Bridge to Industry Talks – Neeraja Raj and Selom Sunu

Over the last few weeks, we’ve had several CSM Alumni come in to deliver talks about both their different roles in the industry as well as their different journeys in entering the industry. I’ll share the highlights and notes I took of some of them.

We had Neeraja Raj give an online presentation about her work. She is a film director, animator and writer who graduated from the NFTS in 2020 and has had experience working at Aardman. Her graduation film “Meow or Never” took 14 months to make with only 3 animators, a story about a cat astronaut looking for the meaning of life. It took off her career and she’s since worked with Nexus Studios. Her first at Nexus was “The Girl Who Built a Rocket” with the client being WaterAid, which has a really pretty art style, lineless and textured and animated in TVPaint.

Neeraja shared experiences and what we should expect working in the industry, such as the timeline of projects. A project can last between two weeks to eight months, and it mainly starts with an animatic, storyboard and designs (character, props and backgrounds). The main bulk of a project is the animation itself, especially if it’s frame-by-frame. After that, the compositing stage comes up, where lighting, motion graphics and post-production wrap up the project. Neeraja was of the opinion that the compositing stage is often too short and is far more rushed than it should be. She wishes that there was more time for people to work on the finishing touches.

Agents have been a big part of her journey, and Neeraja stated they are invaluable to finding jobs and deals. They’ll take 10% of your cut if a deal is taken on but they can be worth the money. She also discussed having managers, but she didn’t personally need one as much as an agent.

The biggest bit of advice Neeraja shared with us was to be proactive and get ourselves known. We can’t expect to catch attention sitting at home. Be proactive, and get your work out there.

Our next lecturer who was in person was Selom Sunu, a character designer and book illustrator who joined the course in 2013 after being rejected once, but he kept in touch with Steve Roberts (former tutor on the course) who eventually accepted him in after sharing his progress.

Selom shared some of his experiences at different stages in his career as well as what each studio was like and the ups and downs of his journey. Selom, like many other alumni, has worked at Nexus Studios, and he was an intern for them back in 2017. He loved working there, not just for the free food but the lovely people also. Unfortunately, the challenges for him was that this was cut-out animation rather than hand-drawn animation, and he took too much time rigging. He was sacked, but he left amicably with the studio.

Selom had also worked with Cbeebies in 2020 with a clear brief. He was given a time consuming style, but the brief gave lots of creative freedom. However, it ended in 1 day.

Disney has also been a client, who were impressed by his designs. They offered good pay, but he found the 10 hour blocks of booking for his time added pressure, as he wasn’t sure what to do for 10 hours straight. His time ended when Disney realised they wanted to go for a more realistic direction.

One of the more interesting experiences Selom shared was working for UpperRoom productions in 2021, a production company founded by John Boyega a few years back. It was clear that they were lovely, but they didn’t know much about the animation pipeline or how long it took. They asked Selom to help out for a pitch to another client, and they liked his work and paid well, but they weren’t the best at articulating what they needed. The pitch didn’t get taken but they paid a decent amount for 4 days of work.

His biggest regret was the mistake he made when working for Disney TVA, in a project in 2021. They were equally as welcoming as the previous Disney job, with the creators being thrilled with the direction and even better pay. He was working under his hero Bruce Smith, which added doubt in his mind and he overthought his drawings. The job came to an abrupt end when he had to cancel a meeting to pick up his daughter, and he didn’t tell them that was the reason or if there was a chance to reschedule, and they didn’t pick him up again after this.

Selom shared some tips and tricks for how he got to where he is today. Firstly, don’t burn bridges. People want to work with nice folks not difficult ones, and all of the jobs he got fired from were amicable. Always be present for every assignment (a tough lesson he learnt), stay up to date on LinkedIn (I’ve since added Selom myself), save as much money as you can from a well-paid gig. If you freelance, make sure the payment terms are in your contracts, get a mentor and refresh knowledge on the basics regularly.

Both talks were highly fascinating and I took a lot away from the pair of them. It also provided insight into the production schedule and painted a picture of what working in studios can feel like, something which I’ve yet to truly experience.