Chances are, you will succeed in any one or more of the seven basic animation categories:
- Hollywood feature films
- TV commercials
- Televised entertainment
- Games
- Home videos
- Business communications
- E-media
Hollywood Feature Films : Hollywood feature films need not actually be produced in Los Angeles, California, but it really helps if you are located somewhere near this geo-creative nexus. Several excellent animation studios working on feature films exist as far away as Santa Barbara, Seattle, and even Massachusetts. Obviously, the benefit of a global Internet marketplace makes locating your animation business in Bombay, India, practical (and I would bet that the savvy Hollywood producer will one day discover the cost benefits of global sourcing). However, feature film production is still a lunchie, backslapping, meshpuka1 kind of business where personal contact represents a major part of the deal. It’s a little hard to schmooze over a T-1 line.
Cracking into a gig doing 3-D animation for feature films is kind of like cracking into feature films as a director. You have to be really persistent, concentrate exclusively on this market, and be a bit lucky. If you have a really good show reel, particularly with regard to character animation and compositing, you might get a break.You’ll need to find a new director or producer who is looking to get some good, cheap CGI into a film and needs to find a low-budget supplier to make the budget. It’s like the music video business where you find an unsigned band and get to be their video person. They make it? So do you. Short of that leap, you can send your reel to existing shops that already work the feature film market and hope their needs and your reel match up.
TV Commercials : TV commercials are another hard market to crack, but easier than feature films. As the commercials get higher in budget, the market gets harder to crack. If you live in a second- or third-tier market (that is, a city that is not New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles), you can pitch your reel to advertising agencies and commercial producers. If your reel is a starter, you should still be able to get some work doing cable commercials, but if you have a stick of dynamite with a sizzling fuse, head for a top-tier market, hire a rep, and go for broke.
The top markets are dominated by the big advertising agencies that have an established custom of seeing new talent. You basically call producers or, better yet, their assistants, send your reel, and pester them a bit until they see it. It’s a hit or miss proposition. Having a rep with existing client contacts helps enormously. Reps come in all flavors, from the ones who have their own businesses, to reps you hire yourself on a full-time basis. Maybe, on second thought, it’s a good idea to get a start in a small town, build a good reel, and work your way to one of the three coasts.
Televised Entertainment : Televised entertainment includes TV shows that use 3-D animation and composited effects as part of their weekly fare. Again, this is primarily a Los Angeles market, but nothing is stopping you from creating your own show in Smalltown, USA, pitching it to a network, and getting a sale. Mike Judge did that with Beavis and Butt-head, although he used primitive, 2-D cell animation instead of sophisticated 3-D computer techniques.
The cost of producing a half-hour or hour-long pilot using 3-D animation is rather small compared to making a filmed presentation. You’re biggest expense will be the voices. Mike Judge did several of his own.
Cable television, especially the public access channels, is a great place to get started. You can test your production techniques, audience response, and enjoyment for the process with little risks.
Games : Game devices, from arcades to set-top boxes (and computers in between), continually increase their capabilities to emulate real 3-D, photorealistic action. The market for 3-D animation in the gaming community is always growing and highly competitive. Skills that will place you at the head of the line include character and creature development, achieving photorealistic playback with minimum memory allocation, understanding moving camera dynamics, and, of course, good teamwork.
You may consider designing your own game and using it to penetrate the market. Certain equipment requirements, such as a motion capture system, may be beyond your reach, but your creative concept, supported by less sophisticated choreography, may be adequate to earn you a significant production contract, or at least a great job.
Home Videos : Home Videos are another outlet for creative 3-D animation. If you decide to make your own televised entertainment, you can extend the selling opportunities of your work by sending it to home video distributors.
You can also go to your local video rental house, look over the special interest videos section, and collect the names of key producers. These enterprising businesspeople are always looking for a way to spice up their productions, and if you can price a package of logos, graphics, special effects, and other eye candy for their productions, you will have found a friend and a long-lasting client.
Business Communications : Business communications is the largest market for 3-D animation, especially videos and DVDs that are made to explain the arcane intricacies of medicine and high technology. Here your market is composed of producers, marketing directors, human resource managers, venture capital entrepreneurs, and training directors, all of whom have a constant need to have their communications embellished by animation and graphics.
Many of these clients have liberal criteria regarding the quality and complexity of the animations they purchase. If you are a beginner, and your reel is not yet replete with the most original, cutting-edge work, you may still be able to make sales in this category. Your client may not have had the opportunity to see some sophisticated work or does not understand the difference between the reels of a beginner and a seasoned pro. This limited window of opportunity should not be exploited by laziness. If you are lucky to get a client after only a few months’ practice in 3-D, don’t sit on your laurels and take your good fortune for granted.Keep pushing yourself and your skills.
E-Media : E-media presentations that appear over the Internet represent another large and growing market, which temporarily offers advantages to the beginner. Because most e-media is streamed to the viewer at a comparatively low bandwidth, the complexity of the animation it can play is severely limited. Beginners, whose work is limited by their level of knowledge, can exploit a medium whose resolution is limited by its bandwidth if the beginner is aware of how these two limitations overlap.
Low bandwidth means fewer colors and shading, fewer frames, simpler morphing, and less detail than full-bandwidth imagery. If you plan to get your start in this category, concentrate your initial skill set on achieving good results within the limitations of the medium and expand your skill set as the medium’s bandwidth increases. You just may get in on the ground floor of something big.
