How to Become a Freelance 2D Animator in 2024

A possible alternative career path for 2D Animators is finding work as a freelancer. Freelance animators will be able to avoid some of the grind associated with entry-level animation work and they are given greater control over the kinds of projects that they work on. However, they will need to do more work to find clients and maintain relationships within the industry. According to the BLS, 63% of animation and special effects artists work in some capacity as self-employed contract workers.

What is a 2D Animator?

2D Animators are creative professionals who plan, design, and build two-dimensional animated assets in everything from traditional animation and video games to digital advertising and user interfaces. As long as a digital asset is made to move, it is likely that a 2D Animator was involved in the process. 2D Animators may also be involved in the development, design, planning, or storyboarding phases of a given project, depending on their level of expertise and the kind of project in question. On the whole, 2D animation is a versatile skill used in various industries and fields, making it an ideal career path for anyone interested in a creative career.

In today’s world, unless a project consciously uses the unique affordances of hand-drawn animation, almost all 2D animation work is computer-assisted. This shift means most animators have begun using computer design applications such as Adobe After Effects or Premiere Pro to add the illusion of motion to a set of static images. 2D Animators may also use tools like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to construct certain kinds of specific animated assets, such as moving digital logos or online GIFs. This emphasis on digitally aided animation tools means that your training as a 2D Animator will cover a lot of technical training.

Read more about what a 2D Animator does. 

What is 2D Animation Freelancing Like?

Freelance 2D animation work mostly differs from studio work in terms of the logistics of receiving assignments. Whereas a studio animator will be given regular assignments by a supervisor, freelancers need to cultivate an audience, negotiate with potential clients, and finalize business arrangements with commissioners before working on an assignment, at which point they will be tasked with completing the assignment on time and to the specifications of the person contracting their services.

This structure means that working alongside clients and other commissioners will be a key part of the daily work of a freelance 2D Animator. In contrast, a studio animator won’t have to worry about this part of the process until they are much further along in their career paths. This will be the most important point difference for most animators looking to work in the field of 2D animation and choosing between a studio job and a freelance job.

The other major distinction is that freelance 2D Animators need to handle the business side of their freelance animation work in a way that studio animators don’t. As a freelancer, you’ll need to manage ingoing and outgoing payments and invoices, keep track of your financial records for legal and tax purposes, and potentially find other freelance employees to manage the logistics of running a profitable freelance animation firm.

Is 2D Animation Freelancing Right for Me?

Choosing whether or not you want to try your hand at freelancing will depend on how much you enjoy the relative autonomy and creative control of freelancing to the added responsibilities that you pick up to freelance. As a freelancer, you are given far more creative freedom to work on projects you want and you tend to accrue a clientele that has sought out your particular creative voice for your project. This means that you are likely to spend less time working on a random assignment that your firm or studio needs to finish quickly.

The drawback to freelance work is that the effort put into entering the field will be significantly higher than the effort required to get an entry-level position at a studio. You’ll need to build an initial clientele, start getting a stable of regular clients, and aggressively network to ensure you have enough work to get by. Plus, you’ll need to handle all of the administrative aspects of your animation work, including keeping financial records, collecting payments, and handling taxable income. This requires patience and outward personability to become successful, particularly if you have aspirations of moving beyond individual freelance work.

Steps to Become a Freelance 2D Animator

Once you have decided to set off on the path to becoming a 2D Animator, there are a few different steps you may want to take to ensure you are successful in the long term. You’ll need to ensure that you have the proper training, build your job materials correctly, and position yourself to be as competitive on the job market as possible. While the actual path will vary greatly for everyone, there are a few key steps you will need to take to ensure you have the best chance of becoming a successful professional 2D Animator. 

Decide if 2D Animation is Right for You

An essential first step is deciding whether or not you actually want to embark on a career in 2D animation or whether you want to keep your interest in the field as a hobby. 2D animation can be a grueling job that requires a great deal from animators and artists. Like all creative jobs, it will be very deadline-oriented and occasionally demanding as you must respond to different tasks and assignments to ensure the project is completed on time. This isn’t to discourage people from seeking a job in 2D animation, a wonderfully diverse and vibrant industry, but you’ll want to enter your training preparation for the work in front of you.

