Transcripts
1. Introduction: Being self-taught on Blender, teaching yourself animation does not prevent you from having a wonderful career working for incredible
projects and clients, and really getting
to see your dream of being a 3D animator
come to life. Hi. I'm Madison Erwin, I'm a 3D Animator. You may have seen
some of my work in the new Spider-Verse movie, also a few Marvel projects including the series I Am Groot, and my niche is 3D animation. I'm the person that puppeteers and breathes life
into the characters. In this class, today,
we're going to be diving into finding
what your niche is specifically and carving
out your career as a 3D animation professional
in the industry. I'm so excited to teach
this class today because freelancing was something that was a whole other world to me. I'm hoping to give
this the step-by-step guide of things
that I failed from, things that I learned from, so that way you can have a head start on your career
as a freelancer. We're going to go over
how to build a demo reel, how to have a clean website, how do you talk to recruiters? How to land your first gig, and how to deal with invoicing, and being your own
business person , and staying organized. You should take this class
if you have first started to make that transition
between learning animation, being a student, and I'm ready to take
this professional. I'm ready to get paid
for what I'm doing. You should take this class too, if you've already had a
few professional gigs in animation and you're
trying to figure out, how am I going to make a
further career path in this? Because I want you to walk away knowing really what
your niche is, how to market yourself correctly in that niche so that
way you can stand apart from all the other people applying for jobs in this
industry of freelance. I can't wait to teach
you everything I know, so that way you to can land your dream career in
animation. Let's get started.
2. Find Your Niche: Hi, welcome to the class. I'm here to help you
find your niche. I'm going to tell you
how I found mine, and then we're going to
make sure that you have a plan to be able to
get your own dream job. When I was first starting
freelance animation, the first thing I was focused on was I just wanted a job, so a lot of times I
was just applying. It wasn't really focusing
on a specific area, it was just a
widespread job search. Then after my first
one or two gigs that I ended up having, I started to really try to
narrow it down because I had the experience to back me
now and now I could be like, okay, what do I really
want to focus on? I knew all throughout
learning animation, my strong suit and my most
fun skill was acting. That lends itself to
feature animation because feature animation
is so acting-heavy. Other niche animation genres
have their own acting, but feature animation is
specifically known for that. I knew I wanted to do
high-quality work, I wanted to do acting that
felt like it was into already pushing me against my will into feature
animation because I was like, okay, this sounds cool, it
sounds like something I could be good at,
and also Enjoy. Throughout my time, freelancing,
especially at the start, I did a lot of
different things that I didn't even think
I wanted to do. I had done some video games, I had done VFX. VFX was very low on my list
of things I wanted to do, but I had a lot of fun and I
learned a lot on that job. I learned things that
I liked about it, and I learned things
that I did not like and did not want to repeat. I think that's also a
very valuable thing, sometimes taking gigs that
you may not even think you'd like and you're going to be able to find
something that you're going to learn from and
also things that you know, okay, I never want to do
something that involves X, Y, or Z again. Maybe you already know
what your niche is. Maybe you've done a few
things in the past. You've done a few gigs.
You know I want to get into VFX or I want
to get into video games. If you don't know, what I
want you to do is go back, look at your body of work
that you have already. Maybe you already
have a demo reel, maybe you just have work and you haven't even made
a demo reel yet. Look at realistically
what your skill set is. What do you think
is the marriage between what am I good at, what does my demo
reel show and my work show that I
could be good at, and also what do I want to do? What is my heart telling me? I think a really
important thing to work out when you're starting your freelance journey
and you're narrowing down this niche is knowing what
the long-term goal is here. Are you going to want to
work only staff gigs? Do you want security
in your job? Maybe that lends itself
more towards video games. Video games has a lot
more staff positions. Or maybe you really like project topping. I did
that for a long time. I love just working
on different projects for super short amount of time, and I would just jump in specifically when
projects were in crunch or wrapping up because I found that fun
because I'm insane. Maybe that's something that you really like and you want to cater your niche towards
that specific goal. Make sure that you're
keeping the broader scope of what's your niche
and what is that going to lend itself
to in the future. Now I want you to go and really look at your past body of work. Think about what am I good at, What do I like doing, and what is my long-term goal in terms of what career do I want. Another really important
thing to consider in terms of long-term goals with your
niche is you need to research. Make sure you know you have realistic expectations of what's the longevity of your career. Are you wanting to go into future film and you know
that it's really hard, it's very competitive
to get into studios like Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks? Those are going to be a
much higher competition and a much lower employment rate versus let's say, video games. Video games is very
popular right now. It's very much trending, there's a lot of people
getting into it. Lots of indie game
studios that are doing incredible work that
people want to be a part of and they need people. Just knowing what is the
realistic expectations of, am I going to be able to
find a job easy or is this going to be really difficult to get
into this career? Either of those are fine. You just need to know what is a realistic expectation of the timeline of me actually
getting my dream job. Now I want you to go and think about all these things
that we talked about, really land on your niche of where do you want
your career to be, what do you want to
be doing long term, and then meet me in the
next class and we're going to talk about
building your demo reel.
