Just want to Voice a little rant on animation. I have been basically chasing a dream to be an animator like my whole life and I feel like I am loosing my drive to want to chase after the dream anymore.
I have wanted to be an animator since I was like 11. I thought I did all the right things. I finished high school at a school for visual arts. I went to college and studied art with a major emphasis on figure drawing and life studies. I tried to study animation at KCAI cause I heard if you went there you could get into the industry but they were ending there illustration program by the time I got out of high school all there was was fine art.
I left UMKC and tried to find a place to study flash or just any form of animation for like 4 years jumping form school to school and still found nothing.
I found out about the Joe Kubert and I packed up my life and moved to the west coast and I met some amazing people had an awesome animation teacher and even got my first job as a freelance illustrator but still no animation career.
I met Dan Haskett and then he moved away and eventually went back to cali to work at Warner Brothers.He is still a great mentor to me. Then some kind of way I ended up back in Missouri and freelancing and helping to run Mapa.
Still no animation career. I always say I was born ten years too early or ten years to late. When I was coming out of high school and then later college all the major animation training grounds were closing down and 3d was taking over. Then when things were resurrecting I needed to be fresh out of college to get into a studio so I went back to school and still ended up not really getting things the way I wanted.
It can be kinda disheartening. After years of dreaming and not feeling like my work was good enough I still cant even manage to get a crappy art job as an illustrator in a studio anywhere. I start to feel like I am just in all the wrong places at all the wrong times.
When opportunities do pop up I can even take advantage of them many times because of financial issues.
I am curious how many artists and want to be animtors are out there just like me trying to do all the right things and not really getting anywhere.
