Luis 2016-07-25 17:10:15

I've always taken the more conservative route, maybe im old fashioned, or just more of a calculated move rather than leap and trust your gut type, so my advice would be to look into an internship, or some sort of work-study, i've heard titmouse both in nyc and vancouver seem to have good nurturing environments for young people trying to get into the animation business.

I think freelance is really tough when youre so green, its easy for people to take advantage of your lack of professional world experience and ultimately i think i hear more stories of people becoming disillusioned and frusterated with the creative business not being what they envisioned.

Good luck!

Plebs 2016-07-25 18:29:44

Consider yourself to be both lucky and unlucky. The majority of the people will never find out what drives them in life, so they settle for the general fillers like everybody else. We all need to live through 80 years and do something with it. That's why you have people 40 years of age, doing a job for over 15 years and they still don't know what they want in life. Well you do and that's the first step.

Step two is just as hard. You need to figure out how to earn a living with what you want. Now any artistic profession is basically a handicap by default when it comes to making money. That's never going to be easy, so your peers weren't wrong there.

I say try different things. Try your hand at a studio, who knows maybe you'll like it. If not you'll have some experience, something on your résumé and move to something different. It's all about your mindset and positive thinking. I know that sounds cliché, but it really is. You can't predict the odds, but you can learn to prepare yourself.

FGIJonC 2016-07-26 23:39:24

For me, someone who's been doing creative stuff for over ten years, I can't imagine me doing anything else. I'll probably doing it. I love it and it brings me joy. I've never made money at it, which is something I would like to eventually do, just so I can do it all the time. I just wanna entertain people. But, I know part of the reason I haven't made money at it where I can do it as my "job". Its because I didn't work hard enough when younger. We spoke at Pico Day and we may have talked about that, I don't remember at the moment. Now I'm at the point where I wanna just work on my creative stuff but I need to work a normal job just to attempt to pay my bills and combine that with my poor time management skills, I'm in a perpetual loop of "I wanna do this" instead of "I'm going to do this." don't be like me dude. Work your ass off more than you already do, follow your desire and your love. You don't necessarily have to do the "go big or go home" route, it works for some, some it doesn't, but as long as you keep chasing your dream, and never give in to what society says you *should* do, I find nothing wrong with it at all.

I may be broke, but at least I can say I've never stopped chasing my dream while lots of people I know just gave up and decided to do what society said to do and you know what I say to that? NOPE.

jessejayjones 2016-07-27 09:25:03

Hey dude. As a person who makes a living every day as an animator I wanted to weigh in on this. First of all, I love your work, and I think you'll have no problem finding work. One thing that helped me was living in a city where there are animation and game studios to work at, but half of my career has been doing freelance work at home. Over the years, my goals, motivations, and priorities have all changed. Don't expect life to follow any neat, laid out path. You can plan for the direction, but the waves will knock you around to different areas you might not've expected. Also, a majority of the work I've gotten has been through friends, and when I hear of work, I return the favor. Being part of the animation community and making friends has been one of the most valuable parts of me staying employed.

Learn as much as you can. The nice thing about being an animator is you pick up so many different skills, you can work on a variety of different jobs. A lot of the work I've gotten was because I can wear many different hats like After Effects Compositor, Flash and Toon Boom Artist, and 3D Animator. Sure, specialization is important and will get you higher paying, less competitive work, but when work is lean it's good to have those other skills. :)

If you want dude, I could give you more advice on what has helped me stay employed as an animator, just send me a PM!