3. Create Your Demo Reel: Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to be going over how to build your demo reel, how to build your website, and good tips and
tricks for demo reel. Specifically, making sure that it is readable, it is clear, and it is specialized towards whatever niche of animation
you're trying to get into. The important part of a demo
reel is this is what you're showcasing yourself as an
artist to your employer. Whoever your prospective
employer is, your client is, your demo reel is a reflection of you and
who you are as an artist. Something that I heard
very early on in my animation career was you are only as good as the worst
shot on your demo reel. You need to make
sure that you're showcasing your best work and you need to show a good
level of versatility, but also making sure
that you're not showing anything that you would hate for someone to hire
you based off of. We're going to be going
over some practical tips of how to choose those shots, how to choose that work,
and what to leave out. First things first, I have
my demo reel pulled up here. This is one of my newer ones
of some of my new body of work from different shows I've worked on and also
as you can see, still some personal
student shots. I keep some personal
shots on my demo reel specifically because I like
to be able to show that, hey, I do work outside of production, Maybe you're first starting
out as a student and you only have student work,
that's totally okay. You can have student work and I've gotten a lot of
my first jobs with just student work on
my demo reel because I never got from the first
few freelance gigs I did, I never got the
actual shots back. That's totally
okay to have that. But as you start
growing as an artist, as you start taking more gigs, you start getting more
things that now I actually have production work
to be able to show on this. A good demo reel
is a mix of both. Specifically, if
you are also going into feature animation,
it's important to show, hey, I do work outside
of just my studio work. Because a big thing that
feature animator employers want to see in recruiters
is they want to see, does this person
have good ideas? Everyone can be an animator, but to become a great animator
that's really employable, you have to be able to have good ideas and you have to
be able to showcase that, hey, I can come up
with ideas myself, I can riff, I can
figure out new things. That's what really makes
you a different animator comparatively to just a good
animator that can execute. Now, we're going to
dive into my memorial. Starting off, we have
title card, important. This should be the first
thing that they see. Here we have my name, Madison Erwin, character
animation reel. Also, contact information, I have my email, phone number, things that you
use for business. As you can see, I have a shot underneath of it. This is a shot that
I did in production, but it wasn't long enough
to put my demo reel. It didn't really feature much. It's just a breathing
cycle as you can see. Nothing really fancy. I thought it looked cool though. I was like, this would be a
cool title to my demo reel. However, you do not have
to have a shot plane. If anything, this
is a little bit of a risky move, I would say. Don't necessarily say,
let me grab something of my work and throw it on a demo reel just so it looks pretty. Ideally, for the longest time until I did the
Spider-Verse shot, I had just a black
title card and it had just my name and
my contact information. Next thing, I like to start off my demo reels with one
of my better shots. Now, there's conflicting advice about this and I
agree with all of it, but my personal approach
is I show one of my best shots first and I show
my second best shot last. I do this specifically
because you want to leave people with a good
taste in their mouth. Having a good shot at the end, if they watch your
reel all the way to the end, it
leaves a good taste. Also, the first shot being
one of your best shots too, also hooks them in. For this first one,
this is a pretty long, I think this is the longest
shot in my demo reel. It's a long acting shot. This is something that
specifically I've put in because it's
a dialogue shot too. If you have dialogue, that's
a really good way to start off and have something
that's entertaining. It gets the viewer has
a lot of acting in it, so that's always a
good thing to show. This is specifically
my reel catering towards feature animation. Next off we have another
Spider-Verse shot. This is just a very
subtle shot that I did of Gwen's dad just talking very simple, very
visually appealing. The lighting and ink
and paint department did incredible on this shot. It's so pretty. I was like, that'd be a great
pretty one to show, the acting is there. Again, another good acting
shot because that's specifically what I'm trying
to cater my reel towards. As you can see, there's not
a lot of body mechanics, there's not a lot of characters moving around and going crazy. A lot of more subtle
things like this. The next shot in my demo reel, these are two very short shots, but I had two shots
in a sequence that went right next to each other
and I got to work on Lyla, which she was really fun
because she had a lot of different things
going on and lots of ink lines and stuff that we
got to play around with. I call this a filler shot of something that's in
there. It's pretty. Next up on my demo reel, I have a personal work. This is something I did after I had already been
in the industry. I had, had a few jobs.
