Jobs

Throughout this blog I have tried to give an idea of where there are jobs available in the pipeline, the kind of things that they entail and even a few examples of the people who fulfil some of these roles. To summarise what I believe to be the case and what has been backed up by the research that I have done over the past 9 months I was unsurprised to find that jobs in animation and modelling are the hardest to come by. However, whilst these jobs are rarely advertised by big companies (contrary to this Pixar are currently advertising for an animator) most of these companies are open to C.V.s at all times. So whilst there may not be a role readily available, should you send your C.V. to a larger company and should you impress them, they may try and make room for you or keep your details on record ready for when an opening does present itself. I tried to e-mail several animation companies and whilst I was often replied to with just FAQ's Aardman's (The Bristol based animation company famous for Wallace and Gromit and Creature comforts) informed me that any C.V's that they receive  if they're good enough, will be kept on record for 6 months and the person responsible for it may be contacted within this time. So whilst there are few animation and modelling jobs out there, that isn't to say that if you're good enough you won't get in. The reason for this lack of jobs in this field is simply the copious amounts of competition, when starting out nobody wants to be a member of the staff who stay behind closed doors getting no credit for their work except for a credit at the end, they want to be the animator who's work is there for everyone to see. 
This mentality is the reason that there are openings in other areas of animation, Storyboarding for example, any good animator should have an understanding of the storyboard process though most don't want a job in it. I see this as an opening in the market that I could possibly fill, whilst I would love to work as an animator or a Character designer, by starting out in storyboarding I could gain a firmer grasp of how everything works, invaluable information for progressing up a chain. This kind of background also makes you more desirable for smaller companies, the likes of RJDM or Slurpy Studios are small so employees have to double up, to be capable of performing more than one task. By being able to animate, design and storyboard at a high standard you instantly become far more of a desirable employee. 

Final output

Now that the editing stage is done, the animation is finally completed, it is now simply a matter of rendering out your final video/game onto whatever format it should require and then releasing it into the world. This might mean having it put onto disks and shipped around the world for people to watch or play, or putting it onto the internet to be seen by thousands of people. It can also mean giving it to the client and hoping that it fulfils what they desired and eventually getting paid. Then it's onwards and upwards on to the next project and the pipeline can start again! For a feature length animation, this can mean 3 maybe even 4 years work coming to an end for hundreds of people (To get an idea of how many people might work on one film, and sticking with the shrek theme, here's a list of all cast and more importantly crew who worked on Shrek http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0126029/fullcredits) and they can now begin their next project using the latest technologies.

Editing

The penultimate stage in the pipeline is editing, this stage is vital to ensure that the animation is the best that it can be, it's a chance to remove anything that's not needed, or might be inappropriate and to ensure that it flows seamlessly from one scene to the next. In essence it is vital to make it a full animation, rather than a collection of random clips. Walter Murch a film and sound editor was quoted saying 'Film editing is now something almost anyone can do at a simple level and enjoy it, but to take it to a higher level requires the same dedication and persistance that any art form does.' This accurately sums up the skill required to be a truly great editor, it can be the difference between a great animation and a good one, whilst the scenes might be brilliant, the models almost human, the animation flawless, if they're thrown together in a hap hazard fashion they lose all context, all direction and all credibility, whilst it can be easy to get to the end of an animation and become excited at the prospect of having a finished piece, it's important to take your time and thoroughly think through the last stages of the pipeline as they are just as important as any other. There are a number of jobs in editing, because it's important to have a number of people working on the same thing so that they can act to check up on one another, what one may see as unnecessary another may feel is vital. However as stated above, it is similar to an artform to master the process and world class editors are as hard to come across as world class animators or artists. Having said all that, should the storyboard have been as detailed as it could have been, the editing process can be a fairly painless and efficient one, vital none the less.

Compositing

Compositing is, in essence, the culmination of everything, the various layers that have been rendered out can now be bought together to create the final images, so whilst one layer may have the lighting on it, another may have the background, another the texture and so on. These are then brought together to create what will become the final image. Should there be something wrong with a frame, for example the lights dim too much then that frame can be singled out, the lighting layer taken into photoshop or another editing programme, the brightness notched up and the newly edited layer can be returned. Doing things this way makes the editing process a far more simple one, and you must have true faith in your animation to render it out as a complete file. There are very few jobs in composition, this process is normally done by the editing team or, in smaller companies, simply by the animators. Below is an image giving an idea of how layers are combined to create a final image. 

