How I Chose to Pursue Animation as a Career

Now that I’ve been working in animation for a few years, I sometimes forget that it took a lot of trial and error to find what I really wanted to do, and how many times I fell flat on my face and ate dirt. I want to share my story of winded paths and road blocks, so whether you are thinking about into venturing into art yourself, or still aren’t sure what it is you want to pursue, I hope you will find some comfort knowing that you aren’t alone in thinking you have no idea what you’re doing. If you totally have your life together and just want to be entertained by how dumb I was, that’s cool too but just know that I hate you. So let’s start from the beginning!

Childhood Years 

Like many artists, I’ve loved drawing ever since I could hold a pencil. I used to staple pieces of paper together to make a book, and then draw on the inside to tell a story. The earlier “books” were filled with gibberish writing, since it was before I even learned the alphabet.

In elementary school, I discovered anime and drew a ton of art in that style. I made friends who were interested in the same things, and we would often make drawings for each other, exchange pieces, and talk about our favourite shows. As much as we loved drawing, we decided that we were not going to be professional artists, and keep art on the side as a hobby.

High School

In middle school, I went to a different school than my friends, and suddenly found myself to be very lonely, and didn’t have anyone to share my art with. It was a very new and strange environment for me, and I suddenly closed up and didn’t want to share that side of me anymore. I did take art class as a subject, where I got to explore different styles and mediums. I really loved it, I think it was my favourite class. However, by the time I got into high school, I decided that art was not a viable career path, and decided not to take art class anymore. My parents had put a lot of pressure on me to get good grades, so that became my priority. I stopped drawing in my spare time, and by the time I got to university, I wasn’t drawing at all anymore.

University

In my first year of university, I was enrolled in a program called “Liberal Studies” at NYU, which was basically a 2-year core program that made you learn writing, cultural studies and history. After that, I decided I was going to choose political sciences as my concentration, so that I could graduate and then apply to law school and be a lawyer just like my dad. He was, and still is, the coolest person I know, so I don’t really blame myself for wanting that since the age of 5 or so.

Before the first year was over, I decided the program wasn’t creative enough for me, so I decided to look into other concentrations. I really enjoyed the Short Film class at my high school, and thought that maybe film school could be a good choice. I mean, I knew how to green screen shots in Final Cut Pro so I was totally prepared for this, right? NYU had a film program and I could do an internal transfer. I figured, why not? I had nothing to lose. If they rejected me then I would just “forget” to tell my parents I even applied.

Film School

I submitted a portfolio that consisted of some photographs and an essay about myself, and a few weeks later, I got the e-mail that I had been accepted, and thus began my journey into filmmaking. When I told my parents, they were really supportive, but they did warn me that it would be extremely difficult. Being the wide-eyed, 19-year-old that I was, I thought “Yeah yeah… I’ll be fine.” My parents thought that since it was a big name school, I was, of course, going to become a big name director. They compared me to Ang Lee, who is an alumni of the Masters program. So no biggie, I was totally going to be the “next Ang Lee.” (My parents also know a total of two directors, Ang Lee and James Cameron, so I guess between those two it made more sense to compare me to Ang Lee because at least he went to my school.)

Film school was not what I expected it to be. Though to be fair, my expectation was that it would be like my high school film class. What I loved about it was how hands-on it was: we were given a camera, a tripod, some 16mm film and were sent out into the wilderness* to make something we could show on screen. *NYC, it was wild.

We shot our own films and did everything from writing our own story, storyboarding it, casting the actors, filming it, cutting it and then screening it in front of our class for all to throw rotten tomatoes at. It really taught me to have thick skin.

Wanting to Quit

I really loved some classes, and then some I didn’t. It was a real rollercoaster of trying to figure out what I wanted to say, fearing the criticism, loving the feeling of completing a short film, and hating being on set, dragging heavy equipment around, so on and so forth. After 3 semesters, I decided my skin was too thin for film, and I wanted to give social sciences a try again.

My parents stepped in and told me that I was going to graduate film school, no matter what. They told me I can study something else after graduation if I wanted to, but that I got myself into this and I was going to see it through. I still had a year and a half left, and I definitely couldn’t continue without some kind of change, so I decided to take a closer look at what other classes were offered as part of the film and tv program… and guess what I found? Intro to Animation.

Finding my Interest Again

The image above was my first assignment for Intro to Animation. As soon as I did it I was pretty certain I wanted to take as many animation classes as I could. I learned 2D and 3D animation, character design, storyboarding, life drawing and got to make my own short animated films. I was really happy to be drawing again. By the time I graduated, I was by no means a professional artist, and had a lot more to work on, but I was able to land my first job in animation as a cleanup artist within weeks of graduating. I’ll get more into my professional experience, as well as my “going-back-to-school-after-working” experience in future posts!

Are you currently working as an artist? Did you always know you wanted to do art? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear your story!