I think I was working a full time job at this
point and then I did an animation mentorship
workshop and I did this shot
outside of work hours. That was chaotic. I don't recommend that. I did it all after hours
while working like 50, 60 hour weeks doing OT on
a project. Crazy shot. But I put this in because
it's nice to be able to show, hey, I can work with
different rigs, different characters,
different styles. You can definitely tell
this is a personal shot, it's not pretty and
lit and rendered. I think it's a good
thing to show. I'd say these are some of
the weaker shots in my reel, but they show a lot of acting. That's why I wanted
to keep them in here. But these shots specifically
are ones I'd like to replace one day and so I need to work on more personal shots
to replace these. I think you should
always have a chunk in your demo reel that you're wanting to update
and that should be your personal shots, anything that you're
working on yourself, you should always be
able to update them. One of my mentors when I was learning animation, told me, "I should not recognize
your demo reel in a year." That sounds simple. It's like, yeah, you should be updating all your
shots within a year, but that's hard to do sometimes, especially when you're
just starting out as a student or just
starting out working in the industry freelance
because you're having to get shots when they're done from the different
productions you've worked on. Sometimes you get them,
sometimes you don't. But it's a good rule of
thumb to try to follow. Next up, we have
a I'm Groot shot. It shows that I have
production experience, I worked on this Marvel series. That's a good thing to show
in your demo reel as well. My next shot I have, this is a cut scene from a video game
I worked on at Ember Lab. This one I think shows
a lot of good acting. I've actually gotten hired specifically off of
these two shots. I know that it's a fan
favorite of my demo reel, which is one of those
things it's really funny when you show
people your demo reel, you might not know
what people really like and what they don't
for whatever reason. But this shows a
lot of subtle work, a lot of subtle acting. You have a character having
a very intense moment, she's crying and it also
looks really pretty too. This is how my demo reel ends. We have these two shots
and then there we go, we're back to a title card. I always like to link
back to the title card. This one doesn't have
a shot underneath it. This is usually
what a title card should look like
on the demo reel. Don't get fancy and try to put a million things all over it. To me, the simpler, the better. I've viewed a lot of students
demo reels before and I sometimes have
clicked off as soon as I see things
happening on the screen. If it's your name and there's bouncing balls and
things happening and you've got a bunch of
little fake animations just coming in and
it's too much. You want to keep this
as simple as possible. As you can see, I just
have a black screen. I'm using DaVinci Resolve here
as my program because I'm cheap and I wanted to go in
and just put basic text, my name, number, how to contact me. That's it. That way it's a nice
little loop too. By the end of your
demo real, again, this is about four, five seconds and I have that
and then it ends and then it will just loop back to the beginning whenever
someone is watching this. Now, I want you to go away, look at your own demo reel or just your body of
work that you have. If you don't have
a demo reel yet, start thinking about ways
that you could craft your demo reel to be a bit
more specific to your niche. If you have a demo reel already,
go ahead and update it. See if you can make a new cut of it and see if you
can take out things or add something and really make an impact through
your demo reel.
4. Build Your Website: You've made your demo real,
you've got your title card, you've got everything
that you need. Where are you going to put it? Two places, you're
going to put it. One, you're going to
save it somewhere nice, not on your desktop,
and then you're going to also apply
it onto your website. Having a website is a
stand in for your resume. If people want to
try to find you, search you up by your name, you want your website to pop up to the top of
the Google search. That way people can find out
more information about you, more work that's supplementary
if they need to. It's just a good thing
to have. I also have my resume on my website
alongside my demo reel. But your demo reel should be front and center
because as an artist, that's what matters
is your body of work. This is my website. This
is madisonerwin.com This is what I first
start off with. This is very, very basic. You do not need to know
how to do websites, you don't need to be a
graphic design artist. We are going as
basic as possible. I am not a graphics
design person, I'm just going for simple. I'm going for clarity
and readability. Also on my website, over here I've got portfolio, so that's going to
be your demo reel. A portfolio could also mean, let me put some of my 3D
sculpting work and some of my concept design
and illustration. I don't think that's
a bad thing to put if you want to put it
in your entire portfolio, but I think it
should definitely be a separate page from
your demo reel, specifically, if you're trying
to apply as a 3D animator. I'll show you specifically
what I did with mine. Here in a minute, once
we're going to go through these three tabs of my website. The next one is resume. This is just going to
be a splash screen of one of my pretty
shots in the background. It's lit and rendered,
so it looks nice. Then I have very,
very basic resume. I'm very basic, I used
resumebuilder.com I did not want to focus on trying to make this really outstanding
resume because again, it gets discarded at
the end of the day. But people do need to know,
what's your background? Have you had actual feature
experience? All that. What's your contact
info? You can click it to download,
which is nice. Some people do like to password protect their resume,
that's totally fine. You can do that on website. I'm using square
space specifically to host my website and build it. Square space, you
can, and I think set password protected pages so
if you're applying for jobs, you can give people a
password to your resume instead of just attaching
it, which is okay. I put mine just on there
for the Internet to see, but that's also an option. My third tab is contact.
