How Important Is It To Get An Internship As A Beginning Animator?

Of course it will depend on the type of internship. Sometimes animation students get internships doing PA type of stuff in companies that are not so great... I mean, if what you really want is to animate you probably won't be happy making xerox copies or going pick up dinner for the boss. This type of internship will probably not turn you into a better animator. It's true though that getting an internship in any of the big studios, even if it's not exactly in production, can be a nice way to get a feeling for how it all works, and also to get good connections and some professional experience. So it all depends on what is the internship like, and in what company.

The best situation is to get an internship where you can develop your skills as an animator and artist, and in a good studio. This type of internship is a wonderful way to start a professional career. Well, at least it worked for me! I was an intern first at Briquet Studios in Sao Paulo (2D), and then at Rhythm & Hues Studios in LA and these two experiences were crucial to my background. At Briquet Studios I was lucky to be an intern under the supervision of Renato dos Anjos – he later ended up moving to the US and worked as supervising animator on Bolt, Surf's Up and Open Season. I knew nothing about animation at that time, so it was really my very first experience, a way to get a feeling for how it all worked on a professional environment. The studio was really small but their work was great, Renato was really good and I learned so much from him. It was not enough time to get good at it, but I felt the experience planted the seed of animation on a fertile soil.

A couple of years after that, I went to School of Visual Arts in New York for my master's degree. During my first summer vacation I got an internship position at Rhythm & Hues. It was amazing. I felt I learned more in this time than in all my time at school! Rhythm & Hues had classes set up for new employers and interns, it was very organized and that's when I really started to understand what 3D was all about. I learned so much. I came back to school after the summer full of energy and started working on my short film. I also met a lot of really nice people, made important professional connections and went to a couple of cool camping trips. Fun times!

So, based on my personal experience, I think a good internship can help turn a student into a good professional. I was lucky in that my internships were really about the animation work. They were also at good companies with a solid reputation. It was a real learning experience on many levels.

Some of my students get internships and I see how positively the experience affects them. In many cases, a company offering an internship program has hopes that that student will be a possible hire in the near future. In a way, you are being “tested” by them, while at the same time you will be learning tons of useful things. Some companies have a very structured internship program – they put a lot of thought into it, and these are the internships you should definitely apply for! Here in California I know that Dreamworks, Pixar, Disney and Rhythm & Hues all offer this type of opportunity. And I bet there are other companies with great internship programs that I just don't know about.

Of course it is not exactly easy to get an internship at one of the best companies in the world - they are very competitive programs, but these would be the first ones I would try if I was a student now. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but it can be life changing to spend a summer working at a studio like any of these. You will meet amazing artists and professionals. You will get to know how the pipeline works, how is the day to day of a CG artist, how the films are done, what the work ethics are like. You will learn about work flow, techniques and art, and you will learn it from real artists. It can make a real difference in your career.

Guest blogger Raquel Rabbit

What Do You Enjoy Most About Being An Animator?

There are so many things that I love about being an animator. I'm surrounded by so many talented artists - it's intimidating and inspiring at the same time, but it allows me to be a student, continuing to learn and push myself. I love that I am around people who share the same love for cinema and cartoons.

One of the best things about being an animator is that I get to be an actor and breathe life into a character. What's really great is that I'll go to the movies and sit next to a complete stranger that will laugh or cry at my performance, and they won't know that was done by the person sitting right beside them.


The things that I love most, though, is that, if I'm fortunate enough, I will be part of something timeless - a film that children and adults will continue to watch and love after I'm long gone. Something that my children's children will show their children, and say "Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandpa Hartline did that!"


Guest blogger Aaron Hartline

How Do You Balance Life With Animation?

Well, when I was working full time in the industry I actually had a lot of fun, made many good friends and really enjoyed what I was doing. So animation and work in general were a big part of my life. Overall it didn't feel unbalanced, even though I always felt that a 10 hour work journey is a bit much for someone who has the desire to also pursue other interests in life outside of animation. But overall, working in the industry felt like it was the right thing for me at the time. Still, I found time to sing in a couple of bands, make puppets, write a couple of children's books, go out, enjoy my friends, go camping, etc.

