Does anyone do ANIMATION as their career?

So I just wanted to reach out and get some opinions on a possible degree change in my studies.... I'm currently studying "Web Design and New Media" at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I'm in my third semester and I'm really starting to lose confidence in the program.... I feel like I'm being put into these "design" classes and told to make ads, but not really being prepared with the appropriate knowledge before I'm put into these design classes....

To sum it up, I'm pursuing my second bachelors degree (my first was in Advertising) Here at the school they have a SECOND BACHELORS program, which is basically just cutting away all the BS classes (history, math, english, etc) and I just focus on the CORE classes (photoshop, flash, etc) But the ONLY design course I had was a concept class that just touched vaguely on some design concepts.... I'm now in a design class to make print media. The teacher informs us that we should be familiar with lots of typefaces (fonts) and colors, and ad layouts by now..... Like we're seniors or something.
In the curriculum I'm not even scheduled to have typography until my LAST semester....... i dunno, I just feel like this is a "RUSHED" way of cramming a TON of different aspects of Media into your skull in two years. (Photography, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Logic Pro, Print Media, Magazine layouts, After Effects, Web Layout, Web Design) Now their philosophy is to make the student "more marketable" and more likely to get hired since they have a "broader knowledge" of all these different medias....

So I'm scared to say, that I don't know if this was a good move for me. I moved all the way from Florida for this school, and I haven't been enjoying living in the city. And now I'm feeling like I may be interested in Animation.... But I'm not sure if it's a good fit for me. So I wanted to ask:

-Anyone here in Computer Animation? (The school has a Character 3D animation program, but I've heard it SUPER SUPER competitive, and EVERYONE wants to do it)

-How's the market for it? (could you make a decent living off it?) I've heard you basically have to be THE BEST to make a living off it....

I'm just wanting some opinions on Animation, and opinions on my schooling situation too..... Are all private art schools like this?

I'm currently finishing my BA in 3D Animation, I can tell you though, it's very competitive, hard to get into. And even more so now with the recession, lots of companies are having problems.

You have to be pretty good at what you do. Because really, if you don't produce something great then it's unusable. You can get paid pretty well though and the type of environment is great, better than being in some type of business job.

You really have to enjoy it, which also goes along with spending a lot of free time learning new things.

Most people who get into it aren't going to be able to get a job anywhere simply because they haven't spent enough time learning on their own. There's a lot to learn, and the programs receive updates about every year (sometimes less) so you have to keep studying. Many people don't realize what is needed, there is absolutely no school that can teach you what you need to know, you have to spend a lot of time outside of class learning by yourself. But luckily there's plenty of training material.

Main thing is--while it's nice to be well-rounded as far as learning, it's best to be really good at one particular thing (like animating, modeling, texturing) and fairly good at everything else than to not have any specialty at all.

As for getting jobs, your demo reel is the most important thing, they probably don't even look at your name before looking at your demo reel, so you have to have a good one.

What's a better choice, especially right now is to go into video game design. Basically study the same things because they apply to video games as well. But video games aren't as hard to get into, there's great benefits (you usually stay with a company longer, and you get profit sharing) and it's not as tough to work in. And best thing with that is along with the regular stuff like learning Maya/3ds Max (3ds Max is used most for video games) it's also good to learn how to use the editor in the Unreal 3 engine, since many companies use it and they really like it if you know how to do it.


But I can tell you, it's very intensive, for me I enjoy it a lot so I don't feel like it's bad, but I put many hours each week working on stuff and for someone who's not that interested in it it would be hell.

I can get a trucker pretty animated when I put his ass out of service. Does that count?

honestly, what isnt competitive these days? i think even McDonalds is competitive....

nash said:

honestly, what isnt competitive these days? i think even McDonalds is competitive....

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It's interesting though about the competitive part. During the Xbox panel they talked about jobs in gaming and including the animators. They said they are always on the lookout for people. The only problem is they require the best and it's hard to find what they are looking for. They said the jobs are out there. You just have to work hard and be great at what you do.

Darthviper, thanks for the amazing feedback!!!!

so where did you study? It's funny hear you say all this. I've actually been in touch with a 3D modeler for Valve games, and he said EXACTLY (and I mean EXACTLY) everything you said. He really emphasized having a strong artistic background, although he said some animators out there can't even draw! But he did emphasize that you have to e REALLY good at ONE thing, so you can get picked up somewhere....

What IM nervous about is just not being that great after spending a TON of money on school. I remember taking a drawing class my first semester, and it was pretty time consuming but rather rewarding (and felt it was most helpful for my artistic sense)....

I'm just already about $25k into studies and now I'm taking a step back from the New Media program I'm in and wondering "maybe I wanna do animation?"........ Since the Media thing is kinda losing my attention in certain areas (print mainly) and because I don't feel like I'm getting fully prepared....

BadMoon said:

It's interesting though about the competitive part. During the Xbox panel they talked about jobs in gaming and including the animators. They said they are always on the lookout for people. The only problem is they require the best and it's hard to find what they are looking for. They said the jobs are out there. You just have to work hard and be great at what you do.

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You pretty much sumed it up.

I think P1xar works in this field as well.

Ktjn said:

You pretty much sumed it up.

I think P1xar works in this field as well.

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Yeah Cliffy B was saying that they would love to hire people. It's just that they have a very hard time finding good people. The rest of the panel argreed and the one guy said that every game company almost is hiring. However, their expectations are very high.

ChrisCJ99 said:

Darthviper, thanks for the amazing feedback!!!!

so where did you study? It's funny hear you say all this. I've actually been in touch with a 3D modeler for Valve games, and he said EXACTLY (and I mean EXACTLY) everything you said. He really emphasized having a strong artistic background, although he said some animators out there can't even draw! But he did emphasize that you have to e REALLY good at ONE thing, so you can get picked up somewhere....

