Animation careers

Animation is a booming industry with a wide variety of jobs available.

Industry overview

Animators can work on full-length animation movies, create television commercials, make DVDs, make games for Internet, mobile, PC or consoles (like PlayStation or XBox), work in the advertising industry or as web designers. The e-learning industry also uses animators and so do fields like medicine, engineering and architecture.

The entertainment industry including movies, TV programmes and Special Effects (VFX) for movies or TV is a major employer.

A typical animated film requires 700 to 800 animators. Of the 30,000 animation studios around the world, 70 percent have a turnover of US $1 million.

India, South Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Japan and China are seeing a deluge of outsourced animation work from across the globe. Indian companies are creating a number of animated films and cartoons for US and European studios.

Animation is a global industry with a large turnover (estimated at $59 billion in 2006) and a growing demand; this is causing a shortage of skilled people.

Career options

There is a wide variety of jobs available in the animation industry, some of which are
as follows:

• Designer
• Audio & video specialist
• Visualiser
• Graphic designer Graphic Designing
  A graphic designer is responsible for the layout and presentation of different types of media (such as a poster, a package or a website)
• Multimedia author
• Web designer Web designer
  A web designer creates web pages. Web designers use graphic design skills as also tools like Flash, HTML, CSS, etc.
• Content developer
• Modeler Modeler
  Modelers facilitate the filming of puppets or any form of 3D models. The puppets are positioned and filmed before being moved slightly and filmed again. This gives the impression that the models are moving. A modeler should have a solid understanding of anatomy, form and volume.
• Texture artist Texture artist
  A texture artist applies a surface to the 3D modeled character, object or environment. Coordinates are laid out to give the model an applicable surface for colour and texture.
• Rigging artist Rigging artist
  Texture artist A rigging artist takes the modeled, textured 3D character or object and sets it up with a skeletal system or joints (if required). Without this step, the 3D model would not be able to animate, talk or move fluidly and correctly.
• 2D animator 2D animator
  2D animation involves the creation of a high volume of separate drawings that define a sequence. This technique is widely used in creating characters for animations and cartoon programmes.
• Lighting artist Lighting artist
  Lighting an animation requires the artist to create variations of shade, colour intensity and shadows that would have been produced if it had been a real-life scene with one or more light source.
• Rendering artist Rendering artist
  Rendering artists take all the data in a scene such as models, textures, animation, lighting, etc and output the correct combination in the form of individual frames of animation.
• 3D animator 3D animator
  The 3D animator takes the sculpted (or modeled), textured and rigged 3D model and breathes life into it. This is done by putting in order the key frames such that they appear to be in motion.
• Compositing artist Compositing artist
  Compositing consists of layering individual frames of animation on top of one another to create final images. These images are then strung together to create complete shots or mini animated movies.
• Editor Editor
  An editor assembles various visual and audio components of the film into a coherent and effective whole
• Storyboard artist Storyboard artist
  A storyboard artist creates a series of panels that contains a visual interpretation of the screenplay – much like a comic book
• Character animator Character animator
  A character animator brings characters to life and generally has knowledge of traditional animation, stop-motion animation as well as claymation
• Effects artist Effects artists
  Effects artists create a believable world for the action to take place in.
• In-between artist In-between artist
  Tweening (short for in-betweening) consists of drawings that are inserted between the ‘key’ or important drawings to make the first image flow smoothly into the next one.
• Image editor
• Multimedia developer
• Digital post-production artist
• Special effects artist Special effects artist
  Special effects artists integrate live-action footage with Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) or other elements (such as model work)
• Programmer