3D Animator Job Outlook

Although it’s a highly specialized field in which a small number of people work (there are scarcely more than 73,000 animators and special effects artists in the country’s civilian workforce of over 168 million), the job forecast for 3D animators is far from being all gloom and doom. Indeed, healthy and steady growth is predicted for the field, and salaries are good. You may have to work at getting your foot in the door, and your tenure in individual jobs may not be overly long, but, if you’re committed to it, you can certainly make a successful career in the field.

What is a 3D Animator?

A 3D animator is an illusionist who creates lifeless drawings that are seemingly imbued, not only with life, but also with the ability to inhabit a world with three-dimensional depth. Over the years, animators have striven to give 2D animation a sense of depth. One of the most successful experiments in this field was the multiplane camera invented by Ub Iwerks for Disney. As early as 1942, it was used to conjure up the gorgeous opening sequence of Bambi, but the 3D look to which moviegoers have become accustomed today is of far newer vintage. It really only began with Pixar’s experiments with computer animation that produced the first 3D animated feature, Toy Story.

Making images that created the illusion of a third dimension dates back to the 19th century, when stereoscopic viewers made it possible to view static images that appeared to possess depth. The Viewmaster of the 1960s was a later iteration of the stereoscopic viewer; it’s enjoying a bit of a renaissance as a curiosity in the 21st century. This stereoscopic technology was taken up by motion pictures as early as 1922, when The Power of Love was released and necessitated the wearing of red and green anaglyph glasses to create the illusion of depth. The anaglyph glasses have since been replaced by the clear polarized lenses you’re given to view 3D movies in cinemas and on theme park rides today.

Filmmakers have been playing around with 3D technology for over a century, and it’s caught on a few times (as in the 1950s), only to fade from popularity and be dismissed as a gimmick. There can be little question that the development of 3D animation has led the 21st century to embrace the latest 3D techniques, not only with the likes of Toy Story and Pixar’s other groundbreaking films, but also with live-action films such as Avatar or the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland, the visual fantasy of which was greatly increased by the use of 3D technology.

Although there’s been a drop off in live-action 3D movies since the 2010s, the technology is still going strong in the world of animation. Indeed, 3D animation has supplanted 2D techniques, which are now reserved mostly for lower budget television productions. 3D animation also lies at the core of video game design.

Into this world steps the 3D animator, or, rather, an entire army of 3D animators, as the process of creating this type of animation on the computer is painstaking in the extreme, far more so than the already painstaking process of hand-drawn 2D animation. The state of the art is such that 3D animators today can create photorealistic images that no longer look like drawings. However, a phenomenon known as the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis maintains that humans find animation that looks too close to real life to be unnerving or creepy. Thus the verisimilitude of which 3D images are capable is generally tempered using devices such as bigger-than-natural eyes so as not to disturb the viewer.

Because of the intricate nature of the work—you need at least 24 images per second to give 3D animation its illusion of life—3D animators concentrate on one aspect and one aspect alone of their work. To choose one example, animating human hair (not only Rapunzel’s in Tangled) is a discipline unto itself. Among the other roles taken by 3D animators are:

• Rigger (those who create the rigging, something like the skeleton of a character to be animated),
• Modeler (those who put the flesh, as it were, on the rigging),
• Key frame animator (analogous to the animators who did the principal drawings in the pencil-and-paper days),
• Background artist,
• Clothing animator (texture artist),
• Lighting artist,
• Clean-up artist,
• Digital ink and paint artist,
• Rendering artist, and
• Compositing artist.

That list isn’t exhaustive. There are many other roles and specialties, which explains why the credits for Disney movies go on forever. (Those for Toy Story 3 clock in at over six minutes.) 3D animation is still an experimental field, with many discoveries still to be made. To choose one example, no one knows how AI will affect the animation industry. There will probably always be a need for human animators to give soul to their creations, but artificial intelligence is sure to play a role in the animation process, the rule book for which remains under construction.

What is the Job Outlook for Graphic Design?

In a word: encouraging. That’s not to say that the animation sector has quite the same extremely sunny outlook as some other tech fields, but 3D animation isn’t going the way of the dodo the way that some other creative jobs seem poised to do. Stable job growth is predicted for animators and special effects artists of all ilks, and the salary numbers are definitely attractive.

Job Outlook

The government’s source for all job-related numbers is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which divides the nation’s employed into a large number of categories and sub-categories. Animators occupy a small corner of this enormous crazy quilt, and are all grouped by the BLS into a single category designated for Special Effects Artists and Animators. There are thus no BLS figures specific to 3D animators alone, but the numbers for the entire profession are such as to make one come away feeling bullish about entering the field. For the years 2023 to 2033, the BLS forecasts job growth in the overall animation sector at 4%, which is about the same as the average expected job growth for the decade.

Future Growth

The BLS report goes on to predict that there will be some 3600 new jobs available over the years 2023 to 2033. It further states that some 6700 annual openings will result in the sector, mostly from people pivoting to another line of work or retiring. The growth projected is attributable to an ongoing consumer demand for 3D movies and increasingly realistic video games. You should also bear in mind that animation is one of the many professions that are, if not exactly threatened, certainly due to be impacted by the increasingly large role AI will play. The BLS report concludes that AI will assume some of the more mundane duties currently taken by human animators, and may thus reduce the number of openings in the field.

Industries

Nearly 60% of the people working in the special effects and animators sector are self-employed, that is to say, freelancers. Recall that this number covers all animators, and not just 3D animators, many of whom fall under the 16% of animators employed in the motion picture industry. Other industries that employ significant quantities of animators and special effects artists are publishing, broadcasting and content providers, software publishers, and computer systems designers. The number of freelancers does mean that a lot of animators have a considerable degree of freedom; it also means that you’re likely to be looking for a new job every year.

Salary

The median salary for special effects artists and animators falls just shy of $100,000 a year. The number is even bigger when it comes to those employed in the motion picture industry: their median salary is $109,000. At the other end of the spectrum, the computer systems design sector pays its animators a median salary of $81,000 per annum. These numbers are medians, which are among the most deceptive of statistics. A better indicator of the kinds of wages that you can anticipate if you get hired as an animator is the range into which 80% of the salaries paid falls: that $100,000 median comes with salaries that go from $57,000 to $169,000, with outliers of 10% at either end. You’re thus not by any means going to be making $100,000 fresh out of school, but, if your career takes off, you can realistically expect to work your way up to a salary of those proportions.

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.