How do you guys survive?

pradeep · How do you guys survive?

Hi
I am from a small group of 2d animators in India who have stubbernly resisted venturing to 3d so far. Its because I am doing my own stuff - and don't work for any outsourcing companies here.

Most of my friends are doing pure labour job in these companies.

For me and my friends it is a real struggle to get small advertisement jobs and television jobs through which we survive.

What about you people?

Scuzzbopper

Pradeep-

For myself, I'm not doing 2D Animation commercially. I have a full-time job working in admissions and teaching at a school that offers animation training. My own animation work is done at home after-hours, for my own personal short film. I do get the occasion to freelance sometimes as well.

There's a very good book by David Levy called 'Your Career in Animation' which I highly recommend you pick up. It has some sections on running your own animation studio and survival tips.

Best of luck!

DavidN

Welcome to the forum, Pradeep .

I can only speak to the situation in North America because that's what I know. Not sure how it is in your part of the world other than what you mention in your post above.

MarkBorok

I'm actually not sure how I've managed to survive. I was just asking myself that very question when I saw this post. Mostly I've been scraping the bottom of the barrel, working on low budget shows or interactive things, with here and there a few illustrations. Not having any other marketable skills certainly doesn't help.

MichaelS

I've had my own studio for the past 27 years doing 2D animation. At the beginning it was hard getting myself the few clients I could find. Then I found the ones I had were good ones and they kept coming back. As a result of that I was able to do about 30 half hour shows (all written, boarded, animated and colored in my own studio). I was able to get that work by doing it inexpensively and creatively. If I had been competing with big studios - cost wise - I wouldn't get the job.

So then the bottom fell out of 2D animation unless you want to do Flash. (And I don't. I don't think of it as animation just movement.) I still have a couple of the same clients who come back, and it's a struggle. In some ways it's always been a struggle. If I didn't desperately love what I do, I would have quit years ago.

I didn't. I started developing my own feature and soon enough I had a script and a lot of artwork. Then I met a producer through another project, and now I may have a VERY LOW BUDGET feature to do.

The short answer to your question is that things happen. But you also have to make them happen. If no one wants your work, you have to do more of it for yourself, and you have to keep at it keep at it keep at it. If you can only do films for yourself, do them. Eventually, if they're good, there's a good chance others will want to watch your films.

Surviving financially is very hard, but you have to do it if you want it. You have to make things happen. Just keep doing it and showing it, and believe in yourself.

MarkBorok

idragosani

idragosani

MarkBorok

idragosani

MarkBorok

idragosani

MarkBorok

idragosani

MarkBorok

I've looked at TV Paint, but didn't buy it because 1) Mirage was offered at a discount to anyone who owned any graphics software whatsoever and 2) when I looked at the TV Paint web site at first I couldn't figure out how to order it from the U.S. By the time I figured that out, I had already ordered Mirage.

I've been a big user of Moho and actually got to make a short cartoon for the Cartoon Network with it. I really hate what e-frontier is doing with it, though, trying to market it as "anime" software and changing the way the demo works by having it time out after 30 days. It has a lot of cool features, like the way onion skinning works, that would be more useful in a traditional animation program.

I have to say, I love software not only as a tool for animation, but as a work of art in its own right. A well-designed or extremely clever piece of software is as exciting to me as a well-animated cartoon.

idragosani

Cerberust

My whole demo reel is traditional flash animation, and I'm just hoping I can get my foot in the door, even if I'm doing symbol animation, which is what seems to be happening in America, cheap and quick. I'll be moving to LA early August to test my meddle and see if I can score a starting gig.

I'd kill to work traditional though, and intend to keep my own side projects going, to keep me happy.

Nancy Beiman · AE7

I just completed my first paperless animated film entirely in Photoshop and After Effects 7.
AE allows you to get an illustrative quality to your animation that Flash does not have--and its 'parenting' button allows you to attach limbs to the paper puppet, which can be put into and out of 3D as you wish. I got some graphic animation that looked like pastels. I vastly prefer AE to Flash.

As for what I do for a living now, I teach (mainly because I wanted to get out of LA and out of the overheated deadlines common to all animated films nowadays.) I also do a lot of illustration work and am about to get into 3 dimensional greeting card and product design (I did a lot of the latter for Disney's and Jim Henson's in the past and will now use my own characters instead.)

Animation has suffered a sea change that isn't going away any time soon.The real reason CGI became the medium of choice with animation executives was that it was possible to keep the characters on model all the time, so it could be farmed out to much cheaper overseas studios and/or turned out by beginning animators who worked for less than seasoned pros. It takes a lot more effort to keep a hand drawn film looking consistent.

Animators in any medium should have a larger skills set so they can rely on something else when the industry contracts. When I freelanced in the eighties I spent one entire year doing book illustration for a well known author and doing product design for Disney...without a single frame of animation for the entire year.

I just thank Heaven that I studied with some great teachers who showed me how to do something OTHER than merely animating.

slowtiger

One mournful aspect of Flash is the uniform "design" of most Flash generated output. But this can be overcome by any talented artist. The other one, which I think is worse, is that many people believe in "Flash makes animation far cheaper", so bugets are cut even more.

A friend of mine produced some short animation segments for german children's TV. The responsible exec didn't care about how it should look like, but insisted of it being done in Flash. The stories could have been done traditionally on paper as fast as well, and with a much better look - but no, it had to be Flash.

This thinking is not restricted to Flash but to every animation software. A project I work on pays 380 $ for finished animation, done with pre-rigged characters in AnimeStudio - per minute. I wouldn't mind if the style would really fit the software, but unfortunately they expect it to move like (cheap) full cel animation.

Nancy Beiman · I wouldn't spit for that sum.

Hello Slowtiger, if you do the math, you would find that you are making less than someone waiting on tables or doing entry level data processing. $380.00 per minute? That's the sort of budget my students' films cost, and they aren't working to the sort of deadlines you are.
That sum is just disgraceful.

idragosani

How many hours of work does it take you to do the Anime Studio Pro animation for a minute of screen time? I imagine if the models are already rigged for you, generating a minute of work is more profitable for you than if you were getting $380 for traditional hand-drawn...

Of course, for productions at the quality of what Grey Kid has done, most of the work is in the pre-viz and modelling and the actual animation is the easy part.

MarkBorok

How do you guys survive?

AE7

I wouldn't spit for that sum.