*see below this post for a step-by-step breakdown of how this animation was created.

Do you know what an Animator actually does?

I thought I did.  Considering I graduated animation school, I thought I had a pretty good idea.

Until I returned to the U.S., ready to get a job, armed with only my schooling and my final portfolio.  It took me a long time to fully understand the differences between the schooling I’d received [in Japan] and the industry I was attempting to enter [in the U.S.].

How the Japanese Education System Works for Animation

I went to a liberal arts school for my undergraduate degree in the States, majoring in Film to give myself a good foundation of editing and filmic techniques, screenwriting and directing.  When I went on and attended animation school I did it in Japan – which was my first real “art” schooling (besides the couple Art Classes I took in the two different high schools I attended).

I majored in Animation Direction and Animation – which meant that I was educated to be an Animator.  But not just any animator, specifically, an animator primed to join an animation company in Japan in an entry-level in-betweening position.

This is all that’s available when it comes to job openings.  In the Japanese studio system, you can’t start as a keyframer, character designer, assistant director, production manager, editor, or director if you’re just coming out of school.

You start at the bottom, as either an in-betweener or a production assistant.  Regardless of your interests or strength of your portfolio.

Have a portfolio full of your own character designs?  Some animation you created, colorizing and editing it?  They’re not even interested – what they want to see is whether you are able to clean up and animate the characters that are already existing, and how much the characters appear as they should.  Thus your portfolio upon graduation from Japanese animation school is flat work; mostly pencil work, showcasing clean-ups, tracing, and sheets of paper bound together displaying the in-betweens of other people’s keyframes you’ve animated.  Even now, when 90% of Japan’s studios have switched to digital paint and editing for their animated TV series…they still want to see the bare minimum, on paper, to make sure you have grasped the fundamentals of movement.

Thus, in school you are taught one thing: in-betweening.  Mimicry is rewarded, or rather, taught from the beginning.

The U.S. Attitude: What is an Animator?

In the U.S., things are quite different.  You’re encouraged to have your own artistic voice, your own unique style – something that differentiates you from the masses.  The road from school to working isn’t as delineated; if you want to work as an animator, you may not necessarily start as an in-betweener.  Unless you work at a goliath such as Disney, in the U.S. it seems that most studios and clients hiring freelances want a Jack-of-all-trades.  Companies are looking for people who not only can animate the in-betweens, but also do the character design, keyframing, colorization, editing, and delivery.  You’re taught all of this in school and then some; your final demo reel showcases work where you have created everything, from the characters to the colorizing, to the keyframing, animation, and editing.  You’re a one-man (one-woman) studio in and of yourself.

For a long time, since I was educated in mimicry, I would let clients and studios know “I can produce any style you want.”  After all, I had been taught a good animator is one who can reproduce anything; that is, reproduce the keryframer’s and character designer’s work exactingly, adding life and movement to a character without compromising on shape, line quality, and colorization.  And not even try to attempt the jobs of anyone else in the studio system (like say, the character designer or keyframer), since I’d been taught to know my place.

Big mistake.

Conversely, I found many clients and studios in the U.S. actually don’t know what they want.  They instead want to see what you can bring to them, who you are.  Rather than saying “I can be anything,” they want to know exactly what style you’ll be supplying them with.  And you’re expected to be able to execute everything in the realm of “animation.”

An Animator in the U.S. does everything. 

An Animator in Japan does one specific job, specifically animating the in-betweens of someone else’s keyframes.

A critical distinction.

What are your thoughts or experiences about this?

Animatedly,

*The above animation I created by in-betweening the two keyframes I received when I was in school as an assignment.  I cleaned up the keyframes, created the in-betweens, cleaned up the in-betweens, scanned all frames into the computer, cleaned up and added color in Illustrator, imported into Flash, and strung the frames together.  The background is just 4-5 photos I took of my street and stitched together in Photoshop, then imported into Flash and motion-tweened to make it look like the background was moving.  Neither the character nor the two keyframe roughs are my work; thus, though the amount of work I did on this animation exceeds what a typical Japanese “animator” in a studio would normally do, the actual drawing work I did on it is right in line with the job description in Japan.

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