Author: Sophie Milton

I’ve been looking more into patreon as one of the visiting lecturers mentioned it and how lots of animators particularly in America use it to be able to fund their own projects. So I’ve been researching a few of my favourite artists to see what they offer on their patreon and see how viable it is as an option, at least to start with if I cant get my foot in the door of the animation industry right away!

@fernandadiasartwork is an animator I have followed for a while who is able to create short animations and music videos using her original characters and upload them to youtube with great reception – getting millions of views.

I’m aware that it would take a while to get enough traction on patreon to make a living wage, but as I have a following of around 44k I don’t see the hard in trying it, at least over the summer if I don’t hear from any studios.

I’ve finally bitten the bullet and started sending my showreel to studios. I tried to find out names out people but I got worried that they might think its weird if I sent it to them and it didnt get to the person who’s name was at the top even though its probably not and I was just overthinking, but I ended up just addressing it to “the studio” team.

So far I’ve send emails to The Line, Blink Ink, and Moth! (Moth is my favourite so far because it actually feels like a human replying to me).

I’ve been working on my CV, and have gotten some helpful feedback from tutors, this is the final (for now) result that I will be sending to studios

We had the opportunity to meet a bunch of allumni of the course on zoom and ask them questions! I asked them if its a bad thing to not know what exactly you want to market yourself as role-wise and they gave some really helpful advice (see notes)

I have been collecting a list of studios that I would like to send my showreel to. The advice we got on this from Blink Ink people was to personalise it and try and find out the name of the person you’re emailing, as well as saying why you like the studio and would want to work with them, so I’ve been trying to find more personal emails that the jobs@studionamehere.com addresses but its tricky, but I’ve started to thoroughly look through each studios work and pick out my favourite project/directors of theirs to mention in the email

Update: Ko has also just sent us a list of animation studios and contacts, with a lot more personal emails within the companies rather than ‘jobs’ or ‘info’ addresses which is super helpful thank you Ko!!

I edited together an updated showreel this time using clips from the reflections on reality film and a fan art animation I did in December. This is the showreel I plan to send out to studios in February/March.

Berlin is a city that I love and was lucky enough to spend four months living there in 2019 for an internship. It is somewhere I would definitely like to return to and so I had a small research into Berlin animation studios – 2D in particular.

KROKODIL Studio

• a focus on 2D animation and motion design
• work on lots of explainer videos and music videos, in both 2D and 3D
• take on the complete production process for a film, including soundtrack
• worked for clients such as Festival of Animation Berlin, Frogs and Friends, and mobyDOK
• based in south berlin
• isn’t offering internship currently

Protoplanet studio

• specialised in 2D character animation, design and illustration
• works on commercials, explanatory and image films, series, music videos, games, apps
• their showreel – https://www.protoplanet-studio.de/protoplanet-2d-charakter-animations-studio-showreel-awards/
• has no vacancies for internships
• happy to receive unsolicited applications for freelance animators (high quality, reliability and compliance with deadlines are prerequisites for cooperation)
• located in east berlin – but that wouldn’t really be an issue if it was just freelance work for them as its all online

Torp animation studio

• use 2d and stop motion primarily
• clients include greenpeace, universal music group, mercedes benze, postbank
• their showreel: https://studiotorp.com/#next
• looking at their work this studio seems like their style is something that mine could fit into very easily
• south berlin

Monstroos studio

• a mix of 2d and stop motion
• their showreel: https://monstroos.com/
• work on explanatory videos, ads, short clips for social media and illustrations
• clients include arte, soapbox science, deutsche welle, interfilm
• not looking for interns currently
• south east berlin

during the current project I think I’ve decided that my favourit epart of the process is clean-up, (although I do still have a long way to come with it), so I’ve done a little research on the role.

• it is up the the clean up artist to maintain consistncey of character throughout production even if multiple artists with different styles work on the roughs
• articulating and defining character poses moods and motions is key, as well as character attitudes and body language
• making the character fit into a scene within the layout and background, observing the laws of perspective and scale.
• ability to articulate character mass and being able to keep the size and sha[e of the character consistent
• clean up is often a roll given to animators who are relativly new in the industry as it helps with precision and also helps them to build on their animation skills by observing and building on rough animations.

from what I can find I think with 2D animation studios it might come down to just working on what is needed at that point in the process, be it roughs, clean-ip, colouring or compositing, so I guess its a relatively good thing that I’m happy with each stage of the process, but as Sheetal mentioned previously, it is good to email studios with an ideal role in mind so they know how to categories your skills and you could come to mind if they need someone for that role in the near future.

this week I had a feedback session for the current project wiht Ko and Shelley Page who we had pitched our ideas to. fortunetly for me the only feedback they had was that it’s all going in the right direction and they’re excited to see the end result. She suggested I watch the film INBETWEENS to see examples of the subtle character acting and mood I want to emulate in my peace

Because of this we had a little extra time and Shelley offered to watch our showreels and give feedback on that to.

Shelley was really insanely nice about it I was honestly shocked!! She said I’d chosen good moments that highlight my skills and was very complimentary saying that it was impressive that I’ve come this far with only a year of animation teaching! Honestly I was floored and I’m terrible at compliments so I was a bit of a mess internally!!

She also asked about what I’d been looking to do once this course was over and I told her about some fo the animation studios I’d been looking into and she suggested I look into the Gobelins english language course, saying it was good for learning to work in a team environment which dont really get enough time for on this course. Frankly if I tried to prolong staying in education past july my parents just might throw a fit so it’s not really an option for me but I plan to research it anyway.

We visited blink ink studio this week and got an insight to the studio animation culture and environment.

The staff gave us a tour of their Holloway studio and then talked through some of the animation work they’ve made. The studio was really homey and whilst small seemed very efficiently run. I was initially quite surprised that there were so few people animating there, most seemed to be in meetings or doing marketing stuff, until they later told us that the office isn’t for the animators…

They gave us a presentation on some of the work they’ve made over the years including commercials, music videos etc. The one that really stood out to me was the BBC world cup tapestry directed by Nicos Livesey. They had ani interesting story on how the idea was formed and lots of information on how it was created and it really made me appreciate the amount of work put in by everyone at every stage in the process of finishing the film.

It was kind of disappointing to hear that they only really have in house directors and producers and the animators are freelance, it seems kind of tricky to get a foot in the door that way, especially if as an animator you don’t get to be in the office making connections with people, as after all connections and networking are the best way to get the jobs as we keep being told and that’s difficult when you’re someone who can’t even say boo to a goose!

This visit definitely made me think more about studio animation, and whilst the staff said that theyre one of the few studios who work like this (with directors being the main priority and animators being freelance), I would like to investigate the dynamics of the other studios i’ve been looking at, particularly the line and golden wolf animation.