What's it like working in an animation studio? Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Apoke Merch: https://apokeanimation.com/ Twitter: http://bit.ly/1SkvsFi Discord: https://discord.gg/HGjVydKCeT What's it like working in an animation studio? I worked at 3 of ‘em and I worked on some shows like Sonic Prime and Lego Ninjago, so I’ve probably got enough qualifications to answer that. Working at animation studios, they almost always hire you contract to contract. So you join for a set start and end date. Afterwards they might renew your contract, if they don’t you have to hunt down your next job. The career stability is pretty rocky.cwqcwcqcwqccwcq On your first week, they usually give you 1 - 5 days of training, so you can get comfortable with the rigs, read the show bible, and animate a practice shot. There was one show I joined, and the first 2 weeks were training which was really awesome. Some studios, day one they’re like welcome aboard, here are your shots, get to animating. In studios each phase is done by a separate department, so the 3D modeling is done by the modeling department, rigging team builds the rigs, then animation team does animation, lighting team does, you guessed it lighting. I often get asked, how do you animate the shows? Does each animator make one episode? Or do you all animate their own version of one episode, and then they pick the best version? Does every animator animate one character? That’s not quite how things work. So one animator doesn’t animate one episode because it would take too long. Each animator does not animate their own version of the episode, and then the director picks their favourite because it’d be horribly inefficient. You’d be producing hours of content that just gets thrown in the trash. Each animator does not animate one character for the entire episode. Characters often interact with each other, so like, how would that even work? Being an animator means you’re an actor who plays every character. It’s different from being a live action actor where actors typically just play 1 role. In live action, the actor can add subtle character specific quirks, like how Steve Harrington always spins his bat in Stranger Things. The episode is broken down into shots, every time the camera cuts, that’s a new shot. Shot shot shot shot shot shot shot shot Each animator is assigned a batch of shots for that episode. When you work in TV animation, you gotta be really fast. Usually animating at least a shot a day. I’ve worked on shows where the quota can be 150 frames per day, so each day you need to animate over 6 seconds. In my experience an episode takes about 5 weeks to animate, with a team of around 6 or 7 animators. There’s usually 1 anim director, 1 lead, 1-2 seniors, 1-2 mids, and 1 junior The biggest misconception about working in studios is the amount of creativity you get. Animators are not writers. Animators aren’t the character designers. We mostly just follow the storyboards. I see people online saying things like “The animators decided to make the box red” Most of the time big decisions are made by the writers, director, designers, or storyboard artists. As an animator your job isn’t to write the story, or even make big decisions about what the characters look like. Your job is to make the characters and objects move, and help bring the director’s vision to life. - @apokeanimation