Industry Talks and UAL Networking Event Notes

I forgot to include my notes on industry and networking in my last post: throughout the term, we had various practitioners talk about what its like to work in the industry as well as UAL alumni who discussed how they got into working into animation and the time it took to get in.

In the alumni networking event over Zoom, we were broken into small breakout groups of 3 with each alumni to ask questions. More often than not, we asked about how long after graduating did the alumni find their first job, and how difficult it was getting your work out there in front of the studios. In our first session, we had Paul (my mentor) and Samira. Paul took a slow lead into the industry, about 3 years before he landed his first studio job after graduation. He’s since gone on to work as a character designer in the industry, working with Blinkink on Deadend Paranormal Park. Samira took a detour by working in the student union for a year and a half, a flexible first job. Once she finished their, she got into Nexus studios on the production side, hiring talent and looking at reels for who should be hired or not. Sometimes she’d notice people’s reels who were really good, but not suited for their project, and would write a note on a spreadsheet as a way of keeping an eye out if another project came up. She eventually got jealous of everyone she was hiring, and wanted to take on the role of animator herself. She managed to land a junior animator role on Hey Duggee and has since gone between small commercial and TV work with gaps. It’s not a constant steady stream, expect that unless you’re in a supervisory role, it’ll be short runs with gaps in between.

We moved onto chatting with Duane Uba, a 2D animator. He mentioned the struggle to get work immediately after graduating (this seems to be a recurring theme in the stories we were told). He mentioned how he wished he’d created an Instagram account for his work earlier, as he took a year afterwards before creating one. Eventually his gaps between projects started get shorter and more consistent. A rather good piece of advice he gave us was to not be too precious with our work. Naturally, as we get better, we cringe at our older work, but in the industry, you’ll be sharing work with supervisors who will be keeping an eye on your progress, so there’s no real point in holding your work back at this stage. As such, it can be stressful compared to what we’ve experienced over our MA course, but it’s important to enjoy animation and keep the passion we hold. He also mentioned to take breaks. Of course we want to make a living from this and stay busy, but a break helps us to recharge and briefly work on our own stuff in between commercial work. Value every break.

We then heard from Nicky, a crew animator as well as an independent animator. She defined “crew” as being part of a team, in-house at a studio. As we are in the stage of getting our graduation films and showreels ready for when we leave, she recommended we start getting the big important shots done first so that a month before we leave, we can send out our showreels when projects might be starting up. Whilst its important to be professional when writing cover letters and emails, our showreels will do the talking. Nicky mentioned that when she first started, she would make gifs and loops, short little exercises each week for a month to add and build up her portfolio. This helped fill gaps she had in her showreel and would give her a reason to send her portfolio back out to studios.

We also had Sophie Koko Gate visit us to help us get started making animation, and she gave us a really fascinating talk about her experiences in the industry. Sophie is more an independent animator, as she likes directing rather than working a studio job. Much like Nicky, she recommended building up our portfolios through gifs, microfilms, music videos for friends, explainer videos and the like. She mentioned Alain de Botton as someone who hires recent graduates for his work, so it may be worth contacting him (although he is apparently quite stingy). She also broke down the levels and roles, with rough animation being a senior level, clean-up and colour being junior levels. That being said, some senior animators prefer to work both rough and clean-up rather than pass it along. She briefly discussed how going up the ladder in productions means you have less work – as a director, you assign roles to everyone else so ironically you have less of a workload.

An important thing Sophie mentioned was wages. If you’re on an internship, don’t take ones unpaid as they’re illegal, minimum living wage is what London interns should be paid. Junior level animators (less than a year in the industry) typically earn a daily rate of £100-150, mid-weight (1-3 years) earn £150-250 and 3+ in the UK can earn £450 a day. You aren’t valued based on things like technical skill or the number of programs you know, but rather the experience you have. Motion graphics is a good side hustle alongside animation, as you can generate stuff quicker with rigging.

Sophie shared some of her experiences pitching – it’s a brutal process. Out of 10 pitches in the last year, she only won one, and it can take a week of unpaid work to even come up with a pitch. She typically works with Adult Swim as they like zany weird personal styles. Much of the pitching process is just telling a story, with fancy words and references. You get given a brief and you highlight points that you think are most important to them. They want to make sure you’ve understood what they’re after. The process of pitching is much like what we did for LIAF, online these days since the pandemic. Adult Swim Small is a good place to send stuff online. Anyone can submit work and they’re always looking for weird content (they pay $5000 for 1 minute apparently).

Motion graphics is probably a good side hustle as its quick.

Since chatting to these guys, I’ve started taking these suggestions on board. As part of a break from my graduation film, I’ve started doing prompts for Monday’s Challenge as I’ve seen some of my classmates doing this for a little while. I’ve also pushed through with my grad film and completed some of the longest and most difficult shots, which I’ve now started populating my showreel with. Our last official days at university are early June, so when May rolls around, I intend on sending my showreel out to as many people as possible, after getting my showreel fine tuned.