What I found harder was to balance studio animation with personal animation. Let me explain: After school, I thought I was going to be able to work full time in an animation studio and also do my short films on the side. Unfortunately, somehow this was never possible. That also happened to a bunch of my friends. I know a lot of people who had dreams of making many short films; they actually had stories, character designs, etc., all waiting to come to life. The reality is that it is really hard to work on your short film after 10 hours (at least) of animating in a studio. So, I could never really balance animating in a studio with animating my own shorts!

In any case, after many years working in the industry I felt that the 10 hours a day was not really working for me, because I really wanted to spend more time on my personal projects. I also missed having a different type of interaction with people. I love teaching, and little by little I got more involved with teaching. So I got a tenure track position in a university, where I teach animation and help students with their own short film projects. In addition, I am a mentor at Animation Mentor, and I love the work I do with them. Parallel to my work in the university, I do some freelance work doing animation – in 2005 I worked on Henry Sellick's Moongirl and on Charlotte's Web, the next year I worked on Happy Feet and on a couple of cool coke spots (with Psyop), in 2007 I worked on SpiderWick Chronicles, and last year I did some freelance for Wildbrain.

Also, I now have time to dedicate to my own artistic projects, which feels great!

So, I think I found my own way to balance life and animation. I interact with people, I discuss, study and practice animation all the time, and I have time to work on my own personal projects as well.

Guest blogger Raquel Rabbit

I'm About to Tackle Lots of Realistic Animal Animation. Do You Have Any Tips?

I sure do! I have three tips for ya:

1) REFERENCE!

If you're doing some realistic animal work, then reference is an absolute must. And I don't mean just finding a video clip of a similar animal and copying some of what you see. I mean watching as much footage of the animal as you can, making notes of their behaviors, studying what it is that makes that animal unique. What makes that tiger a tiger, or what makes a wolf a wolf?

Make a list for yourself of the behaviors, timings, and body mechanics you see (which moves first, the head or the ears? Which paw lifts first as it goes into a run? How does the tail behave?), and keep that around to read through now and then and remind yourself of all the great nuances you studied.

2) Exaggeration

Just because it's going to be "realistic" animation doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't exaggerate certain things. Don't forget to look for ways to help bring your animal to life, and to subtly caricature the behaviors, timing, and poses that you've studied from the reference. The key here is SUBTLY, as the more you exaggerate those three things, the cartoonier the animation will get.

There's an interesting progression of exaggeration you can apply to a creature. No exaggeration might look mostly "correct," or even "real," but it won't have the tiny bit of added punch that will give it character and life, particularly on the big screen. A tiny bit of exaggeration in just the right places (maybe making sure the animal going into a jump moves along a singular line of action, including the tail, even if the reference didn't, or dropping the chest to make a pose more dynamic, or exaggerating the ear movement so it's more visible to the audience) can take that animation from "real" into a "hyperreal" state, that still feels real, but is suddenly much more alive. (incidentally, this is the same exaggeration necessary to take motion capture -- yes, even Avatar -- from looking kind of stiff and dead into becoming something more special).

Once you push the exaggeration beyond that hyperreal point, though, you start pushing it more and more into the "cartoony" realm, so be really careful how far you push this sort of thing.

3) Reference AGAIN!

Once you have your animation pretty much blocked in and are starting to get into the polishing stage where you are ironing out your in-betweens, getting the arcs nice, getting that tail on a nice path of action, etc. Once you're there, it's time to bust that reference out again and watch a bunch of it.

If you have time, give yourself a good 10 or 20 minutes to just watch these animals in the real world again. Look again for behaviors you might have missed, or movements that you didn't notice before you had worked more heavily with the character.

Then, watch your animation again. Does it hold up? Does it look like it could be hanging out with those animals you were just watching? If not, what is it missing?

Often, this process can reveal a behavior or body-mechanics nuance that you simply missed the first time, and once you add it into your animation, it'll suddenly feel right!

Good luck!

Shawn :)