This is important to have. I actually have gotten
a weird amount of forms through this website of people contacting me
for animation jobs. I think it's definitely not the most common way for
people to reach out to you for job or an
opportunity for animation. But it has happened
to be quite a bit. I'd say I get one once
every month or two. Always give options for
people to be able to contact you instead of having
to scour your website. This is all just a
preset of Squarespace. I didn't really do any of
this except for this side. This is what I was talking
about referring to earlier instead of
having my illustrations, because I do not
consider myself a 2D artist in any
sense of the word. But just to make this page
look a little bit pretty, I linked to my Instagram to it, so this goes right
to my art Instagram. Just this one down here gives a slide show of some of my
animation, some of my work. If someone really likes it,
they can click on it and it will just pop up and it's
like, there's the post. The next parts about my website, I have hyperlinks to
all my social media. This one specifically, hopefully
you've seen it before. If you haven't,
it's called Vimeo. Vimeo is where a lot of animators host their
animation reels. It's also embeddable. They give you a lot of embeddable links. The really key part about Vimeo that I like and a lot of
animators like specifically, is you can password protect everything in a really easy way. Or you can make it so
that way it's unlisted. It's not on your Vimeo profile, this is just me pulling up. This is Madison Erwin, this is her profile. I have like 10 more
animation reels that are on my personal one. That are unlisted that I can send that has NDA work, I
don't have to think about it. The next thing I have
is just my Instagram. This is all my stuff on here. I have my website
in my bio as well. I have some more behind the scenes stuff
about my animation. I would definitely recommend making a art Instagram
specifically, so that way you can link to it. No one really wants to see
your personal Instagram. I like to share a lot of
behind the scenes things. If you've seen any
of my Instagram, I do stuff like this
where I'm doing reference and silly stuff, so I'm showing the behind
the scenes of my shots. Then last but not least, I have my Linkedin,
very important, we have me and all
my stuff here, everything is connected,
everything works, and it's very, very simple, which is the most
important part. Another thing that's
important to consider is if you have narrowed down
your niche to something, don't show work from another niche that you're not proud of or you
don't think fits. For example, with my demo reel, I don't have any of
my VFX work on there. I specifically want
to do feature film. I'm not super proud of a lot
of the VFX work that I did. There's some good stuff
or some stuff that shows way is nice, whatever. But I don't want it
on my demo real, because I know it's
my weakest skill and I don't want to show people
even though it looks okay. Maybe I could have still gotten jobs even if it
wasn't my demo reel. You don't want to
take that chance. Just make sure that you're only showing the
work that you're really proud of and that's
necessary to put on. Another important aspect of building a website is just
making it really clear. Who are you and what do you do? So mine, top left hand corner, Madison Erwin, animator. If I wanted to get
even more specific, I could have put 3D animator. I like to keep it broad
because I thought it looked pretty anesthetic. Less is more when
it comes to this. If I'm clicking on
someone's website that they applied for a job or
they want to work with me, I am mainly looking
for what's your name, what do you do, what's
your demo reel? Don't worry about having
to build a fancy website. You don't need to become
a graphic designer, a website designer overnight. You just need
something very simple. This is even like a pre built
template from Squarespace, so you don't need to worry
about making it fancy. Remember with your website, make sure your demo reel
is front and center. That's your golden baby
of your animation career. Also, less is more, and make sure that you're
only putting things on your website that follow
and align with your niche. [inaudible] in the
next lesson and we're going to talk about
marketing yourself, networking, and job sites.
5. Market Yourself on LinkedIn: The biggest tool that you're
going to use to be able to land a job into
animation is LinkedIn. First, starting your
animation career and being on LinkedIn is so
vital because you're going to be able to connect
with people that either have really big projects under their belt or are just
starting out as well. This is a great resource
to really network. You have a direct
messaging feature, you can connect with
people so that way you are building this networking site
of people that you know. Be friendly, be nice. You can talk to people and
you can talk to people that have had a lot more
experience than you as well. LinkedIn is an
incredible resource that we're going
to be using a lot, especially when
you're first starting out in your freelance career. This is my LinkedIn,
you got your name, it has your last title, which I was at Sony. It tells where you're at, Los
Angeles metropolitan area. You've got all of
your connections. For me, I have a
header of one of my rendered student work
shots that I thought was cute so I put that
on there just to show animation and it's one of the first
thing that shows up. You can have an about which I just have a silly
little tag line. This is also all of your
experiences that you've had. You can go in and you
can edit these and you make sure you say,
hey, I've done this. I have all the way back
to 2013 when I was a piano teacher back in the day before I started
learning animation. Then you go in and you start adding your animation careers, different freelance
gigs that you've had. As you can see, I was
freelance character animator for nine months. I am again now. It's important to keep this
updated too in real time because you never
know when you need to look for your next gig. You're going in and making
sure that people can look you up really quick online,
do a Google search, find your LinkedIn, and
they are going to have a whole ready list of all of the experience that
you already have. Also you have education. For someone that's self taught, this is there. It's there. I did some animation mentor. I did some KYOSIL, I did a few classes and
did some workshops. But as you can see, I did not
go to a four year school. I went to a four year school for piano theory
and performance. That's still on my profile because I think it's
funny, honestly. But if you don't have any prior education experience,
nobody looks at this. Don't worry, you don't
have to put it on there. I think a big pitfall that
I see a lot of people hit is they make a LinkedIn and they
never touch it again. That's the first thing, or two, you make a LinkedIn. You have no experience
as a character animator yet, which is fine. You're not going to