What IM nervous about is just not being that great after spending a TON of money on school. I remember taking a drawing class my first semester, and it was pretty time consuming but rather rewarding (and felt it was most helpful for my artistic sense)....

I'm just already about $25k into studies and now I'm taking a step back from the New Media program I'm in and wondering "maybe I wanna do animation?"........ Since the Media thing is kinda losing my attention in certain areas (print mainly) and because I don't feel like I'm getting fully prepared....

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I'm at John Brown University in Arkansas--it's the closest university that offers a 4 year degree in animation. Many schools offer it but only as 2 years.

And really, there's only a handful of really good animation schools--Digipen, Dave School, and USC are some.

But really, going to school is really just getting the degree rather than learning. You can't learn enough from there anyway, but jobs want you to have a degree. Plus it can help you start to network.

Best thing is to get some tutorial DVD's and learn on your own. Stuff from CG-Academy, The Gnomon Workshop, Digital Tutors are really great, especially since the tutorials are done by industry professionals. There's also CG Society online workshops, where you get to learn directly from the professionals. And those are only $500, I finished one over the summer in Video Game Character Design and it was pretty good, the teacher worked on the most recent Tomb Raider game (he made the Lara Croft model) and is currently working on The Old Republic Star Wars MMO.

WOW! More great info..... I was told to check out Digipen and Animationmentor.com. Digipen seems more of a video game industry school, and I didn't really wanna focus too much on that..... But I think I'll poke around and see if I can take a class here and there and see if its a good fit for me.....

I looked at Animationmentor.com and it looks great! But each "session" costs about $3000

darthviper107 summed it well. it's a very rewarding field once you're in but it takes a lot of tremendous hard work. this is just casual knowledge from talking to some of the animators that i bump into on occasion. i know of one who started with a background in design/advertising that eventually helped land her position to where she is today. one animator who used to work for us moved on to her ultimate passion. video games!

i have to say. it drives me nuts when ppl ask me if i'm an animator!

Love your avatar p1x... I really hope they have a part 2. My kids love the incredibles!!

ChrisCJ99 said:

WOW! More great info..... I was told to check out Digipen and Animationmentor.com. Digipen seems more of a video game industry school, and I didn't really wanna focus too much on that..... But I think I'll poke around and see if I can take a class here and there and see if its a good fit for me.....

I looked at Animationmentor.com and it looks great! But each "session" costs about $3000

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back when i was attending college in the beginning i had looked into Digipen. i was seriously looking into a video game career but the high costs scared me also. i wasn't too hot on assembly language programming either.

praxitas said:

Love your avatar p1x... I really hope they have a part 2. My kids love the incredibles!!

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thanks prax! i hope so too. it's my favorite movie of them all.

P1X4R said:

i have to say. it drives me nuts when ppl ask me if i'm an animator!

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So then what DO you do?

That's another thing, as far as drawing skills are concerned--they always recommend practicing your drawing skills, but while it can help a lot, it's not really necessary. Really the only thing you need drawing for is for making textures, other than that it's not going to help.

And again, you can learn a lot on your own without school, most of what I've learned is just by trying to do something--looking through the program help files and doing searches through forums (mainly CGTalk) to find answers.

darthviper107 said:

That's another thing, as far as drawing skills are concerned--they always recommend practicing your drawing skills, but while it can help a lot, it's not really necessary. Really the only thing you need drawing for is for making textures, other than that it's not going to help.

And again, you can learn a lot on your own without school, most of what I've learned is just by trying to do something--looking through the program help files and doing searches through forums (mainly CGTalk) to find answers.

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Hm. Interesting point..... Sp if illustration skills aren't a total necessity in animation, then WHAT is it that makes it so hard to do? Curious

I was just always under the impression that you had to make insanely good art in order to be considered anywhere. But I'm sure it's obviously more than that....

ChrisCJ99 said:

So then what DO you do?

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unix systems administrator aka digital janitor.

ChrisCJ99 said:

Hm. Interesting point..... Sp if illustration skills aren't a total necessity in animation, then WHAT is it that makes it so hard to do? Curious

I was just always under the impression that you had to make insanely good art in order to be considered anywhere. But I'm sure it's obviously more than that....

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You have to do really well to get jobs, since if you don't do a good job on something they can't use it at all.

What makes it hard is that there's a lot of tools to learn, and just learning what they are and what they do isn't everything, you have to know how to use the tools in combinations to get the result you want. It's also about understanding the basis of how things work. Modeling requires you to see how to create proper topology and to create the amount of detail required for what's needed--also the level of accuracy. Animation needs understanding of physics and how things move, texturing needs to know what things look like, how materials work, and drawing. That's another thing--for Zbrush artists, drawing will actually help. But the advantage to 3D is that it's so easy to change something that isn't correct a lot of drawing skills are wasted.

darthviper107 said:

You have to do really well to get jobs, since if you don't do a good job on something they can't use it at all.

What makes it hard is that there's a lot of tools to learn, and just learning what they are and what they do isn't everything, you have to know how to use the tools in combinations to get the result you want. It's also about understanding the basis of how things work. Modeling requires you to see how to create proper topology and to create the amount of detail required for what's needed--also the level of accuracy. Animation needs understanding of physics and how things move, texturing needs to know what things look like, how materials work, and drawing. That's another thing--for Zbrush artists, drawing will actually help. But the advantage to 3D is that it's so easy to change something that isn't correct a lot of drawing skills are wasted.

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Wow. Seems pretty intricate. I also heard that Animation is pretty involved with math?

So if I may ask, have you had any offers or have anything lined up for when you graduate? Seems like you got some cool stuff!