Commercial Industry is my main area of interest: music videos; advertising; short form social media content and trailers for films / series / games. I love games as a medium too, and feel that if there was the space for me as a 2D artist or animator in a studio such as The Chinese Room and Annapurna I would be happy here too.

• Commercial Industry
• Games Industry
• Independent filmmaker / animator
• Collectives
• Artist Filmmaker
• Theatre / Fashion / Museum /
• Documentary
• Feature Films / Series

Screen skills has a very conclusive list of roles in the animation industry with descriptions, pathways into roles and more that I have found super useful when researching into where I feel I want to fit once I graduate.

https://www.screenskills.com/job-profiles/browse/animation/

I’ve taken some time to reflect on each role and whether I resonate with it, and have highlighted the ones I aim to focus my applications on once having left university. I have also struck-through roles that I feel are not for me, and never say never! but I won’t be focusing my energy there.

What I will say, is that when it comes to junior roles I am pretty much open to everything, and will definitely be keeping an eye out for animation-adjacent roles too. My ideal would be to work in a structured 9-5 / 10-6 studio environment, but I understand that most clean up and assistant animation work is completed freelance. This could definitely influence my decisions when applying for roles, and anything that has that structure will be top of my list for applying.

While at uni I have also been working with the student union on administration and curation type work that I have really enjoyed, and could see myself bringing those skills forward into my full time working life. I’ve been enjoying having a variety of different things to work on, so working freelance on animation projects alongside some other kind of part time ‘more traditional’ role would work really well for me.

ENTRY LEVEL ROLES

• Runner
• Clean Up / Inbetweening / Assistant Animation
• Production Assistant / Trainee
• Background design / painting
• Junior Concept
• Junior Compositing

HIGHER LEVEL ROLES

• Director
• Producer
• Roughs
• Tie Down
• Colouring
• Compositing
• Storyboarding
• Concept
• Backgrounds
• Character Design
• Set Design

A side note: I had so much fun looking through “Art of Animation” pages for some BTS on what concept and character designers for iconic shows and movies worked on. Coming from an illustration background, concept and character will always be close to my heart.

MENTORING

Speaking with my mentor Krisi Zhupali has helped me demystify clean up and junior animation roles. Her path into industry pretty much aligns with my ambitions, some concept, some animation roles, work on music videos, shows and movies. She’s been super helpful with advice for my animation skills and empowering me and I’m super grateful for her, as I definitely felt I was nowhere near good enough for industry yet. Krisi mentioned that by far she learnt the most through industry once she started working, and her skill increased exponentially in these kinds of roles compared to university.