One way to lay this groundwork is to take advantage of the free training resources and seminars available through Noble Desktop. These seminars, such as the Getting Started in Motion Graphics course, offer students a wide overview of the field of 2D and 3D animation to help them decide whether or not that is the career path they want to pursue. Noble also provides free seminars like Intro to After Effects that will teach you the barebone fundamentals of using industry-standard motion graphics tools like Adobe After Effects. These courses are a great way to help you become comfortable and familiar with important design tools before you enroll in a professional training program emphasizing that tool.

This is also a great time to begin building your knowledge of animation theory and history. Being a successful 2D Animator will require that you engage with animation as a unique art form, and the form has been popular for over 100 years, giving it plenty of time to develop its own language and history. You won’t need to be an expert in 1930s animation to get a job, but knowing broad trends and understanding shifts in popular styles and techniques can help shape your creative voice and better understand how animators make informed choices when working on projects. This won’t even require a ton of reading, just watch or consume animated projects in the medium that you aspire to work in.

Get Trained in 2D Animation

The next step is one of the most straightforward: you’ll need actually to learn 2D animation skills. While most animators get this training as part of a four-year degree program, there are viable alternatives for students who want to accelerate their learning. Noble Desktop offers comprehensive animation training in their Motion Graphics Certificate program, which aims to take students from relative novices (some knowledge of Illustrator and Photoshop is required) to professional 2D Animators in only a few months of study. This course will provide students with immersive, hands-on training in tools like Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Adobe Cinema 4D, and the projects that students build in this course will be ideally suited for their design portfolio once they enter the market, since the hands-on instruction mirrors the kinds of projects that you can expect to work on in a professional capacity.

These courses are also excellent places to prepare for the job market because they are career-focused and aim to tailor their pedagogy to students aiming to start a new job in the field of 2D animation. They also include professional development training, including one-on-one career mentorship sessions and industry-focused workshops. In these seminars and meetings, students can receive tailored feedback on their job materials, ask questions about the pitfalls they may encounter on the job market, and build connections with a cohort of like-minded students and professionals. These training seminars offer invaluable assistance for students looking to shift their careers, and they complement the professional skills development associated with the rest of the program.

Search for Jobs

Once you are confident in your 2D animation skills training, you will want to start searching for jobs and compiling your materials. Assuming you haven’t built particularly deep industry connections, the most common way to search for a job is by using a job posting aggregation tool like Glassdoor.com, Indeed.com, or LinkedIn. These platforms let users browse hundreds of job openings and apply directly. This makes them ideal places to begin a job search, particularly for new 2D Animators searching for entry-level positions.

These sites can be difficult to navigate for new users, since they are not always the most intuitive in their organization and construction. It is easy enough for job seekers to punch 2D Animator in the search bar and this is an essential first step, but it shouldn’t be the last. You’ll want to try to search other job titles related to 2D animation to get a broader feel for the kinds of jobs available. Then, you’ll want to do a quick survey of all of the job openings posted and create a list of the ones you want to apply for. A good set of applications will be tailored to the job opening, so it isn’t likely you can apply to every job. In addition, it is worth making a quick check of things like minimum expected requirements or skills to avoid wasting time on jobs you don’t qualify for (it is very rare that throwing a hail mary is a good use of your time and energy). Finally, while it may not seem important, look at the job posting date. Many of these job search websites are not great about taking down positions that have been filled or that are rolling job postings, so if a job was posted seven months ago, it is likely to have been filled. Even a job that was posted six weeks ago may be too old, since these websites vastly increase the candidate pool, you want to be early on in the search process as opposed to coming in after a thousand other people have applied.

Collect Your Job Materials

Most 2D Animator job openings will require the same basic job materials for consideration. These materials include a resume, a cover letter, and a portfolio of sample animations (sometimes called a demo reel). These materials will be the first thing a prospective employer sees and will serve as the basis for whether or not your application gets more than a cursory glance. In the long term, the demo reel is the most important aspect of your application, but it also takes the most time for a prospective employer to sift through and analyze it. Therefore, the resume and the cover letter are necessary for both getting the hiring manager to look at your job materials with interest and guiding them through examining your demo reel. This is easily the most challenging part of the job application process, and it is almost assured that you will need help and guidance on this step.

