How to make a living with 2D

[schwarzgrau]

I guess this fits the "frivolous, charming or amusing vignettes" category pretty well, but I would like to add this example anyways, since they're using the internet to make a living from animation.
https://www.youtube.com/show/bamanpiderman. I'm really don't know if they really can live from this, but at least they found a distributor.

[Paul Fierlinger]

The problem I see with this kind of fare is that I can't imagine who would want to pay for this. By that I mean, what demographics? Isn't this type of entertainment all over the internet for free already? To use my paradigm of books, this is like a leaflet; a handout on the street, compared to browsing through a University bookstore in search of something of value to bring home; a good book to curl up with because the book's dustcover description just hits the spot for you.

But after rereading this thread I realized how most young, upstart animators most likely do not see themselves as future authors or entrepreneurs. Their demo reels showoff only their animation skills in the most narrow forms, such as, I can animate tits like no one else, or watch how I animate this guy throwing a punch, and here's another guy throwing an even bigger punch. Am I not just right for your next project? Please?

Seeing this I then have to agree with everyone here that there is no chance for a budding animator to make a living with 2D animation. Somehow I've been living in the mistaken illusion that all young animators have dreams of one day making it in the world as independent author/director/animators and for that to happen I suppose a college student should first (or in tandem) study a load of liberal arts classes such as literature, art history, philosophy -- any or all of the great humanities disciplines.

@momo who said:

That's true few or no animator does his own work and makes a living out of it. Most of independent animator either: teach, do illustrations, do some commercial work, work in studios from time to time

I've been so far making a living as an independent animator 95% of the time doing my own work for 57 years and have met along the way many animators who have succeeded in making a living the same way. True, most of us have experienced some lean and mean years but that I consider to be something that belongs to the past with all the innovations the internet now has to offer in matters of self distribution. All I have to suggest to you is to raise the bar of your ambitions if you want to make a living with animation because otherwise I am in agreement with you -- there is no future for 2D animators to make a steady and secure living animating forever as a member of a team.

It's such a paradox of our times; when I was getting started with ambitions of becoming an independent animator, I was browbeaten by everyone around me that I dream nonsense because animation can be produced only by a team, considering the volume of work involved. But look at the picture today: to dream of security as a member of a team has turned into the nonsensical because the only venue left for today's 2D films is online and to succeed there, you have to learn to become a one man production unit, starting with TVPaint and a decent education in the humanities.

[schwarzgrau]

The problem I see with this kind of fare is that I can't imagine who would want to pay for this. By that I mean, what demographics? Isn't this type of entertainment all over the internet for free already? To use my paradigm of books, this is like a leaflet; a handout on the street, compared to browsing through a University bookstore in search of something of value to bring home; a good book to curl up with because the book's dustcover description just hits the spot for you.

But after rereading this thread I realized how most young, upstart animators most likely do not see themselves as future authors or entrepreneurs. Their demo reels showoff only their animation skills in the most narrow forms, such as, I can animate tits like no one else, or watch how I animate this guy throwing a punch, and here's another guy throwing an even bigger punch. Am I not just right for your next project? Please?

Seeing this I then have to agree with everyone here that there is no chance for a budding animator to make a living with 2D animation. Somehow I've been living in the mistaken illusion that all young animators have dreams of one day making it in the world as independent author/director/animators and for that to happen I suppose a college student should first (or in tandem) study a load of liberal arts classes such as literature, art history, philosophy -- any or all of the great humanities disciplines.

I completely agree with you on this!
But for me, and I guess for a lot of animators, is the problem that we can only produce shorts. And shorts may get attention on the web, but they don't pay the bills. If you're lucky your short will get the attention of an animation studio, hiring you as commercial director or even better fund a feature film, made by you.
Of course there are exceptions like you, which are able to produce full length feature films by themselve, which I really admire, cause you accomplish to animate that much, by keeping a great style and don't drift into limited animation. But I'm pretty sure It would take me and probably a lot of others, a decade.
I would love to make a living out of my own stuff, but I can't see how.

