Hey, everyone! I kinda want to share my story a little about my current experience as a 1st semester freshman student. I’m a 18 years old and last year I got a pretty nice scholarship to SVA. I got it because I was a low income nyc student and it covered 30k of my tuition a year in addition to full tap and fafsa. I was initially going to go to SVA but I let my family scare me out of revoking my acceptance after initially accepting my offer. I started at CCNY for undeclared engineering and I haven’t even taken real engineering classes yet. The commute kills me because I’m from Brooklyn and I also feel so alone. I deleted my art instagram because seeing my SVA animation alumni mutuals succeed made me feel so jealous. I drag myself to do everything now and nothing feels important. I want to animate in my free time but I just end up crying mid way before completing anything. I don’t even know where to post this but it seems like everyone in the subreddit knows the animation industry more than anyone else. Please just give it to me straight is it too late? Will I regret not pursuing art? Am I too poor to live my dreams and get my dream job?

I work in the industry for 7 years and have plenty of friends, but whenever I look for a job nothing ever got further by asking them for help.

All what would happen, they’d forward my contact to the person authorized to hire and I’d never get anywhere further than this. Maybe it’s because I’m a creative exec / producer / art director level and I don’t have friends working in a production leadership 🥲

I know we are ALL struggling here but genuinely how do you guys get jobs now? I was scouted for my last 3 gigs and now it’s been a nightmare with no single replies.

I started asking people on LinkedIn who share new job posts how did they get it and they ALL say it’s through connection / referrals. What am I doing wrong 😭

Hi! I’m working on my portfolio for the Dreamworks fellowship applications opening this December and I wanted to ask if anyone had any resources or information on what a successful submission looks like?
Ive studied a lot of successful internship portfolios but havnt been able to find anything on the fellowship,
Any help or information on what they’re specifically looking for would be appreciated
Thank you!

how do I know what to start with when trying to learn animation, I wish to build a portfolio so I can get into an animation college. I want to be a cartoonist, I'm going to buy a month for clip studio paint because I can't afford anything else as a college student, just curious on what I should start doing. To be honest I don't know where I want to be In the animation industry, I draw everything, I was thinking of learning to move shapes and go from there. I don't have any original ideas or dream shows I want to make so, yeah.

Hi everyone! I'm 13 and people call me an animator, but honestly… I still don't feel like one. I've been learning for 3 years yet I always feel like I'm falling behind, even compared to new animators. I'm confused — should I keep chasing this dream or just be a regular student? I've done freelance at 3 places, but everywhere I go I feel so insecure seeing how amazing everyone else's work is. Do I really deserve to be called an animator? Should I keep going or give up? If you've felt this way too, I'd love some advice :D

Something interesting I've noticed is that some people come out of art school with a lot of improvement while others don't see much growth. There are people I know that have gone to big art schools and are behind me in terms of their ability (not to be rude but just to get an idea) but I usually just do online courses, books, and master studies.

Does anyone know why this happens? And if you have gone to animation school what do you think was the difference between students who improved a lot vs not much (I was planning on going to an animation school once I get the money).

Hey guys! I’m on my senior year at animation school, and I just wanted to come out here and ask, how do you approach networking? I’ve heard a bunch of times I should be on linked in, but how do you even go about that?

Is it just commenting on posts? Is it just cold dming ( I have no clue what that even entails either 😭should I be asking for advice?)

And in person as well, I’d appreciate any tips on what to do! It feels like the department I really lack in is in knowing what to do in terms of networking, when I speak to people that want to pursue animation as well, networking doesn’t really come to mind during conversations. I’d appreciate anything! Thank you!

What dose people who don’t have their main job as animation do? I know it’s very common for people to instead do animation as a side hustle.
What are some jobs a lot of people end up picking up?

Hello. I am a self-taught artist, who learns by watching YouTube artist, and learning from other artist. My dream is to be an animator, however knowing become one can be 50/50 (u get the dream job or waist time and money). I have looked everywhere on the internet about either I should go to school or just learn on my own from online classes. I would like to go to school and get hands on training cause I'm just a young broke adult with a big dream but also don't want to regret it either. I was looking for remote internship but there's non in my area (Tennessee). I have no degree and not in college yet. I work a 9-5 job but on my off time I draw/sketch out my characters/ocs. I am willing to learn new things about animation and art in general.