Thoughts.

I've never thought of News post as like entries, but it seems like the best format for dumping your thoughts and such, can't stand Facebook and Twitter is too limited.

Once you reach a checkpoint in life like gradutating from high school, you have to look back on your experiences and reflect, then start planning for the future. I don't think school can help you do either of those, it's mandatory, repetitive, and isn't all that flexible for an individual student. Now i'm at a point where i've got to plan my path which is a really high stakes game that you have to make the rules for. It's even more difficult when you're unsure of your goals; I know that I want to do animation for a living, but I don't know where I want it to take me, what will I be doing with that, is it a studio job, freelance or a game, idk. I'm not even sure which I prefer or which are available, it's also really easy to be a dreamer and beleive everything will work out. I decided I wanted to do animation as a job and put all my focus into that a while back, but I know other people my age that don't have faith in careers in art, so I wonder if maybe i'm not being realistic or if i've just been building myself up about this and paying too much attention to the success stories and glorifying the lives of online artists. The direction is animation but the path isn't clear and neither is the endgoal, where the hell is this gonna bring me? Maybe I should just make it up as I go along, but that could just leave me stagnant and unmotivated. It might be too early to be thinking about this, but it's unsettling to not know what you'll be doing in a week, a month, or a year, or what you even want to be doing by then.

I'm usually against posts like these since I don't like how they come off, but it's up to you to interpret this as whatever you like.

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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!

IvanAlmighty 2016-07-25 17:10:15

Thanks Luis, I don't like the idea of diving in head first and just leaving it up to chance either, so I'll definitely look into that Titmouse internship, better to be moving in some direction rather than not doing anything at all. I'm in the midst of a freelance commission and I'm figuring out what it takes to actually do it, later than I wish I had.

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.

IvanAlmighty 2016-07-25 18:29:44

Yeah, it's difficult and isn't a very high profit job but there's nothing I'd rather do in life and I want to give it a shot. I'll try different paths until I can figure out which works best, you never truly know what suits you until you've done it. Hopefully I can narrow it down to something fulfilling that can provide a creative outlet and some sort of stability.

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.

IvanAlmighty 2016-07-26 23:39:24

I'm determined to keep trying and push myself to make this work, if I can get myself into the mindset of selling my services and being more aggressive with business opportunities I could begin the first steps to making this a career. I want to do art regardless of wether I'm making money doing it, money is a side affect of me creating. But I'd like to aim for a career in animation because I can't imagine myself being as happy in any other job position. I'm still figuring out my personal desires and what kind of projects I'd want to do on my own, so right now the focus is applying my skills to get in the workforce.

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!

IvanAlmighty 2016-07-27 09:25:03

Yeah, I've never once heard two people repeating the same route and getting into the industry/workforce, it's always some unpredictable path that just happens. I'll just have to try things that come my way and keep an ear out for what's available, and exploring new mediums as you said. That's also cool that you can use skills you learn along the way to find work, and you may even fall in love with another skill. I'd love to hear advice from someone experiences like you and how you got to where you are.

Thoughts.

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