a career, not a job in animation

This article talks about an animator who has worked in the industry for 36 years. He talks about the same ambition that we've all had before we start out as an animator, we want to work at Disney or Dreamworks. Some big company and we expect to be doing that the rest of our career. The author explains its not that easy to achieve and there are things that could constantly get in your way. He is basically saying that animation isn't a job because you have to find or keeping creating work yourself. Which is what he's done for his whole life, he's worked on several different projects and has had different roles in animation production. Like helping design Sebastian on the little mermaid or being a supervising animator for cogsworth on beauty and the beast & Aladdin. In between these projects he'd work as a freelance. He says that we should never take a job for granted and each of those jobs are part of career and help shape it.

This article isn't to scare away future animators and people who want to go into the industry, like myself, its to tell us what its going to be like as a career. Work isn't always going to come to you, you may have to find it yourself. Which is why you have to be really passionate about this kind of thing. Most of the events he talked about in this article happened 10 or 20 years ago, the industry is probably a lot different now and there may be more demand for jobs from animators too. I'm not sure what it's really like now. But despite the job outlook, he is right about animation being a career. Rather than a job.