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About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

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Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#51

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

paulpauper wrote: post #38

THis is not suprising at all. It's similar to game design. 1. demanding hours and work with mediocre pay and little hope of promotion 2. no lucrative stock options ,even working for Disney or Pixar pales in comparison to how much $ Facebook,apple, netflix and amazon, workers made 3. no fat six-figure salaries. It's one of those jobs where people do it out of a passion, so there will always be a supply of workers even…

> It's one of those jobs where people do it out of a passion

This was clearly the message of Keep Your Hands Off Eziuken and it was a really nice show to watch because of it. Putting passion into your art is about passion, they managed that quite well I think.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#52

Post by akrotkov »

Incidentally, when I was looking for an animator for a short animated segment for an indie game trailer, it took many many months of searching.

There's a few companies that do it as part of a fully-fledged package to produce video (at hundreds to thousands of dollars per second) but surprisingly the same glut of people looking to break into the industry (like art, modeling, composing) are not very discoverable.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#53

Post by actually_a_dog »

dagmx wrote: post #9
jdshaffer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The few animators I have known personally said the hours were grueling, the pay was so so, and they all wanted to move up to "Technical Director" or "Lighting Director" as soon as possible. (And I think most of them did.) Though I'm not sure if they quit the industry entirely after that.

Neither Technical Director or Lighting Director are roles that would naturally progress from being an animator.

Neither does “product/project manager” progress naturally from “software engineer,” but it’s a moderately common progression in the real world.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#54

Post by blueblimp »

yodon wrote: post #30
artursapek wrote: post #24

How far are we from automating the job of animators with tech like what makes DeepFake videos?

Animation is about acting - sometimes comedy, always emotions. Like acting it is hard to specify the desired end state and harder still to identify the decisions and actions required to achieve it. "She needs to look more nurturing" or "that ocean wave needs to look more aggressive (but not malicious)" are legitimate things a Director might say to an animator. Machine Learning can already make an image walk. The tric…

Is this true of in-between animation (which is what's being discussed in the linked article)? I would think this doesn't require much creativity, since you're interpolating between keyframes, and might be a reasonable target for ML methods.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#55

Post by ehnto »

spfzero wrote: post #47
chmod600 wrote: post #8

Most people are probably best off with good jobs that sound boring but are highly demanded. Could be plumber or software engineer or accountant or whatever. People are happy to see you, happy when you do your job, and pay you well. People work as a team rather than compete. Don't underestimate the value of pleasantness in day to day interactions. Cool sounding jobs are competitive and you are likely to be treated poo…

This is so right on. If you care about the remuneration, then you'd best do something highly valued. If you care about doing something you "love" instead, that's manifestly not highly valued, then don't complain about the money.

Highly valued is subjective to humans but not the economics of employment, which I think is worth noting because being a doctor in the middle of nowhere is highly valued by the people you help but not monetarily. Versus online advertising which makes disgusting amounts of money and yet most people hate to see it.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#56

Post by _moof »

chmod600 wrote: post #8

Most people are probably best off with good jobs that sound boring but are highly demanded. Could be plumber or software engineer or accountant or whatever. People are happy to see you, happy when you do your job, and pay you well. People work as a team rather than compete. Don't underestimate the value of pleasantness in day to day interactions. Cool sounding jobs are competitive and you are likely to be treated poo…

Yes, the term for what you're describing is "glamor industries." From experience, they are absolute hell to work in.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#57

Post by SilverRed »

artursapek wrote: post #24

How far are we from automating the job of animators with tech like what makes DeepFake videos?

IMO AI is going to be like code autocomplete is today. A real animator will draw in keyframes and then the AI will try to interpolate correctly. The human then watches the interpolation and assesses the result. If anything looks off, they then go and draw in manual frames until the AI gets it right.

Then later we may see the AI assist in drawing the individual frames so the artist draws an image and uses the shading AI to attempt to shade the image. Again, with manual work to correct where it messes up.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#58

Post by ransom1538 »

chmod600 wrote: post #8

Most people are probably best off with good jobs that sound boring but are highly demanded. Could be plumber or software engineer or accountant or whatever. People are happy to see you, happy when you do your job, and pay you well. People work as a team rather than compete. Don't underestimate the value of pleasantness in day to day interactions. Cool sounding jobs are competitive and you are likely to be treated poo…

"Cool sounding jobs are competitive"

Also! The problem with Animators is projects being canceled. Animation takes forever. A project getting cut a year in is normal. That takes a huge toll on you mentally. THEN, you have the art experience problem. Do your art skills scale with time? I bet not.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#59

Post by prawn »

mumblemumble wrote: post #20
chadcmulligan wrote: post #2

It's like all those jobs - game developer, film jobs, graphic artist, artist, musician - too many young people want to do it and there's a lot of money if you're successful so it attracts sharks up the top who keep all the money. Just don't is my advice, unless you have a trust fund, which a large number of those successful have, you can weather out the early years then until you make a name for yourself.

I'm rather fond of the story of the Pulitzer prizewinning poet Wallace Stevens, who worked as an insurance attorney by day, and did his writing during his free time. He considered his unexciting day job to be something that enabled him to do his writing, by giving his life a stable foundation that left plenty of mental resources remaining for doing what he loved. Some choice quotes on the subject: "It is necessary to…

Derek Sivers had a blog entry with similar advice. Have a tolerable day job so that your hobby can remain an enjoyable pursuit rather than trying to make your passion into a viable business.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#60

Post by wsc981 »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #2

It's like all those jobs - game developer, film jobs, graphic artist, artist, musician - too many young people want to do it and there's a lot of money if you're successful so it attracts sharks up the top who keep all the money. Just don't is my advice, unless you have a trust fund, which a large number of those successful have, you can weather out the early years then until you make a name for yourself.

I think if people are interested in game dev, it’s probably a better idea to work as a contractor doing boring business apps for income and then do games as a side project.

If you get lucky with a game, perhaps can ditch the contractor job, but otherwise at least you’ll have a nice income. Perhaps can save money for an early retirement, after which you’ll have plenty of time to focus on game dev.

Also, if your game becomes a big in this situation, you get to reap all the benefits.

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