[Paul Fierlinger]

When I was your age I started off by making inexpensive commercials for small minded clients such as local car dealerships or rundown shopping malls, eateries and the like. I made dozens, maybe a hundred or more of these over the course of about 10 years, which then led to bigger and better commercials; regional and even a couple of national ones. It's a fantastic way to learn how to tell a story and how to get along with narrow minded clients. Every commercial serves a purpose for someone and taught me great discipline in following simplistic demands of simplistic customers while trying my best to make a good story work. My 20 years living in Communist Czechoslovakia taught me how to sneak my own ideas under the radar of authority figures.

If I would be young again today, I would try to hook up with some local or regional news blog or municipality outfit that lives off of low budget ads online. I imagine myself convincing the CEO of such a blog or digi-newspaper to let me create animated ads in one designated small square of their front page. The way this would work would be that clients would be offered my space to make an ad based on their client's specs instead of having the blog post badly done ads that clients would bring to the news blog themselves.

This has good potential because local businesses don't have the money to spend on a local filmmaker to create a very awful commercial after which the business has to buy space on the local news blog.

I would make the ads in such a way that readers would soon become conditioned to first look up what I came up with that day or that week etc. This means that I would have to be very good at what I do and being of your age this is exactly how I would feel about myself. I would also have a sample reel to prove it.The news blog would pay me at first a very meager salary (enough to pay rent for a room at the end of a sorry street, walking distance from the offices, give me a desk with an old computer at the end of a hallway in their offices and I'd be set to start a life.

[momo]

The problem I see with this kind of fare is that I can't imagine who would want to pay for this. By that I mean, what demographics? Isn't this type of entertainment all over the internet for free already? To use my paradigm of books, this is like a leaflet; a handout on the street, compared to browsing through a University bookstore in search of something of value to bring home; a good book to curl up with because the book's dustcover description just hits the spot for you.

But after rereading this thread I realized how most young, upstart animators most likely do not see themselves as future authors or entrepreneurs. Their demo reels showoff only their animation skills in the most narrow forms, such as, I can animate tits like no one else, or watch how I animate this guy throwing a punch, and here's another guy throwing an even bigger punch. Am I not just right for your next project? Please?

Seeing this I then have to agree with everyone here that there is no chance for a budding animator to make a living with 2D animation. Somehow I've been living in the mistaken illusion that all young animators have dreams of one day making it in the world as independent author/director/animators and for that to happen I suppose a college student should first (or in tandem) study a load of liberal arts classes such as literature, art history, philosophy -- any or all of the great humanities disciplines.

Ah! I couldn't agree more! In fact that was my biggest problem while at school. Most student only wanted to become a slaves (working for free, working in bad condition everything goes. Just read about the entire wage fixing story with Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks etc....) of some corporation only to be thrown away later. In the same school a lot of student felt the shorts from Ron Diamond's Animation Shows of Shows were too artsy fartsy. In fact Ron even made a similar statement to Paul's about staying home to make your own work instead of trying to be a corporate slave.

I've been so far making a living as an independent animator 95% of the time doing my own work for 57 years and have met along the way many animators who have succeeded in making a living the same way. True, most of us have experienced some lean and mean years but that I consider to be something that belongs to the past with all the innovations the internet now has to offer in matters of self distribution. All I have to suggest to you is to raise the bar of your ambitions if you want to make a living with animation because otherwise I am in agreement with you -- there is no future for 2D animators to make a steady and secure living animating forever as a member of a team.

It's such a paradox of our times; when I was getting started with ambitions of becoming an independent animator, I was browbeaten by everyone around me that I dream nonsense because animation can be produced only by a team, considering the volume of work involved. But look at the picture today: to dream of security as a member of a team has turned into the nonsensical because the only venue left for today's 2D films is online and to succeed there, you have to learn to become a one man production unit, starting with TVPaint and a decent education in the humanities.

