WHY YOU SHOULDN'T WANT A JOB IN ANIMATION

As of this month I have been working in the animation industry for 36 years. Currently I work from home, for various employers as a freelance independent contractor, mostly as a digital storyboard artist. It has its ups and downs but (HUMBLEBRAG ALERT) most of the time I'm busy enough for two people; when I'm not, I've learned to be patient and enjoy the breaks. Because busy or not, here’s how I think of it: I don’t have a job - I have a career. 

This may sound like semantics, (maybe it is) but to me a job is something you depend on from an employer.  It’s theirs to give and theirs to take away... A career is something i have to be responsible for based on my reputation, my ability, and my preferences. I don’t expect much beyond what I invoiced for last week, and i keep tabs on whatever’s coming up - staying in touch with long-term contacts and making new ones almost constantly. I try to keep at least one "Plan B" in mind at all times.  And that’s fine. A career is like a life : mine to tend, mine to succeed or fail at, mine to take credit and blame for, mine to earn. I would not have it any other way. 

When I was a kid my all-consuming ambition was to get a job as an animator at the Walt Disney Studios and live out at least five decades there, hunched over a drawing board sketching away on the next Buena Vista release like my heroes. Other kids worshiped sports figures like Wilt Chamberlain or Joe Namath, I was obsessed with the statistics of “The 9 Old Men”, the group of legendary Disney animators who had  defined the craft as performed at Disney. I poured over their screen credits and thrived on the few grainy black and white photos of them that I could find in books in my high school library…

By a combination of determination and dumb luck, by the age of 20, I had made it into the ranks of fledgling artists being hand picked to fill the emptying offices of the retiring (and in some cases, expiring) Disney animators who had made the studio what it was. After many failed portfolio submissions and calls, letters and conversations with Eric Larson  the legendary animator in charge of training, I was tentatively accepted to the training program. During the 8 weeks of Eric’s mentorship I was vying for a slot in the production ranks against peers who were legendary in their own right even back then: most of them talented CALARTS superstars, including Hendel Butoy, later a director for the studio, and some weirdo named Tim Burton. 

Somehow I made it thru the 8 weeks by the skin of my teeth and on to production of THE FOX AND THE HOUND. But success was short-lived. It would take a book (GAME OF THRONES maybe?) to outline the various backstage politics during that turbulent year - suffice it to say I got caught in the crossfire. Plus my work was substandard even for a newbie and i knew it. I ultimately ran afoul of studio management and was fired after a short, chaotic term. I had barely lasted 9 months. 

I was devastated. My dream of working “cradle to grave” at Disney had crashed and burned. Work was scarce but I eventually talked my way into the ranks of the new Don Bluth studio, where I was able to do story work on the feature SECRET OF NIMH and animation on video games DRAGON’S LAIR and SPACE ACE. When this work dried up, I worked begrudgingly for the FILMATION studio as an assistant on the old HE-MAN TV show. Then I freelanced for Marvel on a show called JEM and a TV special directed by my friend Darrell VanCitters, who would soon after start his own studio RENEGADE ANIMATION.

After that, back to FILMATION as an animator, which overlapped with freelance stints on THE CHIPMUNK ADVENTURE
and THE GUMMI BEARS, to name a few. In 1987 I was finally given another shot at Disney - this time as an animator. Over the next nine years, I wound up working on some major films of the era: THE LITTLE MERMAID (where I helped design ‘Sebastian’ the crab), BEAUTY & THE BEAST (as supervising animator on ‘Cogsworth’ the clock) and ALADDIN (as supervising animator on ‘Iago’ the parrot). Despite my checkered history, many of my artistic dreams came true during this time.  When I left Disney in 1996, this time it was by my own volition to go to Dreamworks, another new startup. 

Through the decades, I had picked up the habit of freelancing during off hours - often for Darrell at RENEGADE, and also for DIC, Spielberg’s TINY TOONS, animating for Chuck Jones’ final ROAD RUNNER short, designing and storyboarding for series like RESCUE RANGERS and CLERKS. In 1999 I left Dreamworks and came back to Disney where times were about to turn turbulent again. Massive changes in the economics and technical practices (like PIXAR’S TOY STORY) forced sea-changing layoffs throughout the industry and at Disney in particular. Senior Disney artists who I remember envying on that day in 1979 when I got let go were being given their 20th and 25th anniversary pins alongside pink slips terminating their employment. Some of them had never worked outside the studio and the transition must have been difficult. But at that point I knew while i still admired their talent and artistry, i had stopped envying the idea of a long tenure at a single studio long ago. In 2004, I was on the pavement again, looking for work. 

I found it. And when that ran out I found some more, and then some more. I’ve learned something valuable from every single assignment, whether it was a distinguished prestige project or not. And I will never forget the things I learned in that fateful Year One, including this: 1. Never take a gig for granted. 2. Each job is not an end in and of itself: it’s a piece of something bigger: something called a career.