3D Animator Career Path

Although creative careers are as varied as the creative people who work in them, most animation careers pass through the same basic way stations. The following concentrates mostly on the experiences animators employed with larger studios will experience. A section for freelancers follows in turn.

Getting Started

Odds are your desire to become an animator started at an early age, probably with a combined passion for watching animation and making art of your own. That probably means that you showed some artistic aptitude as a child, enjoyed drawing and painting, and probably channeled some of your artistic energies into drawing subjects drawn from the animation you liked to watch. (A lot of animators today took their first steps into the field by sketching characters from Japanese anime.) You may also have gotten your appetite whetted for 3D animation by playing video games and then trying to invent some of your own.

If you showed this early interest in animation, as you reached high school age, you may have started to show some initial serious interest in the subject. You may have checked out books on the subject from the library or dabbled in the near-surfeit of tutorials available on YouTube. If you were particularly enterprising, you may even have sought out people who were making a living as animators, and interviewed them about their professional experiences. You could also have taken a class or two in animation geared toward high school students, as animation is a calling that usually manifests itself early in life.

Do I Need a Degree to Become a 3D Animator?

There can be no question that the received wisdom is that a bachelor’s degree in animation or a closely related discipline is an essential stepping stone to a career as a 3D animator. Four years is a good amount of time to learn the tools of the trade and work up an impressive showreel. A four-year degree is also what most HR officers expect when they glance fleetingly at your resume.

That said, college isn’t necessarily for everyone for reasons that range from the personal to the pecuniary. A four-year degree costs a fortune today, and getting one at all costs may not be the stepping stone to an animation career you think it’s going to be. It’s far from being a magic pathway with guaranteed employment at the other end. People have made it into the animation game with associate’s degrees and even just a high school diploma: indeed, according to one set of figures from Zippia, only 72% of employed 3D animators have four-year degrees.

If you don’t have that bachelor’s degree, your chances of getting hired will be considerably improved by attending a certificate program at a school that specializes in equipping people with the kinds of tech skills they need to make it on the job market. These programs last months rather than the years it takes to get a college degree, and are priced far more reasonably, too. They focus entirely on the in-demand skill sets that any employed 3D animator needs to have and have you properly prepared to pound the proverbial pavement when you’re done with your program. This may not be the most traditional route to an animation career, but it has proven itself to be a very real possibility, especially if you have a terrific demo reel that will make the contents of your resume all but moot.

Internships

Once you’ve completed your studies (however you choose to conduct them), you’re going to come face-to-face with the experience paradox: the seemingly insoluble problem that you need experience to get hired for a job, but you need to get hired for a job to get experience. One of the ways around that irritating neologism is to secure an internship and gain experience in the animation workplace that way.

Internships come both paid and unpaid, and, obviously, the paid ones are preferable, although you shouldn’t expect to get rich from the stipend that goes with your internship. Still, some money is better than none, which means that the competition for paid internships is going to be even stiffer than that for unpaid ones. Still, there are lots of possibilities for people willing to work for nothing, and, while you’ll basically be giving your services away, you’ll also be finishing your education on the job, so there is some element of tit-for-tat. Arguably, the most valuable aspect of an internship is that it will give you material you can use for your showreel, and real-life projects will always look better than the ones you whipped up to fit a recipe in school. Unless you’re exceptionally good at hustling and can line up several small freelance jobs to gain your first real-world experience, your career path is likely to lead through at least one internship.

Entry-Level 3D Animator Jobs

Among the job titles available to those seeking entry-level 3D animator jobs are:

• Junior Animator,
• Assistant Animator,
• Crowd Animator,
• Rotomation Artist,
• Matchmove Artist,
• Layout Artist,
• Previs,
• Studio Runner, and the seemingly unavoidable
• Production Assistant.

Of these, Junior Animator may be the most coveted—and the hardest to land. Assistant Animator is actually a term leftover from 2D animation when it was a fancier term for in-betweener. Now that the computer handles the in-betweening for 3D animation, the label is often viewed as a means of paying people less for doing more advanced work. Crowd Animators, Rotomation Artists, Matchmove Artists, and Layout Artists do just what their job titles say they do. Previs is a means of previewing a shot, sequence or scene before actual production begins, and it often falls to those starting their careers. As for Studio Runners and Production Assistants, those positions may be inescapable, either as internships or as first jobs with production companies. You’re going to be going out on coffee runs more frequently than you like, and probably doing very little that’s even close to animation, but, as it’s in the name of laying the foundations for a career, you should get ready to make friends with the neighborhood barista.

Do note that the common denominator to all these jobs is that they involve little or no actual creation of animation. That comes later in your career, after you’ve laid the groundwork with gruntwork. Remember that the field is highly competitive, and that landing a PA job is in itself something of a coup. If an animation career is what you want, you won’t be able to afford to turn your nose up at relatively menial work at the start of your professional life.

Mid-Level 3D Animator Jobs

As your career progresses, you’ll be able to create animation:

Junior Animator, despite the title, is actually not an entry-level job, although it’s where you get to get your hands dirty doing what you set out to do. Animator II or 3D Generalist are mid-level titles you’re likely to encounter, along with Lead 3D Character Artist, Senior VFX Artist and CAD Designer. With something like five years’ experience under your belt, you’ll be supervising junior animators in your mid-level capacity. Other mid-level titles encountered in film production and game design are Character Artist, Texturing Artist, 3D Modeler, and, more specifically to game creation, Environment Artist. These are jobs that allow a degree of creative freedom to those who have them, and are considerably more interesting than the entry-level positions outlined above. 

