Marketing Yourself As An Animator

Most animators work on contract, usually employed for 3 – 12 months at a time. As with most contract work, one of the biggest challenges is to always have work.

Ideally you want to jump from one contract to the next without much down time in between (unless of course you can afford a break).

Aside from having great animation skills, how you market yourself as an animator is one of the most important factors in managing your career. It helps to keep new contracts rolling in and keep you working.

Here are a few different ways to market yourself and help keep you steadily employed….

Networking
I know, you hear this all the time “you gotta network”. This is simply staying in touch with people in the industry that you already know and trying to meet new people (usually through the people you already know). Even if you do much of it online, at least they get your name and see your work. You want people to know your there so they can send you work or recommend you. If your not networking, your hibernating.

Website or Blog
Showcasing your talents on a site or blog is a quick and easy way for potential employers to view your body of work. It also provides a way for you to organize your work with your sites pages – life drawings, modelling, animation demo, other art forms can all be stored on seperate pages.

When you apply for a job, they will also be able to browse through all your other stuff if they want to or just go directly to the area that they are looking to hire you for.

LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com)
Speaking of networking, LinkedIn is an online networking site for professionals and there is a huge animation industry presence there. I think LinkedIn’s About Us page describes it best…

“When you join, you create a profile that summarizes your professional expertise and accomplishments. You can then form enduring connections by inviting trusted contacts to join LinkedIn and connect to you. Your network consists of your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to a vast number of qualified professionals and experts.”

I would like to add that you can also get recommended by other professionals and add a link to your own site or Utube demo reel, among other features. Speaking of Utube demo reels…

Utube Demo Reel
It’s no big secret that Utube is rammed with animation demo reels. It is a very easy way for studio folks to veiw your demo reel via a link. If you set up a Utube account you will get a free channel which you can design (much like a twitter home page) and upload as many videos as you like. You could also embed your uploaded videos onto your site which is made quite easy to do.

AWN (Animation World Network)
AWN is absolutely my #1 recommended resources for animation industry information. It’s one of, if not the most used sites by animation studios to post available positions and find qualified animators. I like being able to find studios by location through AWN. There’s lots of other stuff in there as well. The site has a section called ‘AWN Career Connections’. Here you can browse jobs and create a jobseeker account to post (and edit) your resume for industry recruiters to view.