Today, I would like to share with you the basic fundamentals of the animation industry. To know where you're headed and what jobs are available to you. You must understand what are the job titles and what roles do they play in the entire animation pipeline. It is vital to know the specific roles, such as character animators, modelers, lighting artists in order to find your strength and to work towards it. During higher learning in animation courses, they would teach you very general techniques and skills across all professions in the animation industry. This is so that you can discover your passion and develop specific skillsets before you graduate.

For me, I found my passion in character animation and modeling. Thus, focusing on just these two roles in the animation pipeline. And until I master one of them, I won't be changing my role very soon. Sometimes people can be animators all their life.

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You'd be surprised that many people don't know what an animator does. Everytime when I meet someone new, It will usually be by the line,"Oh, I make cartoon tv series for kids to watch".

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But how many of them actually understand what a character animator actually do. After awhile, there would be instances where they start calling me a graphic designer, or the IT guy. Not against these two roles of professions but an animator is a TOTALLY different job and requires very different set of skills.

So today, without further ado, I would like the share with you the jobs/specialists in the animation pipeline and hopefully, you will understand that animators are not graphic designers. (Again, I have nothing against them) :)

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The Animation Professions

Character Animators

• These people are the ones that bring the characters/objects to life regardless of the medium they use. It can in 2D or 3D. Without them, everything would be static. And you won't be seeing Elsa singing and dancing "Let it goooo, let it gooo". They give movement to the joints of the characters.

Modelers

• My second best skillset but have never touched it after becoming a character animator. These are the people that build the characters from scratch using polygons. They can produce anything from cars, planes, a monster, a cute furby etc etc.

Lighting Artists

• When you have your assets and characters ready, you need it to look real, to have shadows and highlights, to have reflections. For that, you need lights. This is where the lighting artists would populate the entire environment/scene with lights, making sure the character's faces are always well lit and the shadows are realistic.

Renderer/Renderman

• Renderers can often be very busy and also very free. When in the early production stages, these people are doing the R&D work of how the final outcome would look like in image. When the scenes are done animating and lighted up, renderers will work their magic managing multiple computers to produce thousands of images to be compiled as a working animation. Like a flip book where thousands of images create the illusion of animation.

FX Artists(Fur/hair/cloth/water)

• FX artists can also be separated into several skillsets. Some are good at water simulations, some are good with hair dynamics and some are good with explosions. Nonetheless, they add 'effects' to the scenes. Some who are good in coding will build in-house tools to enhance certain simulations.

Concept Artists

• These are extrodinary artists helping the directors and producers to visualize & conceptualize the whole idea. All this through painting and several other mediums they feel best to interpret the idea. From background, landscapes, environment, characters, objects, u name it, they will draw em out for you.

Storyboard Artists

• They interpret the story scripts into thumbnail drawings that will best tell the story. In the finalize storyboard, they have to visually show the development of the story.

Layout Artists

• Properly prepare each scene. They will add the characters, environment, assets, camera settings before passing the scenes to the animators. They basically breakdown 2D storyboard into 3D shots. At this stage, the layout artist must make sure that the staging is good and the hook up from scene to scene is smooth.

Texture Artists

• Texture artists much like a painter, but instead painting on a white piece of canvas. They manipulate or paint textures to be fitted onto the 3D assets. If that character's face has freckles, it is the texture artist's job to paint freckles on the skin.

Rigging Artists

• Without these guys, the animators cannot animate the character. They study the human anatomy a lot... how the muscles move, how joints and limbs are connected, how many degrees can our joints turn. All this because, they build the 'skeleton' for the characters also known as rigs. These are the people that add limbs and bones to your characters so animators can animate them. Not only biped creatures but dogs, cats, dinosaurs etc...

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There are many more specialized job roles in the animation industry and these are the few main ones that you may hear often. Some companies that produce First-Person Shooter games may have several other specific roles such as the demolition team, weapons experts etc etc.

Here are some of the other job roles which I did not cover.

• Art Director
• Animation Director
• Producer
• Character Designer
• Compositor (sometimes the lighting artist does this role)
• Creative Director
• Technical Director
• Rigging Supervisor
• Roto Artist
• Environment Designer
• Programmers
• CG Supervisor
• Shading Artist
• All sorts of supervisor :D

Different company may set up different other roles to suit the current production. There are times when I had to be the layout artists and animator at the same time. Just recently, I was helping the lighting team to setup the lighting for the scenes. This happen often in small companies when there isn't enough manpower.

So the next time someone calls me a graphic designer..... I would probably cry and hide in my room. KIDDING!!!

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Thank You

If you like what I do, check out my other posts on my artworks, photography & animations.

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DM me on discord : zord189#7776

Credits to @pinstory & @coloringiship for this lovely photo of me.

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