have experiences and character
animation right away. But as soon as you made
that mental decision, I want to be a
professional freelancer now, put it on your LinkedIn. You've started, you don't
even have to have a job. As you can see with
me, I still have 3D character animator freelance. That's on my LinkedIn so
people know that's what I do. I had put that on before I
even started to have a job, yet before I had my first gig. I just want you
to go on and make sure that you have started
becoming an animator. You already are one so
make sure you fill it out. Don't leave your last
high school summer job on there as the only
thing on your LinkedIn. If you're going to
be an animator, go ahead and act like you
are one because you are and put it on your
LinkedIn as an experience. When you have your LinkedIn, you have it set up, you want to start making
connections with people. A great way to do that is just going through
your home feed. If you start doing
more animation things, you like more animation videos, clips, start seeing people
and start clicking on them saying this is a
character animator, what do they do? Look on their stuff and message, connect, because you never
know who's going to say, I saw your work and I actually
have a project coming up and would you be willing
to work on it with me? A lot of my job opportunities have come from people
messaging me on LinkedIn just because
I'm nosy and I click around a lot and I'm
liking people's posts, I'm commenting, I'm connecting
with a lot of people. Maybe I might write a comment, that's really great, I
love the acting in this. Just getting your name out there is a really
important thing. The next thing I'm going to
show you is jobs on LinkedIn. This is where I have
gotten almost every one of my jobs except
for the past two. It has been through
LinkedIn. Scrolling down. As we can see, this
is a perfect example. We have jobs recommended
for you already. There's some stuff
here. I'm going to hit "Show more"
just to show you. This is just what
LinkedIn is saying, these are a thing here. We have, based on your profile, which is why it's important
to fill out your profile, this is a nice way to say, this is going to show me stuff. I'm in California right
now so it's showing me here's animator jobs in California that
seem like they would fit your job description. [inaudible] musical therapist on here because I sell a piano. But we can say,
senior technical, animation designer, game
producer, combat designer. These are all things
within animation. It's like I have
animation related stuff but this is gameplay designers, this isn't an animator. What we're going to
do is search the top. We're going to
search 3D animator. Here we go. We have
senior gameplay animator. First thing, senior
gameplay animator. Senior animation artist, character animator,
technical animator. All of these are jobs that
you can apply for directly on LinkedIn or a lot of
times they'll take you to another job
application site. This is where I spent 99% of my days when I was first starting out as a
freelance animator. You can start to go
through and you see all these different
filters you can apply. Hey, what do I want
an entry level job? Do I want a mid or a senior
level job? What is my salary? You can even put
that in if you want to see just jobs that pay this much because I know
I need to make this much to make rent next month. You can see different companies specifically if you want
to see if there's more. This is an important one.
I was searching mostly for remote for the first year of my freelance animation journey. Look at the jobs that you'd be most interested in and say, what skills are
they specifically asking for in the description? What skills are valuable
and marketable? Then you can take
those skills that you might have already
and you say, oh, I know how to do this or I
have scripting experience, I have coding experience. Maybe you're going
to go back and go to your LinkedIn and make sure that those are somewhere
in your profile. It doesn't matter if it's under your experience, if
it's in your about, just make sure the buzz words are somewhere in your profile so you're marketing
yourself as something that these studios want to hire. One of the main benefits about
LinkedIn is it gives you access to a lot
of industry pros, people that have been
around in our industry, veterans that are very
seasoned professionals. You can talk to those people,
which is a great thing. You can connect, you
can message them. Great resource, but you
need to use it smartly. You don't want to
be that person, that animation student that is messaging someone that has been at X Studio for
a number of years, is well known, and
you're sitting there messaging them
every day saying, oh, I just love your work. Here's my reel. I want you to look at it and tell
me what you like and what you don't like and
would I get hired at your studio and will you hire me? That's never going to work. You don't want to leave a
bad taste in their mouth. The thing about the
animation industry is, although it's a hugely
growing industry, it is very small. There are about three degrees of separation between you and everyone you know so you need to make sure that
you're not being annoying, you're not coming off as weird. You need to be a friendly
face, a friendly presence. Animation is a very
teachable thing. People love sharing knowledge and learning with animation. If you reach out to
someone in the kind, respectful way, they're very likely to respond
back and to help you. Don't just mass send your
reel to every industry pro. That's a perfect way to get yourself blocked
and not looked at because taking feedback and giving feedback takes a
lot of time and effort. It's honestly what a lot
of industry professionals do as a side hustle of
giving feedback for payment so you don't
want to undermine their time and their
skills by asking people, hey, could you just look at
my shot and give me feedback? Kindly ask, hey, I
really love your work, is there any way I could
pick your brain for 15 minutes over a
Zoom call one day? That's totally fine to
ask. They can say no, which is fine, or have a
specific question in mind. Say, you know what
helps you to really narrow down your job search when you were searching
for a freelance gig. People love getting questions about themselves and
they love talking about themselves
so if you can ask to get someone's
personal experience, they're a lot more likely
to reply than you saying, hey, give me this, do this
for me, can you tell me this? Make it about them. Now I want you to go away. Go make a LinkedIn. If you
don't have one already. Make sure that it's updated, it's filled out with
relevant information regarding the niche of the animation career that
you want to get into, making connections with people and say, hey, how's
your day going? I really appreciate
seeing your work. I love z, y, and z. That's always a
good thing to say. Go make your LinkedIn, start networking with people
and see what happens. Meet me in the next lesson where we're going to be
applying for jobs and getting our first gig.