Senior 3D Animator Jobs

Senior animators have titles like, for starters, Senior Animator. They can also be Lead Animators and be responsible for creating keyframes and, in effect, playing the role of the character they’re modeling, rigging and bringing to life. Animation Supervisor is an even more senior title, on top of which comes Animation Director, the person whose name the Director’s Guild of America insists be attached to the very end of the opening credits or the very opening of the end credits, which is the more usual position for the director’s credit in an animated movie. Beyond that, the sky’s the limit if you’re willing to go into a more managerial position and do less actual animation. The titles here can include Creative Director and, ultimately, Chief Creative Officer. Producer and Executive Producer credits can come with these titles. There’s not much further than that to go if you want to remain on the creative side of things, although titles such as Consigliere and Supreme Ruler of Earth are always available for those who are interested in procuring them.

Another Path: Freelancing

The majority of animators don’t work within corporate structures like those just described. That’s because they prefer to do so, and because that’s how most of the profession is structured. Freelancers enjoy an unparalleled degree of freedom to accept the jobs they want, assuming their bank accounts allow them such luxury. There are times as a freelancer when you’re glad to get whatever kind of assignment you can get, as with the freedom to work when and how you want comes the financial uncertainty of not getting one of those dependable paychecks with taxes and your 401(k) contribution taken out. Freelancers also have to run their own one-person businesses and track down clients, all the while doing actual animation work.

The path to freelancing can begin as early as college, if you want to use university as a means of making contacts, or just after you conclude your education, if you think you can hustle up work either in place of, or in addition to, an internship. You will probably have to take on a junior position for a couple of years before you can branch out on your own, after which, if you have the financial stomach for it, you can captain your own ship for the rest of your working life. You’ll be working either on independent assignments, or be brought in to work on larger projects and do the kind of animation you’d be doing if you were on staff with the studio that hires you. Freelancing has a great deal to recommend it, as 59% of animators and special effects artists can’t be wrong. And, if you do hang out your own shingle, you can think up as grand a title for yourself as you like.

How Do I Find A 3D Animator Job?

There’s no sense in applying too much sugar-coating to the pill: breaking into 3D animation isn’t easy. The number of available jobs isn’t enormous, and there is plenty of competition for them, especially the ones with big-name studios such as Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, Pixar, or DreamWorks. The job-search process for an animator is, on one level, the same as the process for any other job: trawl the job search platforms like Indeed for positions in your field, send out resumes, and, way more than nine times out of ten, get not even so much as a thanks but no thanks email in return. Indeed can be overwhelmingly discouraging to use, but, because of the number of jobs (and scams) it commands, it can’t be ignored. You can improve your chances of getting some kind of response by tailoring your resume and cover letter very carefully to match the requirements in the Indeed job description. That’s at least going to give you a chance, but don’t count on it for much more than that.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to Indeed that you can pursue. There are smaller job posting sites that cater to creative artists in general, and some that cater to animators in particular. You may need to do some research to find the ones best suited to your needs, but they are out there. One such platform is Dribbble (that’s with three Bs), which allows you to showcase your portfolio in addition to hosting a job board. A further portfolio site that allows you to put your creativity on view is Adobe’s Behance, the premium version of which is included with several different subscriptions to the Adobe Creative Cloud.

There are also freelance sites that look like a good way of picking up a gig here and a gig there, including Fiverr and Upwork. These have a whole world of drawbacks, not the least of which is that they’re very hard to break into if you haven’t done a job for them as yet. (Yes, that’s an impasse.) They also skim their cut off of what the freelancer is paid, and sometimes the cut can be 20% or more. Don’t expect too much from freelancing sites, although, especially if you lowball your estimate, you may manage to get struck by lightning after all.

The best advice you can get as an animator trying to break into the field is to work on your showreel. The quality of your work is what’s ultimately going to get you hired, so research what should go into a demo reel (hint: only about a minute of your very, very best work) and compose your digital calling card accordingly. The other thing you need to do is network network network. That means checking to see if your landlady’s cousin’s first wife’s son-in-law knows anyone in the animation game. It also means trying to connect with people on LinkedIn, where you ought to have a profile anyway, and where you may come into contact with people who’ll view your demo reel and offer guidance, if not a job. Speaking of jobs, LinkedIn does have its own listings, although animation is not its strong suit.

This may all sound extremely pessimistic, but the point is that you’re going to have to do a lot of metaphoric pavement-pounding to find your first animation job. Still, if your showreel is good and you have talent, you’re likely to secure employment eventually.

Learn the Skills to Become a 3D Animator at Noble Desktop

If you lack the time, funds or inclination to pursue a four-year degree in animation, you can always consider a certificate program that will teach you what you need to know to break into the 3D animator job market. One such program is Noble Desktop’s Motion Graphics Certificate. It will teach you how to use Adobe After Effects as a means of creating motion graphics along with Cinema 4D Lite, which, despite the name, is a 3D modeling program that will allow you to create sophisticated 3D animations.

Alternatively, Noble offers a longer Video Editing & Motion Graphics Certificate program that adds modules on Adobe Premiere Pro and Audition to the motion graphics curriculum. The course will make you a competent video editor as well as an animator. The extra skills may well pay off, especially if you end up working on a small team that needs someone who can edit.

These Noble Desktop classes come complete with sessions with expert mentors who’ve actually worked as animators; these sessions can be used for any purpose you choose, including preparing your showreel. Both certificate programs include time to work on it as well. You’ll receive a free retake option (valid for up to one year) and access to recordings of every classroom session you attend. Finally, payment plans are available, some at 0% interest.