That is very encouraging/motivating to say the least

When I was your age I started off by making inexpensive commercials for small minded clients such as local car dealerships or rundown shopping malls, eateries and the like. I made dozens, maybe a hundred or more of these over the course of about 10 years, which then led to bigger and better commercials; regional and even a couple of national ones. It's a fantastic way to learn how to tell a story and how to get along with narrow minded clients. Every commercial serves a purpose for someone and taught me great discipline in following simplistic demands of simplistic customers while trying my best to make a good story work. My 20 years living in Communist Czechoslovakia taught me how to sneak my own ideas under the radar of authority figures.

If I would be young again today, I would try to hook up with some local or regional news blog or municipality outfit that lives off of low budget ads online. I imagine myself convincing the CEO of such a blog or digi-newspaper to let me create animated ads in one designated small square of their front page. The way this would work would be that clients would be offered my space to make an ad based on their client's specs instead of having the blog post badly done ads that clients would bring to the news blog themselves.

This has good potential because local businesses don't have the money to spend on a local filmmaker to create a very awful commercial after which the business has to buy space on the local news blog.

I would make the ads in such a way that readers would soon become conditioned to first look up what I came up with that day or that week etc. This means that I would have to be very good at what I do and being of your age this is exactly how I would feel about myself. I would also have a sample reel to prove it.The news blog would pay me at first a very meager salary (enough to pay rent for a room at the end of a sorry street, walking distance from the offices, give me a desk with an old computer at the end of a hallway in their offices and I'd be set to start a life.

The online ad world is going through some serious changes right now, because of Ad Block (which is a fantastic little plug in that blocks that ads on all the webpages you visit) I personnally never see any ads online. The online ads system doesn't require any direct contact between the business and the space owner. There is usually someone (google ads for exemple) that you pay and they will feed ads to your page based one who is visiting it. Traditionnal TV ads are almost gone most people have internet TV, in Korea. Everyone in the ad business is trying to find new ways to show ads online. Enjoy your almost ad free internet because it is going to change a lot

In the end this doesn't matter I think the point Paul is making goes far beyond petty detail about the internet changing. I now understand what Paul said about dropping all rationale and not planing your every next move. It reminds of a painter during the dictatorship in Korea. He was sent to prison for a painting he did. The painting was destroyed by the authorities. But when he got out of prison he did the exact same painting again. Now the dictatorship is gone but the paintings still exist.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I use Ad Block as well and agree with you that I hardly ever come across an ad and take it for granted. But I also understand the need for advertising in the free enterprise system and when I come out with our two hour Slocum story in a couple of months, I'll need to advertise to let the targeted audience know it's available. What disturbs me is how intolerable the way goods and services are advertised today and I believe that my views on the subject are in sync with the majority of the world's consumers.

This is why I think there will be a need to incorporate ads within the content of the product, by which I mean the news blog for instance. Ad Block cannot recognize that an animated story published within the context of the blog is an ad can it? My banner animation would not be an ad on after all but part of the content.

This just might be the right time to approach such interests online. What I would do with my small allotted banner within the page would be to keep it consistently informative in a way that it doesn't insult the intelligence of the reader. I refuse to accept the notion that annoying ads work the best when the annoyance level is at its highest possible level. So perhaps when you say, and I agree with you, that some big changes will have to happen with advertising online, it just might have to be with the way ads are made to be able to co-exist with content.

If I was in the predicament of being in dire financial straights today, I would create a reel of these banner ads done with wit and intelligence and directly approach the New York Times online with it. The stumbling block for the young animator will be they might be too inexperienced and undisciplined in the way they would create this reel which I suspect could come off as too sophomoric -- but that's a whole different thread for a whole different forum.

[CartoonMonkey]

I so regret missing the opportunity to teach out in Maryland and dropping in for a visit Paul! I hope we can meet up at some point.