6. Get Your First Gig: We're on LinkedIn,
we're looking at jobs. You've seen a job that
you want to apply for. What is next? What does that
process even look like? We're going through all
these jobs on LinkedIn. I see this one, senior
gameplay animator. Cool. Maybe I look
through the summary. I see the bigger
part of the summary, and I'm like, okay,
it's mid-senior level. I can even see on LinkedIn how many people have
applied through LinkedIn, which is a cool feature to see. You see, oh, there's 92 people that have
applied for this job. You can see when
they've re-posted it. So are they still
actively looking for people that's
important to see? You can see also, what
skills do we need? This one, they specifically need an animator that
knows Autodesk Maya. There's eight more skills,
so let's jump down to that. Two skills that they
say are on my profile. You can see what
matches with you, if everything in the
summary you think, yep, that's something
that I want. Next thing I'm going
to do is apply. A lot of times on
LinkedIn there's either Easy Apply with LinkedIn which just
shares your profile. Or there's an actual
application button. If we click that,
here's what we have. It's basically,
this is going to be just a copy and paste of whatever the summary
was on LinkedIn, so this is the same
thing. Here we go. But then when you scroll down, now we have a apply
for this job form. This one you're going
to put first name, last name, your email. Make sure that this isn't
likechickendancer98@hotmail.com, Make it something that's
actually related to animation. This is where it gets
a little confusing. A lot of times on
job applications it is a very standard template. It is resume/CV or
a cover letter. Cover letters are fake and
I don't believe in them. Some people may
disagree with that. If you really feel
like you really want this job and you want to write
a cover letter, go for it. But I've talked to a
lot of recruiters, I've talked to a
lot of animators that work with the recruiting, they don't read cover letters. It's very rare that someone
has reading a cover letter, and to me it's a waste of time. Next thing is where do
I put my demo reel. This is a good one
to show because this one specifically
doesn't have a hey link to your show
reel or demo reel. Where I would put personally
on this my demo reel, I would put it under website. I know we just
made a website and we talked about why
you need a websites. Still good that you have a website and if people
search your name, your website should come up, if you do it correctly
and tag it correctly. However, here we're going to put our demo reel on the website. This would just be copying and pasting your link from Vimeo. Also cool thing
about Vimeo is you can see who has
watched your video. So I know if I applied for
this job in California, I can see, oh, viewed in
California, so they watched it. Here it also even has the
option for a LinkedIn profile. Again, LinkedIn is important, so you're going to put
your LinkedIn there. Put your resume as well. That's always a
good thing to have. They always need it. If they
really like your demo reel, they're going to
look at your resume. If you scroll down, they have some different
things depending on the legalities of
whatever country you're working in or
whatever you need to do, totally fine, and they're going to be able to
submit it at the end. The next step in this is, let's say you've submitted
your job application. Sometimes you'll get
email first that says, thank you for submitting
your application. This is a receipt. Basically saying
we've received it, we may not be able to give
you specialized feedback, so don't expect to
hear from us ever again if we don't
accept your job. That's usually pretty standard. You might get that email first, and then if you are accepted, if they want to offer
or talk to you more, offer you an interview, they will send you another email, usually coming from
the recruiter of whatever project or
studio you applied for. They'll say, hey, we saw
your job application. We'd like to move forward with offering you an interview, and so we can talk more about the project and
the scope of work. When would you be
free for a call? Now, when you write an
email or a message back, what you're not going
to say is, "Hey, sure. Sounds good. Let me know." You don't want to say
something like that. You want to be very
professional. Be cordial. Just say, "Hello. Thank you
so much for reaching out. Looking forward to
talking to you. I'd be available for a call." Give them specific dates. Say I'd be available
at this date and this date from this
time to this time. Let me know whatever
dates work best for you and your team, regards. Cheers, Madison. Just your basic email
etiquette goes a long way, especially when you have
lots and lots of animators. You want to try to
set yourself apart by making their job
as easy as possible. One big tip I would
give you with communication is consistency. Make sure that you're
not leaving someone on read for days, weeks. Make sure that you're
trying to constantly check back and reply in a timely manner that
really can make or break sometimes them going with another
candidate versus you. I'd say a big no-no is don't try to offer too much
information too quick. I've seen a lot of
students do that, or a lot of people that
are just starting to learn how to talk professionally
to recruiters and clients. You don't need to tell them how great their
company is and you don't need to sell yourself
to the point of nausea. Sometimes you see people
say, oh, you know, I'm so great at this and I'd be a great asset of your
company because of A, B, C, and D, and E, and F, and G and I loved when you did this project. You
don't need to do that. You can sing their
praises a little bit, specifically when you get on a call with
them or something. But in the email communication back and forth to get scheduling and conflicts out of the way and get rates and
information across, you don't need to be singing
the praises of the company. You don't need to
be trying to really market yourself at that point. That's what an interview is for. The next thing I want you to
do is go organize your file. You saw what applying
for a job is like. Imagine doing that
50 times in one day? You don't want to keep
having to remember where you put your demo reel again,
where you put things. Go organize all your files. I know everything that
is on your desktop right now and I'm mad about it. So please go organize all your files in a
way that makes sense, where you know everything
is going to be, that way when you're
applying for all these jobs, you can apply with no worries, stress free, knowing that you have all your resources intact. Maybe in the next lesson,
and this time we're going to talk about all the
financial side of things, invoicing and negotiating rates.
