Day in the life

A Day in The Life

Daily tasks/Responsibilities

The main tasks are making complex animated scenes with a few frames a day. When starting the first daily tasks would be to create a storyboard, which is almost like a comic stripe with the material and getting a feel for what movement would need to happen in between frames.

When you get further into the creation process the next steps would be to make the motion. When the motion is finished, there is a responsibility to either send the work over to a seperate team which colors it or you yourself will be in charge of coloring as well as adding shadows.

Another responsibilty may be to set a straight deadline which you must follow. This deadline will often follow coordinating meeting with the employer or other animators. This is also used for progress tracking. Deadlines are also useful because it gives a vision of how many frames or what to do in a day. Failure to meet a deadline could result in money loss or even job loss.


Setting

The setting will vary depending on the type of work currently being done, the tasks, or the type of animator you are. Some animators work inside of the comfort of their homes. Other times, you will be required to work within an office setting alongside other employees.

People's likes

There is a multiude of reasons why someone would like this career. Some reasons include:

  1. Having creative freedom with what you were instructed to do
  2. Being able to often times work from home
  3. Showing their art skills with the world
  4. Being able to see their work in a popular show or movie

The bad side

Some finds that this job is not fun at all. Other find that this job is tiring. Here are the most common things people might say about this job:

  1. Long hours
  2. Tight deadlines
  3. Working with others can lead to feeling inferior
  4. Tough requests
  5. Not being allowed to add their own touch
  6. Strict employers
  7. Back problems from sitting and looking down at a screen for long hours
  8. Coordination with others may prove tiresome

Job type

This job is often categorized as being more fast paced but at the same time tedious. This stems from having strict deadlines all while battling against the tediousness of making scene after scene where there is barely any change in motion.

Most of the work in independent, but some times employees must work with others to coordinate movement and fluidity.

This job is also very repetivie, and high pressure. Pressure to perform on time and do their absolute best is present. This job also required repetitive behaviors like animating similar scenes over and over again or even the same location or characters.

A video discussing the goods and bads of being an animator, from an animator:

A day in the life