Andrew Cottingham
The animation school
16/11/2015
Creative career plan
Contents
The animation industry.......................................................................................... 3
Alternative careers................................................................................................ 3
Career plan............................................................................................................ 3
Roles and responsibilities...................................................................................... 4
The animation industry
The up and coming animation industry in South Africa is still young and growing
with many opportunities for students to entry and contribute to the industry
helping it to grow and become internationally recognisable.
Many other animation industries such as America and Europe have a well
founded animation industry as they were formed during the 1940s 1950s where
animation became recognisable within the film industry. Where they started to
shape what animation is seen as today and has their own style of animation.
South Africa being such a diverse place to live needs its own style which is what
we as animators are doing defining who and what we are and how we want the
rest of the world to view us and our work as America has done.
With an up and coming animation industry it becomes hard to compete with
other countries such as America and Europe where they have spent much time
refining what people want to see such as characters and what appeals to the
viewers.
This becomes hard for south Africa to introduce its own style to the world as
everyone has a Disney expectation and this makes it hard as we want something
to call our own and for people to love as much as the typical western style of
animation.
Alternative careers
My career path is to become a rigger a very technical job within animation which
allows characters and many other things the ability to be moved and set keys so
that movement can be carried out. With much time and effort put into rigging it
would give me a better understanding to move into animation as I would be able
to push the characters as hard as I possibly could. Because I have a great
understanding of what the rig is able to do.
But this would only be a field that I would want to go into as a last resort as I am
extremely happy working within the technical department as I look for technical
challenges and how I am to solve to the problems and any other that people may
come across.
Career plan
The position I want to hold in 10 years.
In ten years I want to be a technical director someone who is head of a team that
determines the best outcome and best approach in which to tackle the project.
To give all the necessary tools to his team so that their work flows would be fast
and efficient.
I have already started on this path as I have applied to a new collage that offers
a fourth year in a specialized field of animation being rigging where I would
spend a year writing thesis on what it is I am doing. Giving me a better
understanding of what I am doing.
Moving into the industry as a rigger I would have to start off being a junior
animator which is where I would be able to show off my skills. And in my own
time build on the work I want to do which still falls under rigging but also putting
time and effort into animation.
After two year in the animation industry I would like to be moved out of the junior
animator sector and placed into a job within rigging that requires more effort and
bigger responsibilities. And slowly use this as means of getting me to position of
technical director.
Four years of being a mid ranged rigger should by now have given me the time
and experience to now want to become a senor rigger which is where my work
will stand out most as people will start to look to me for answers and solutions to
the work that needs to be done. By this time I would have extensive knowledge
in many other programmes as well as being able to code which is one of the
needs of becoming a technical director.
Roles and responsibilities
The roles and responsibilities of being a rigger after working in the industry for a
short amount of time I have a better understanding of the pace of what is
needed and what my role was as a junior rigger is to look and listen to what is
needed for the project is.
Working closely with the technical director I was given some insight to what he
does and what is expected for the position. Spending much of his time coding
and working closely with the junior riggers he tells them what is needed of them
and the time constraint given to them.
Part of his job is to view the work that I had done and test it so that it can be
moved onto the stage of production which would be animation. He needs to
make sure that there are no bugs or problems with the work been given over.
He also needs to give the director and the producers an idea of how long the
work is going to take and what he would need in terms of staff and programmes
being used depending on the project being worked on.
A technical director needs to have a great understanding of other programmes
that would be used in a technical department. And he would need to be able to
teach and help many of the other people in this department so that they would
be cable of working the same programme to split the work load.
All this information that I have acquired has been given to me by a technical
director within the animation industry I worked alongside him and he gave me a
great understanding of what is needed from me as a junior animator to a become
a technical director and how hard it is to work for that as my goal.
