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.