Any Aspiring Animators? (Or Breaking Into Animation?)

[sarahj156]

Hello all! I'm new here to the forums and currently working on my first real comic to debut eventually.

But in the meantime I thought I'd spend some time in the community while I piece together my story and layouts!

I currently work as a Storyboard Artist at Nickelodeon on Fairly OddParents and was curious if there's any animators or aspiring animators out there? Comics is such a great medium for breaking into the business! MANY people nowadays are getting hired from their comics to work as storyboard artists. Visual storytelling skills are very much in demand right now!

I'd love to see some work from anyone trying to get into the animation industry or if there's any way I can be helpful? Questions?

Also, if anyone has ever seen "Ordinary Batman Adventures" floating around on tumblr, that is my "claim to fame."

[SandraMJ]

Well, to start off, congratulations on your job! I absolutely love animation and I've always wanted to try it, but here in Spain there's no such thing as a major devoted to it, and I've found tutorials on aren't all that helpful. Is there any program you use in particular, or any advice on how to get started?

PS. I tip my hat off to you for ordinary batman 8D

[DoodleDamage]

That's really great to hear!! I'm an aspiring animator/storyboard artist, specifically storyboarding though. I've been told storyboarding is a pretty heavy task, but my school never really got into depth about it, so I've been trying to figure it out on my own. If it's ok, I'd like to hear some tips and precautions towards storyboarding ;w;

[ashriott]

I have strongly thought about doing animation before when I had to decide what to do for university, but was discouraged from it by my parents. It didn't help that I knew very little about the animation industry and lived overseas in a country where the animation industry is practically non-existent. I wish there's some way of trialing the industry to find out whether it's something I wouldn't mind doing for the rest of my life

It's so cool that we have animation industry professionals on Tapastic xD How is it like working for Nickelodeon? I assume there are lots of long hours and hard work? But do you enjoy it and have fun? It's interesting that you say visual storytelling skills are in demand, when I'm under the impression that it's hard to get animation jobs unless you're amazeballs (which you probably are).

[abbastudios]

Thanks so much for this generous offer.

I've dropped off my portfolio quite a few times there to get storyboard and prop design work. I never seem to make the cut.

Here's my website http://abbadabba.com/

[UzukiCheverie]

Animation student here! I don't know if I'd ever want to go for a career in animation but I do have the skills for it, and if I do get an animation-related job, that would be the shit lol Right now I'm mostly devoted to comics, but I enjoy being in animation as well. I'm actually mostly looking for some kind of career in character design for video games in the future. When it comes to animating, I much prefer the animation part (and I know this might sound silly to some, but what I mean is like . . . the actual job of animating, layout design and stuff is okay, but eeeeeeh....... And although I love writing and storytelling, storyboarding has always felt tedious and boring to me u o u)

I'm actually in a Flash class right now lol

[sarahj156]

Thank you so much!

Yeah, it's kind of tough to find tutorials for storyboarding since practically every show storyboards differently. There's also two main types of storyboarding for episodes - "script driven" or "storyboard driven."

Fairly OddParents is sciprt-driven, which means I get a 15-ish page script and then I storyboard out the whole episode based on that script. Each show will vary how much leeway you have with the script and the changes to certain actions that may be described in it.

Other shows like Adventure Time or Steven Universe are storyboard-driven which means the artist usually gets a 2-3 page outline (or less) of the story idea. Then they are responsible for creating everything including the dialog. So storyboard-driven shows need excellent writers as well as good artists/storyboarders. I'd say that it's harder but also probably funner.

Practically every show is migrating towards using Toon Boom's Storyboard Pro. Fairly OddParents is an old show so we're still stuck a lil bit in the old ways. Half of the artists storyboard in Toon Boom and half of us are in Photoshop. Butch Hartman storyboards in Photoshop.

The best thing to learn storyboarding I think is to study whatever storyboards you can get your hands on. Lots of shows are putting out boards now you can find online. Some googling would be your best friend. Check out some Steven Universe boards! Those are really wonderful.

ALSO Flooby Nooby has a great post about storyboarding here - http://www.floobynooby.com/comp1.html
BUT WARNING. It's a HUGE, LONG, IMAGE HEAVY, page. So it might take a while to load depending on your internet speed/computer age. But it is super helpful! Almost forgot about it!

[sarahj156]

Yeah, there's not much "actual animation" work in the US so storyboarding really is the way to go. (It always pays more too. Animation is still considered "grunt" work.)

Storyboarding definitely is hard and usually I'm working on the weekend to meet my deadline. On my production, I get 3 weeks to completely rough out the entire 11 minute episode and then 3 weeks to clean it up and make any changes/revisions my boss has. Usually those first 3 weeks are the roughest and it can be 12 hour days to meet that first deadline. Some episodes are harder than others too, depending on how many characters/crowd shots you have to draw.

As far as tips! Just make comics! It's essentially visual storytelling skills that you're trying to hone and then can be tweaked and adapted for storyboards. Just with more drawings for storyboards. But every show is different as far as the style... so it's hard to give standards for exactly what to do.

Precautions? I don't know if I have any for sure... I'll have to think on that one!

Oh, I also mentioned this in another reply but check out Flooby Nooby's master post (warning- the page is HUGE and really LONG. So loading could be an issue!)
http://www.floobynooby.com/comp1.html

[sarahj156]

(Opps! Still learning on here! I'll start mentioning ppl's names to get more info into one post that's easier to read?)

