artist Research ✨
For my artist reasearch I had a few artists in mind, but I was struggling to find a showreel as most of them post their work on sites like Twitter and deviantArt. I want to include them here regardless as they’re a big inspiration for me and my work!
One of my artists is a freelancer that I’ve used as a reference for my work before. Her name is Abby Goss, her portfolio site can be found here!
Her work is extremely colourful and silly, yet she has a really excellent understanding of animation that bring her silly characters to life.
I find her skills and understanding of different programs the most interesting, as she works freelance I’m sure she has to understand how to use whatever program the client has a preference for, so having an understanding of as many as you can seems to be really important. I also know from following her social media that she also makes plush toys, prints, stickers and charms as well as taking art commissions as a way to make money on the side when in between work.
Another artist I like is Yon Lee or @Yodelui on Twitter. He’s a storyboard artist at Pixar who most recently worked on the movie Luca.
https://twitter.com/yodelui/status/1423075596855169031
I really love his posts like these that are storyboards and animatics that he’s worked on straight from Luca, it helps me see the kind of work animation companies like Pixar are looking for, which I can then use as a reference for my own work and portfolio!
https://twitter.com/yodelui/status/1423750513967828995
On Yon Lee’s Instagram, he also held a Q+A, and this answer was really insightful for me when creating my own CV and cover letter, I tried to cover these points when writing up my first drafts.
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✨ CV, Cover Letter and Showreel ✨
For my job choice I decided to focus entirely on the Dog Ears animator job listing, as it’s a position I genuinely really want to work in next year during placement and I’m planning on reaching out to them about it next term. I went to their website and read through the job listing and took note of their job responsibilites and requirements to construct my CV and Cover Letter around.
The biggest issue I saw was that they required extensive knowledge of ToonBoom, which I’ve never worked with before. I’m hoping that during the next term I get a chance to learn the program before my placement year in the hopes that I can work with Dog Ears.
Other than that, I also noticed that they seemed to be using 2d rigs for this show, seen in one of the job responsibilities below.
While I’ve animated with a rig before, I don’t have any examples of it currently available to me, however the job listing also stated the show will have lots of action, adventure, humour and a cinematic visual style, so I’m hoping that if I show I enjoy character driven and creating fun and upbeat animations, I’ll more than make up for it and showcase that I’m capable for the role.
From here I drafted up my CV, I looked up examples online of other animation CV’s and wrote up roughly in a word document all the points I wanted to touch on when I designed up the finished thing. I wanted to make sure that I included as many examples of my actual animation work under experiences, so that my lack of knowledge in ToonBoom wouldn’t hinder me. I also made sure to state that I’m a positive person and proactive when working in a team, as the job requirement stated.
While I was here typing things up, I also drafted my cover letter, which elaborated on points I made in my CV and also where I tried to express that I was passionate about the job listing. After my One-on-One with Alec, I was advised to tailor my CV more specifically to the job listing, which I amended by addressing it to the managing director Fionnuala Deane, and going into more detail about the project itself to show I keep up with the company and I’m interested in their work. I also kept it under 300 words as that was a requirement on the actual job listing!
In my cover letter, I also included a few lines about the time I visited their studio back in 2019 with NI Screen Academy. During this visit, they told us about a secret project they were planning on making in the next few years that really sparked my interest. They showed us some of their concept work and it was almost exactly the type of show I wanted to work on, so I’m really hopeful this job listing has something to do with that project and that hopefully due to my participation with the NI Screen animation course I might get a leg up on other job applicants.
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From here, I sketched up what I wanted my CV to look like, I used the examples provided by the tutors and a few of my own to help me get an idea for what kind of design I wanted. These two CVs from Melvin Kwan and Binyang Liu really inspired me when I was conceptualising mine, and I carried elements from both into my final outcome. I particularly really love the bright colours of each, the bubble design in Melvin Kwan’s and the skill bars in Binyang Liu’s.
This was the sketch for my CV design, I made it in Clip Studio Paint as opposed to word or other illustration programs as I’m most familiar with CSP and it’s tools, I knew exactly how to go about constructing this.
I tried to go for a round yet geometric sort of look, including all those bubble shapes to box in text. I also used Adobe Colour to come up with a colour palette, I was going for a space-y blue and purple look.
I worked with the grid lines on to help me keep everything evenly spaced and clean, using the shape tools to create all the textboxes.
I was a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to fit the text into the spaces I’d made up as I tend to over and underestimate the space I need for text in almost everything, however I was trusting my gut as I continued to work on my CV. I was really liking how it was looking once I edited the colours to the palette I chose!
Here’s my finished CV! excluding space under contact for the hyperlinks to my artstation and showreel. I imported the png into Adobe Acrobat to do this, and saved everything as a pdf!
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After the CV, I began constructing my showreel. During class, we were told one of the most important things is to have a good song with a good beat to help time your animations to, so I set off looking for some music I could use.
My first thought was to use video game music, as I wanted something a bit more unique than something I could quickly download from a royalty free music site, however, I read that game soundtracks can be a bit of a gray area in terms of free use in videos. Although it’d probably be fine, I wasn’t keen on taking that chance. As I mulled over what to do, I remembered there was a youtube channel called Qumu who made remixes of video game music that I really liked.
I found their website and navigated to their FAQ to see if they allowed their music to be used in videos, and luckily they did!
I felt that using a remix would be safer than the actual soundtrack ripped from a game, as well as the remix having a stronger beat to edit my showreel to.
From here I gathered up as much animation as I could, I decided to use some unfinished projects of my own as well as I was looking for as many 2D animation pieces as I could get, and even though they aren’t finished I still really enjoyed them, I was hoping these clips would help showcase my storyboarding skills, and also show Dog Ears that I already create fun goofy character driven animations like they’re looking for.
To start and end my showreel, I made these title and end cards using bits and pieces from my CV, that I think turned out really fun!
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You can watch my finished showreel here!