It's totally humbling and a bit mind blowing that you've been making a living as an independent animator many more years than I've been alive! I've been making my living as an independent 2d animator for around 23 years now, and it's been an incredibly tough climb. But of course, there have been very thin years, with almost no work, and that can continue on into one's later career if you fail to say relevant and stop putting yourself out there. "Out of sight, out of mind." As they say...
I do what I do, because I love it, and I must do it. I'm no good for office work, or anything else. And after so many years, animation and cartooning come easily to me, so I continue to learn and take on new challenges.

I've seen a lot of students go into art school getting into major debt (Here in the US, school costs quite a bit, and that's a subject for another time) and focus on 3d animation, and I think to myself: How can anyone continue to make a living at that? The only way I've gotten jobs, is to try and maintain an individual sense of style, and hope that people seek out something that stands out from the crowd as different from all the rest. I also have an "if you build it, they will come" type of attitude, which is the closest thing I get to being sort of Zen. If I make new films, they make ripples in the big pond of life, and perhaps some good energy comes back to you in the long run.

I think ultimately, the world is starving for originality, good storytelling, and interesting artwork. The job of the independent animator is to stay fresh, continue to explore and evolve, -network!- and keep working in your various subjects of interest, and the work will come. I totally agree on studying the humanities as well. An animator is nothing without a great sense of history and being able to tell a good story. I would have never became an animator if I didn't fall in love with drawing from an early age, and keep practicing it daily. I also owe quite a bit to the importance of meeting other cartoonists and animators / artists in the field, from whom I've continually learned new techniques and ideas from, aside from just reading books on technique.

The internet has really enabled me to connect so much more with clients. Just totally invaluable to me and my business. And hey! The message boards and people at TVPaint aren't so bad either.

[Paul Fierlinger]

a bit mind blowing that you've been making a living as an independent animator many more years than I've been alive! I've been making my living as an independent 2d animator for around 23 years now, and it's been an incredibly tough climb.

It hasn't always been easy for me either, particularly since I turned down jobs where it was required that I stay on agency defined style (usually one of their own artists). But I am convinced that style has everything to do with success in generating commissioned work.

I noticed a steady rise in commissions as I slipped from all out cartooning of my Sesame Street years into more realistic body proportions which in turn pushed me into more realistically animated body language of my characters but particularly after I had met Sandra who has a fine arts background in painting did our lives become relaxed and manageable. I was never strong in painting. I have an unrefined color palette and never found pleasure in painting. Quite rapidly the change in our collective style began to generate a new type of clientele, namely producers and directors of live action documentaries who always are on the lookout for a non cartoony style of animation to complement their serious subject matter.

There is a strong need for such animators because doumentarists often lack footage of events that had occurred too far in the past or to reflect inner feelings of subjects or to illustrate their soliloquies which only animation can achieve so well due to the ease one can turn imagery into more abstract forms and metaphors. Once we discovered this, it was a natural for us to attempt producing our own, all animated documentaries, from head to tail.

Our success with a couple of these films are now leading us into self distribution over the net where we have already observed that viewer's tastes for our type of art has generated strong interest particularly after our PBS films began to appear online. Therefore I highly recommend that if anyone just starting out feels that she or he have the drawing skills to go into this direction they should not shy away from the higher demands the animation of such characters requires and should pursue this genre. We have more offers than we could ever manage and are often asked if we know of anyone who can do what we do...

[CartoonMonkey]

Hrm.. interesting! I may in fact cultivate a more realistic style to try and sell in the near future.
If you get any more of those sorts of inquiries, and need to recommend someone, I'd be always glad to throw my hat into the ring, and give it the old college try anyway.

[Paul Fierlinger]

The head is much too big, the buttons given too much prominence while the S curve stance screams Toons!!!:D Think Goya, or 16th century "cartone" sketches of the Renaissance masters, the beginning of the modern cartoon. This style of animation must be far removed from the funnies to be taken seriously by docu directors. Start with a thin pen and ink line and a refresher course in quicky life drawing -- but it is not my place to tell other pros how to draw.