@ashriott I won't lie, it's a tough industry. Lots of ups and downs. You never know how long your show will go on and you could easily be out of work for 3 months or 6 months. Many times you go on a "hiatus" for a month or two before you know if the company picks up another order of episodes. But sometimes that hiatus turns into no more work. So it's really constantly keeping your ear to the ground for where to work next or what production is amping up while yours is winding down. It's not fun so if job security is important to you, I would advise against going into animation.

Nickelodeon IS tons of fun. Yeah, it's some long hours sometimes but everyone is so friendly and great here. Since it's such a collaborative experience in animation, the jerks and slackers get weeded out pretty quickly. You won't work long in animation if no one likes working with you. Even if you're talented. So it's a great vibe here.

There are lots of animation opportunities right now. But also many artists and many more animation programs that are churning out animation students. But between studios trying to put out more content online and on tv it seems like there's more job openings then I've seen before. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon are all creating their own animated TV series and the major studios are also making shows strictly for the web. Nickelodeon had "Welcome to the Wayne" (I think is the name) as a completely online web series which is now being greenlit to be a TV show. So while you have to be good to make it on a really popular show like Adventure Time or Steven Universe, there are lots of opportunities on other shows that just might not have the name recognition.

@UzukiCheverie Hurray! Keep doing comics! It's a great thing to have in a portfolio for animation. I do enjoy also actually animating but storyboarding is nice because it's almost like animating but without having to do all the inbetweens. Flash is a great thing to learn! I animate almost totally in flash and there's still plenty of studios that use it. Here at Nick, "Breadwinners" actually storyboards the show in Flash. "Teen Titans GO!" also storyboards the show in Flash. If you want to animate, the best place to find a job is in Canada. Digital animation is almost all out-sourced to Canada and the hand-drawn shows are out-sourced to Korea. I do hear great things about Vancouver!

[Raven_C]

Not animator, but I think it would be awesome to be a visual development artist for animated films. I love pre-production stuff like that and I enjoy looking at "Art of" books of films. Props, backgrounds, character design, expressions, and the like are stuff that interest me.

[sarahj156]

You have some good stuff on your website! But it does feel all over the place.

I think you should consider trimming down your website to the job you want. Less is more. Your worst piece of art is going to speak the loudest. You may have several really awesome designs but as soon as a bad one pops up, it will only put doubt in the portfolio reviewers mind. It's better to show only the good pieces and have a small portfolio than have a larger portfolio with stuff not as strong.

As far as storyboarding, you just need more work. And to tell a story. Just write a story and fully board it out. On Fairly OddParents, we have a general rule of one pose/board for each period or common. So an example would be if Wanda said "Geeze, Timmy! Don't you think you've had enough soda?" That would be at least two poses/boards.

[sarahj156]

@raintowns I think by far, Visual Development jobs are the hardest to get. There's a ton of competition and not that many jobs.

The only advice I have is to really keep making work. AND get on that social media. Really, the artists that I see moving onto bigger productions are helped out more when they have a good web presence. There's so many talented artists out there, if you have some name recognition it will help. If you get a big enough following you might have studios coming to you.

Also, I hate to say it but fanart will be your best friend when trying to build that social media following. It's a good way to get people that normally wouldn't stumble on your work to see it. Don't do ALL fanart, but mix it in with your own original stuff.

Oh, one more thing. Everyone seems to be channeling Brittney Lee or Victoria Ying style of drawing girls. It looks great but stay away from that. It will only look like copies and you have to find a different/unique style.

[Raven_C]

Thanks for the advice!! I do a lot of fanart already, so here's to hoping I get something out of it. hah! Yeah, i figured vis dev is super challenging to get into. It's not a dream of mine (i just wanna be an illustrator), but nevertheless, I think it would be a great experience to be a vis dev artist. I agree with you in that I see a lot of young artists trying to be the next Brittney Lee or Victoria Ying. While I love those artists, I definitely want to separate myself from their style. I see people/students at conventions like CTNx, for example, with that type of style and in the end I just feel it's not original anymore.

[abbastudios]

Thanks for the advice.

[purrlpankras]

I'm studying animation at uni.
To be honest, I'm not sure if I will go into the animation field at the end of it, because I only chose to study it
as a challenge for myself, and it's more engaging than illustration I find.

[hades]

I wanted to go into animation for quite a few years before falling into comic work pretty much accidentally. I haven't taken direct animation courses but have taken various film study oriented courses and cinematography. As well I am going to start Grad school for a Mfa in sequential art and plan to take some animation classes as an elective to appease my younger self. XD I hope to be a storyboard artist someday in time. Glad to meet you and hope to see your work!

[UzukiCheverie]

Yeah, I know there's a studio in Vancouver that does animating for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic lol and that's just the tip of the iceberg x3 (that doesn't include Nelvana, Nick, etc.)

I'm more of a Toon Boom fan myself. Flash works but it's main functionality is for interfaces and flash interactions - for hand-drawn animation (digital or traditional), Toon Boom doesn't restrict your work flow as much (especially when it comes to those damn automatically-vectored lines that Flash has, ughhhhhh).

[sarahj156]

I should be at CTN-X this year! Keep me posted if you're coming! I'd love to meet you in person!

Same for anyone else!

[sarahj156]

Oh yeah... Toon Boom is WAY better for animating... and now that they have a monthly subscription option, its much more affordable. Which I think is the death sentence for Flash. In fact, every studio I've worked for and can think of that still uses Flash... still uses Flash CS3 because it was all downhill after that.

[UzukiCheverie]

I've got Flash CS6 and I always just want to punch it through my monitor u o u It's just . . . so phenomenally bad.

Also, I didn't know Toon Boom had a monthly subscription option, so I might try that out I'd love to be able to have it for my computer (especially cause I can't find any copies of it . . . anywhere else . . . cough cough >.>)