7. Set Your Rate and Invoice Your Clients : All right, welcome back. Now
we're going to be diving into all of the money stuff
when it comes to freelancing. All the stuff, that's a
little bit intimidating and we're going to be breaking
it down step by step. As a freelancer, you're
going to have to be doing all your own taxes
at the end of the year, so you need to be a
bookkeeper for yourself, which is daunting if you've
never done it before. I know I had a lot of screaming, crying fits over it
because I was so worried that I was not going to get
something or miss something. But it's important to keep
that organization and that file structure in place so you have all your invoices. You're prepared when
it comes to taxes the next year and you know that you've got
everything that you need. With rates, the
important thing to know is you cannot
undersell yourself. You need to make
sure that you're getting paid for enough
that you're worth. Now that isn't to say that
you're going to be making an insane amount of money when
you're first starting off freelancing because you
have no experience yet. But experience is really
going to bump up your rate. Best way to research this is
do your own market research. We already went
through Linked In. We've looked at all the jobs. If you saw most
of those jobs had a salary expectation under them and now they were a range. So if you're first starting out, you're probably going to
be on the low side of that range and you're not
going to be able to apply for a senior
character position or even an intermediate
character position. Go on Linked In, look
through those job postings, and look specifically
at entry-level jobs. So junior animation positions. What are the salary
expectations? Like specifically for remote or specifically for in-person, because those are
very different rates. The thing about rates
and negotiation is, especially in the early
stages of your career, you're not going to be
able to charge a ton. You're not going to be
able to negotiate a ton. But a good rule of
thumb is you can always let them
negotiate you down. They're never going
to negotiate you up. You're never going to negotiate a rate with someone and
the client's going to say, actually you deserve more money. They're always going to try to knock you down a little bit. So my rule of thumb for
that is if my rate, let's say starting an out is $25 per hour, that's
my hourly rate. Maybe I'm going to ask them for $28 per hour and then
they're going to say, oh, we'll offer you
25 and I'll go, okay. I'll consider it. Okay. Yes. I take it
the exception to this is let's say you
applied for a project, you had an interview, you got to offer for your dream project. I have taken huge
pay cuts because I specifically really wanted
to work on a project. This is something
that has to do with what are your goals, what
are your priorities. But this is where rates,
sometimes I'm like, I won't negotiate, I'll
take whatever you want because I really just want
to work on this project. I know it's going to be
great for my real later. I've taken pay cuts
because of that, or I've given ridiculous numbers because I'm not really
attached to the project at all and so I've just thrown stuff at the wall
and see what sticks and sometimes
you'll be surprised at what they'll say yes to. Again, Linked In
is an incredible, fantastic tool to be
able just to peer into all these different
jobs and what are the salary expectations. Take several of the same jobs. If you want to get
into games and you want to be a junior
animator in games, let's look at three to four
different job postings for a junior gameplay animator. What are the expected salary ranges for all three of those? Figure out what the average is and then that's probably what you should be aiming for when you're offering your own rates. One of the most
stressful parts about my freelance animation
journey was when I first got my freelance animation gig for the first time and I got an email from the
HR person saying, hey, send me your invoice by the end of next week
and I was like, oh no, I don't even
know how to do that. Where do I do that? What do I find? How do I send that to you? It was really
complicated for me. There was a lot of
conflicting resources online. It was just overwhelming.
