Dear Mr. Mense, I'd like to ask you about what it is like to work in the animation industry. I'm interested in getting into this branch myself yet unfortunately I don't now anyone I can ask about this since I don't have any connections to people working there. Might you give me a little insight in what it is like to work as a visual development artist and whether it is a stressful job to do?
First I can only speak for me, and as I’m working as a freelance artist, I can only talk about this kind of experience. Working in the animation industry as concept artist is great. It demands a lot of work and exigency.
Working in the animation means working with a team, you have to learn to question yourself, accept corrections, defend your ideas and communicate.Visual development isn’t just creating nice characters and images, it’s about understanding a story, the characters specificities and to translate it as well as you can, and as interestingly as possible. You have got to be able to explore different paths, you have got to be able to restart your work from scratch. Visual development needs solid technique skills for sure but what really matters is the ideas you’ll bring and the life and energy you’ll be able to insuflate to the project.
Freelance work can be quite hard, You’re working on your own and you’re briefed via mails or conferences. Sometimes you can go toward a wrong direction without be aware of it. On the other hand you are quite free to work as you want and as comfortably as you need.
You have to communicate as much as you can with your clients. Don’t hesitate to ask for precisions, to tell them you’re a bit late … (it’s not that easy!)
When you are freelance, you don’t have any employment security, so you’re always searching for new opportunities. That can be stressfull too.That’s why you have to be visible and share your work consistantly, the animation studios are on internet and they are searching for new artists A LOT.
It’s important to show your art and to “promote” yourself as genuinly as possible. I often can’t show what I’m working on for a long time, so I have to keep on creating my own projects and researchs. it’s important because you’re showing who you are and what you do.
Before searching for talented drawers, studios are searching for strong universes and originality.
Finaly you have to know your value and to negociate your daily rates. If you can have an agent, it should be better (I don’t have one yet).
It’s a lot of tasks, and it’s sometimes hard to manage, but it’s a terrific job and we can live quite well from it ( much more than comics sadly).I hope this could help and it was not too pontificating !
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