Rendering

Once the lighting is completed the film is almost ready to move into pre-production, first of all however it has to be rendered. This process is where the computer takes over and begins to compute what you're animation is going to look at this. Dependant upon the size and detail of the animation, this process can be an extremely long winded one and at major animation companies such as Pixar this is done by a render farm, a bank of computers all working to render out the frames. The variously layers are usually rendered separately so that should something be found to have gone wrong it can be easily edited, however some companies do not bother with this in the hopes that everything has worked as intended. There are a number of different ways in which things can be rendered, naturally it's important to be able to render out basic versions of the animation, this allows you to ensure that they work correctly, there are no issues with the animation and everything is going to plan, they can also be shown to clients to ensure that they're happy with the final outcome. Once they have the go ahead then the rendering process to begin, there are a number of rendering softwares that allow for greater quality renders, quicker render times etc... Vray is one such programme, it allows the user to add a number of particle effects, dust, etc... to create ultra realistic, visually stunning rendered final pieces. The video at the top of this page is a demo reel showing things that have been produced by Vray and a number of top animators. Jobs in the rendering section of animation are often done by people who also specialise in other areas such as lighting, texturing etc ... The website below is a website for people to offer their jobs and for freelance animators to respond and offer to do, it has a number of jobs that involve 3D rendering, showing that there is a market for people in the field, despite the current economic climate. 
http://www.freelancer.co.uk/jobs/Rendering/

Lighting

Once the animation has been finished (although this stage may require some lighting to already have been put into place) the lighting can be added to a scene. Naturally, dependant on the type of animation you are trying to produce, different lighting will have to be used. For example a film where the majority of scenes are set under water e.g. Finding Nemo, requires completely different lighting effects to a film set on a distant planet close to a sun. With each scene the lighting will change and complicated lighting rigs can be developed in order to make the characters seem more realistic. As with drawing, it's important to consider the light source frequently in order to understand what is going to be visible and what won't so that animators can understand where to put emphasis and what requires less focus. Lighting can also be used to great effect, it can change the mood and feel of a scene, if two characters are fighting for example then it may be fairly powerful if it's just out in broad daylight, however if they're in the middle of a storm with every strike of lightning lighting their bodies the scene instantly becomes so much more. Whilst 3D lighting can be fairly complex, it can be far harder in 2d animation, to consider every element, the way the light will hit it, the use of reflection etc... There has to be a lot of thought put into ever frame. In turn, Stop motion also throws up a lot of issues when it comes to lighting, for it must remain constant throughout and cannot be knocked or dimmed at any point else the animation will become jumpy. Lighting, whilst not always the longest stage of the pipeline, require large amounts of thought and dedication in order to produce something realistic and noteworthy. Around this text you can see some examples of my own work showing the impact that different light sources would have on it, I decided on the last light source in the bottom image, where the slightly yellowish glow comes softly through the window, I was hoping to replicate the light of the sun, a far softer more natural light than that of a bulb. The middle image shows such a light, and although it was before I had finished texturing my room it is clearly very harsh, the top image is a clay render, the objects are devoid of texture and the light source comes from a render setting called Global Illumination which replicates the glow of the sun and creates a rather soft light.

To give an idea of how complex a stage lighting can be, the image below shows the credits from Shrek and gives an idea of the number of people it takes to create a truly brilliant animation. 

Animation

Now comes the period in which to animate the characters, backgrounds etc... that have been developed over the previous stages. It is obviously vital to stick to the script and storyboard in order to maintain the intende plot, however it is important that the work is amended and checked over and over, for something that may have seemed like a good idea at the beginning may simply not work when actually put on screen. It is a very subtle art form to ensure that the characters movements, interactions with one another and the physics of the entire film are believable, if not a viewer who is completely naive to how animation takes place will be capable of spotting when things are wrong. This process can take vast amounts of time, not simply because the animation process is so incredibly long, but because it can also encompass huge amounts of research to ensure that characters move in a certain way, that the wind acts in a natural manner, that the water ripples are believable  there is more to the animating process than simply grabbing part of the rig, dragging it somewhere else and allowing the computer (in the case of 3D animation) do the rest of the work. Truly gifted animators shouldn't need dazzling models or beautiful scenes to make their work realistic or of a high standard, it is their eye for detail, the way in which they understand movement, their use of the 12 principles of animation that make them brilliant. Below is a video that received much popularity and, if rumours are to be believed, landed the man responsible for it a job at Pixar. However by no means is it the best model and definitely not the best scene that I have ever seen, but the movement is so believable, so well observed and full of character, this is the true sign of a gifted animator and this can often be the reason that animation is such a long process. Not only is it a long process when animating a video, but it takes years of practice, of observation and persistance to reach even a decent standard of animation, let alone to master the art.