It was too much. Invoices are something
that I've learned through trial and error and you can
make it very, very simple. You just need an invoice
to be able to give it to the person
that you're working for, the client, the studio, whoever you're working for as
an independent contractor, you need to send them an
invoice that says, hey, I worked on these tasks for this amount of hours with this rate and this
is what you owe me. This is basically
giving a receipt of your work to them
for tax purposes. For them and also for
you. We're going to talk through my invoice
little template here. This is one I made when I literally did my first
job in animation and it is my tried and true
animation invoicing template. Till today, I still use
this to send my invoices. I even have my invoice just on a Google Doc
and the cool thing about this one is I can
actually put in my unit price. This is my hourly
rate and it will calculate the amount
for me and total it out at the end of the month so I don't have to sit
here and do math and I'm going to share this in the resources
of this class. So that way you're
going to be able to use this for your own
invoice template. You don't have to search
online for a new one. This is just clear, concise, and has everything
that you need to send your first invoice. Walking through this top of the page is going
to be your name. Next thing is bill to now,
common misconception. You might think, oh, this is the studio or the client
that I'm billing to. Not true. This is where you're going to have your name again, your address that you're
doing business at, and also phone number,
email contact information. I always number my invoices. Hey, this is my first
invoice that I've sent studio and I'm also
going to have a pay date. This is important to
question when you first get at working at freelance at
any sort of studio or client, you're going to ask
them, hey, when do you want me to send my invoices? Usually, it's a 30-day thing. I found in most freelance gigs, sometimes it's a two week. Every two weeks you
send an invoice. Really just depends
on the length of your contract and what the
studio specifically requires. Nine times out of 10,
I'd say it's a 30 day or a every two week situation. I always like to write
the date of hey, this is from this pay period
of this date to this date. This one, for instance,
is one month, so this is January to February. January 25 to February 25. So make sure you change
this on every invoice. For tax purposes, they know
when you have billed them, when you're going to get paid. The next thing, this is the fun part
description and task. This is where you're
going to ask for the client or the studio
that you're working for. Hey, how do you want
me to build this? Sometimes they
have very specific tax laws for the studio, depending what kind
of company they are, where they need you to
put a very specific task under the task description. Make sure that you know
that before you just start filling out invoices
and sending them. For this one it might
be their code name for whatever project and then the whole sequence
name, the shot number. You might have to put all this
really specific stuff in, then you're going
to put your hours. First thing I like to do
is let's say I worked on this animation shot 1. My unit price for that, let's
say I was junior animator, I was just starting,
was $25 an hour. I did this task, animation shot 1 for this
company for 40 hours that week. Now you see that has now calculated the
subtotal, the total, all the way at the
bottom so they owe me $1,000 for 40 hours for the
one month that I've done it. You can go through and start adding all the
different things. I did animation for shot 2
and I did that for 37 hours. My rate was also 25 for that. Once I had this all filled out with all the things
that I worked on, then usually what
I'm going to do is export this as a PDF. Make sure I'm labeling it as company invoice number
one for this pay period. Usually when it comes to
different payment terms and invoicing, usually, that will say either
in the contract initially when you're
going to get paid, when you can expect payment
after date of invoice. Or that's something
that your HR person will tell you immediately, either with the offer
letter and the contract or right after when it gets
into orientation time. Make sure that you're
following up and sending your invoice
on the correct time, emailing it to the
correct people, and following up with them too. Because usually after
you send an invoice, they have a certain
amount of time from the date of submitted
invoice to pay you. Make sure you know that
because you need to know when you need to poke
them and bug them. That's happened to me a few
times when I've submitted an invoice and then
have not gotten paid in the two weeks they
said they would pay me in. I've had to say, hey,
where's my payment? They're like, oh yeah,
we're getting onto it. You have to go back and forth. I've never had
someone not pay me, but sometimes things happen, things slip in the
finance department, so make sure that you're
staying on top of it and know what you're
expected to be paid. The next thing that
I want you to do is go get a folder structure. Make sure that you know, hey, where am I going to be
putting this invoice because you're going to
have this resource now. So where am I going to be
saving the PDFs of this, what's even my
naming convention? How am I going to make sure I'm staying organized
and staying on top of differentiating all
the different studios I might be working
for in a year. How am I going to
keep everything clear and concise
for tax purposes? I know this stuff isn't the most fun part of
freelancing and animation, but it's super necessary
because it's going to let you not think about it and focus more on the fun part, which is actually animating, landing your dream
job, and being able to freelance
with peace of mind.
8. Final Thoughts: Congrats, you've made it
to the end of this class. Hopefully feel a
lot more prepared on how to find your niche, how to get your first gig, how to network, and how
to deal with planning and organizing the financial side of things when it
comes to freelancing. I hope you feel way
more equipped and ready to land your dream job in
the world of 3-D animation. If you liked this
course, please check out all my other
classes on Skill share. Good luck with the next
stage of your career in freelancing and
3-D animation. I hope to see you in the
next class. Bye for now.
Madison Erwin, Animator