These materials should also be crafted for the specific job that you will be applying for. While it is good to have a generic cover letter and demo reel on hand to build upon, you still want to tailor your materials to the job in question. This will require additional work and research on your part, but it will greatly increase your chance of success in the long term. It will also help prospective employers set your resume apart from more generic applications since it demonstrates your attentiveness to their position.

Prepare for an Interview

Once you’ve submitted your job applications, you must first prepare to engage with hiring managers face-to-face in a job interview. This part of the process is among the last ones you’ll need to prepare for, and it isn’t recommended that you put too much effort into this until you know that you’ll be getting an interview. It is, however, an important part of the late stages of the application process, so it helps to be aware of what you’ll need to do to succeed at an interview. Once you’ve reached this stage, it is recommended that you practice with mock interview questions and you prepare yourself for multiple different kinds of interviews. Once you are prepared for this, the job application process is out of your hands, and you can only wait for your preparation to bear fruit.

Learn Business Skills

An essential part of being a successful freelance 2D Animator is understanding that you are essentially a one-person business and that you need to treat your freelance work like a small business. This means that you will need to both handle the logistical aspects of working with clients and negotiating rates for your work, which comes with the added challenge of figuring out what the correct rate to charge for your work happens to be. Freelancing will tend to be very networking heavy, since successful freelancers will need to be a stable of clients, and you may need to learn the marketing skills required to treat your own services like a product that needs to be sold.

Another, less obvious aspect of working as a freelancer is that you’ll need at least a bit of understanding of business law to avoid complex challenges that may arise. For example, you’ll need to understand how to properly file tax reports and document your income and business expenses to pay your fair share of taxes without overpaying. You’ll also need to know how to go through the proper channels to collect commissions and payments for your work. This can be fairly minor for someone who is working as a freelance 2D Animator part-time, but if it is your primary income, it is crucial that you understand how to do things as legitimately as possible.

Learn the Skills to Become a 2D Animator at Noble Desktop

Once you’ve committed to learning the skills necessary to become a 2D Animator, Noble Desktop is available to make that dream a reality through professional skills instruction. Noble offers a wide array of 2D animation classes, available in person or online, and all of these classes are taught by expert instructors with years of on-the-job experience. This structure means that regardless of how your course is delivered, you’ll receive real-time instruction and be able to ask questions and receive personalized feedback on your work. Similarly, no matter whether you take the course in person or online, you’ll benefit from small class sizes and all of the professionalization support options, including one-on-one career mentoring in the career-certificate programs. Finally, every Noble class comes with the option for a free retake within one year, meaning that you’ll have the chance to build your portfolio and get even more hands-on experience in preparation for entering the job market.

Students interested in a career change may consider enrolling in Noble’s Motion Graphics Certificate program. This class aims to teach students how to use tools like Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro to create evocative 2D and 3D animated assets for many practical projects. In this class, students will be guided through the process of using After Effects to animate text, photos, and videos, and they will learn how to modify these animations in subtle but perceptible ways slightly. Students will also learn how to create animated images using layered Photoshop and Illustrator files (this course does not include instruction in either of these tools, they are prerequisites for taking the course). Finally, students will learn how to use Premiere Pro to edit their animated assets into video files. All this work will culminate in a series of professionalization seminars, including a portfolio-building workshop and a one-on-one mentorship session, intended to prepare students for a career as a 2D or 3D Animator.

Students who aren’t ready to make a significant career shift but do want to learn 2D animation skills may want to consider one of Noble’s many motion graphics bootcamps. These classes include the Adobe After Effects Bootcamp, which provides students with guided instruction in the use of After Effects for creating animated digital assets and the Adobe Premiere Pro Bootcamp, which teaches students how to use that program to compile their animated assets into a completed project. These courses are excellent starting points for new animators looking to learn the trade. However, they don’t provide students with any of the professionalization services offered through Noble’s career certificate programs.

Finally, students who aren’t sure that they want to start learning 2D animation but are intrigued by the possibility should consult some of Noble’s free training resources to learn more. Noble’s Learn 2D Animation page, as well as their Learn After Effects and Learn Premiere Pro page compiles a weird range of articles, free seminars and resources that students can use to help them on their 2D Animation career path. Noble also provides prospective 2D Animators with a career information hub to help them decide if a career change is right for them.