What Degree Do You Need to Become a 2D Animator?

One of the first questions you may ask yourself when considering a 2D animation career is whether or not you will need a degree to find a job. While many 2D Animators do have college degrees, it isn’t always a strict requirement for finding a job in the field. With sufficient training, a prospective animator without a college degree or with a degree in a different field is more than capable of finding a good job in the industry. This will require professional skills instruction, but it should be worth considering when you enter into the field that lacking a specific degree won’t be a total deal-breaker for many studios.

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. 

Do I Need a Degree to Become a 2D Animator?

Most 2D Animators enter the field with a college degree, with the most common majors being computer animation, media arts, illustration, or digital arts. While most 2D Animators will have a college degree in animation or another related field, like visual arts, it isn’t a strict requirement to get your motion graphics training through a four-year degree program. Many successful 2D Animators got their start without a college degree, and you shouldn’t be turned off from pursuing a career in animation if you didn’t major in it. Whether you have a degree in an unrelated field or no degree, there are still viable paths you can take to build your career in 2D animation.

Students without college degrees will need a significant amount of supplemental training to demonstrate that they have comparable skills to prospective candidates who did graduate from a college computer animation program. This training is most commonly acquired in a career-focused skills development program, such as the career-certificate programs offered through Noble Desktop. These accelerated programs will teach students how to work as 2D Animators and set them up for success on the job market with targeted professionalization seminars. Students without degrees will still lag in terms of things like networking opportunities, and they will need to do more work to build their portfolios and job materials. Still, they will be well-positioned to enter the job market as competitive candidates for 2D Animation jobs.

Read more about if you need a degree to become a 2D Animator. 

Common Degrees for 2D Animators

Most 2D Animators enter the field with either an art or a visual design degree. Many animators have a formal education in animation, but many will have a more generalized art degree. A few of the most common degrees held by 2D Animators include:

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Animation

Bachelor's Degree in Animation

Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Design

Bachelor’s Degree in The Fine Arts

Master’s of the Fine Arts

Associate’s Degree in Computer Animation

Tips for Starting a 2D Animator Career Without a Degree

If you want to begin a career in 2D animation but a college education isn’t in the cards, there are a few steps that you can take to improve your overall chances of success. Becoming a 2D without earning a specific college degree is possible, but it will require you to ensure that you are proactively taking steps to ensure that you can demonstrate to a hiring manager that your application is worth considering.

The first, and most important, step that you will need to take is ensuring that you have the skills training required to become a 2D Animator. You’ll need to know how to use the major 2D animation software applications, such as Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, and you’ll need to understand animation theories and techniques. Noble Desktop offers a wide range of classes to help you learn these skills. Their Motion Graphics Certificate program is especially useful for those students looking to start a new career since it covers all of the major skills you’ll need to succeed in 2D animation and dedicates time to training in the soft skills you’ll need to succeed on the job market. Courses such as this one will help students level the competitive playing field in terms of job skills so they won’t be behind their college-educated counterparts on the job market. Even though these courses are thorough and immersive, they tend to be more broadly skills focused than a college education, so students taking a certificate training program are less likely to leave with training in niche specializations unless they receive other training.

The next step involves preparing your job materials and ensuring that your candidacy is as competitive as it can possibly be. You will likely be at a disadvantage without a college degree, both for practical reasons (you are likely to have less training and few industry connections) and for less practical reasons (hiring managers will bias toward applicants with college degrees). To work against this, you need to have a collection of job materials designed to convince a hiring manager that you are equally qualified for the job as someone with a more prestigious degree. This means working very hard on your demo reel to showcase your unique artistic voice. One of the drawbacks to entering the field without a college degree is that you have less time to iterate and perfect your sample materials, meaning you’ll want to give extra attention to your demo reel and assorted other job materials. This also includes working to remove any possible issues or typos from your resume and cover letter. Even though these documents are less directly tied to the training you’ve received, it is valuable to ensure that they aren’t subtly pushing hiring managers away from your application.

Prospective animators without college degrees might want to consider doing volunteer work or freelancing to get industry experience before applying for full-time employment. This is an excellent way to build a resume line, a great way to supplement your skills training, and can be a solid place to start building your demo reel beyond what you produced in your career skills training course. Plus, one of the most advantageous aspects of attending an animation college is getting valuable networking time and building industry relationships, which you can do when volunteering or freelancing. There is a limit to how much time you want to spend working for free or working at significantly below the kind of salary you would command, but this decision largely rests on the individual who will be working in this context.

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.

Key Takeaways

• While most 2D Animators do have college degrees, usually in a field directly connected to digital animation, it is very possible to become a professional 2D Animator without attending college.
• To ensure that you are competitive on the job market, you’ll need to receive professional skills training, and you’ll need to strategize how to parlay that skills training into a successful career.
• An essential aspect of the application process is building your demo reel. If you enroll in a career skills training program, you’ll dedicate time to building a demo reel, but it won’t be as much time as it would be in a college senior seminar.
• Aspiring 2D Animators can make up for some of this lost time by volunteering or freelancing to build industry connections and deepen their demo reel but should be cautious to avoid having too much of their labor exploited.
• One way to receive the necessary skills training to become a 2D Animator without a college degree is by enrolling in a comprehensive in-person or live online motion graphics training program through Noble Desktop.