[CartoonMonkey]

All valid criticism, and I thank you for it.

I have spent so much time and cartoon world, drawing realistically becomes a bit of a chore. I think I could get closer with practice.

Although I never want animation to stop being hard work. it's one of the things that attracted me to the art form. Being able to constantly study, evolve and learn new things.

[momo]

About those documentaries, this year in Annecy there was a noticeable ammount of them. The interesting thing I noticed is that I felt more animation in some of the films would have actually been better then live action footage. It makes things clearer and simplifies the unecessary details of live action to let the audience focus on the point the documentary is trying to make.

Think Goya, or 16th century "cartone" sketches of the Renaissance masters, the beginning of the modern cartoon. This style of animation must be far removed from the funnies to be taken seriously by docu directors. Start with a thin pen and ink line and a refresher course in quicky life drawing -- but it is not my place to tell other pros how to draw.

Are there any example of an animated documentary in a 16th century sketches style?

[Paul Fierlinger]

What was the general style of those Annecy documentaries? Cartoony or closer to what I have described. Here you can see some samples of my work -- not exactly Goya, but...welll, not cartoony either.
http://forum.tvpaint.com/viewtopic.php? ... cum#p79190" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[momo]

When you talk about Goya's sketches it makes me think of Feliks Toposki and Honore Daumier.

The two feature films I saw at Annecy:

Moug
Réalisation : Ahmed NOUR
Pays : Égypte, Maroc

http://www.annecy.org/a-propos/archives ... m-20140775

And

Truth Has Fallen
Réalisation : Sheila SOFIAN
Pays : États-Unis

http://www.annecy.org/a-propos/archives ... m-20142261

Neither had cartoony approach. The first one was very much like "Waltz with Bashir" in terms of style. The theme was the Suez canal and the social unfairness related to it. The animation was used to depict things that happened but were not filmed.

"Truth has Fallen" was using animation to depict the feelings. Not realistic but more "morphing" from one feeling to the next. It is hard for me to describe with words (the vignette you see ont he url illustrates the animated sequence well) The theme was the wonderful privatised prison system of the US, the main focus was on people who spend long prison terms while being completely innocent. Animation was very very powerful at making you feeling the unfairness and clostrophobic feeling of being in prison.

I believe in 2009 the winner of short film was an animated documentary. It was an interview of a kids terrible life.

Title: Slave
Directors: David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn
Country: Sweden

http://www.story.se/films/slaves/

Here is an exemple where a cartonny approach is used (which bugs me because you can see the artist has kind of an influence of John K.)

http://storycorps.org/animation/

I do noticed that all those film have very serious subject matter. Which shows once again to the world that animation is not just for kids...

[Paul Fierlinger]

If we want to stick to the theme of your thread I have to contribute with a word of caution that these may be films that want to serve a purpose along the line of Bashir and their intents may be noble, but I doubt too many people will be anxious to pay to download any of them. I say this because there are plenty of live action documentaries of this type to be found on TV news, mostly cable news in the States.

At this difficult period of world events I suspect most people are turning to the Net in search for escape from the horrors of life but preferably escape with meaningful, intelligent content that speaks directly to the soul. Now what that would be can only be up for debate but I doubt even a world conference on the subject would ever reach a unified consent with a paradigm. This is where authenticity of an artist enters and I am of the sincere opinion that any film with a serious and enlightening subject matter will work only if the author/animator has personal experiences and deep, opinionated feelings about the chosen subject. The film should be made in such a way that the targeted audience of one will instantly recognize truth in the making and will spread the link among friends.

I suspect that a lot of these documentary films popping up with more frequency at festivals are insincere attempts to follow the leader, which won't sell well online. I have to return to the comparison with literature -- only books written with explicit honesty will find a large following, though there will always be a "Bridges of Montgomery County" undeservedly sneaking onto the best seller list. True art never has an easy birth before living a long and fruitful life but those are one of those risks we take without preplanning.