What Does An Animation Artist Do?

An animator works with computer animation: from creating simple sketches to final layouts of future animated videos. Animation artists may also participate in creating cartoons, video games, animated advertising, or any other interactive media. Animation artists often bring objects, characters, and even entire worlds to life.

What is an Animation Artist?

What does animator do? The main task of the animator is not just entertain, amuse people, provide them with a good mood via incredible animation design works. They are ultimate creators engaged in video design with motion graphics and other computer effects for educative, commercial and other purposes.

Where do animators work?

More than a half of all animators are self-employed and may work from home. You may find them on the top design platforms, as well as in house of solid animation design studios. Thus, the job is concentrated in the motion picture and video industries. Animators may also work in an ordinary business office, a publishing company, advertising agency, or software company, etc.

Possible Jobs in Animation

Here are the top job offers that may be found among the jobs in the animation design sphere:

Animator

What does a computer animator do? They typically specialize in one of media and may further concentrate on a specific area, such as characters, scenery, or background design. An animator usually creates an extensive series of beautiful images that form the animation that may be seen in 3d on websites, movies, commercials, TV programs, and video games.

Concept artist

Concept artists may often draw or paint characters, some graphics, create various environments, objects of those environments, or any other related project. The skill and the quality of the illustration style may vary from quick and ruff to a detailed and refined concept. Concept artists are often asked to research and pick the reference for the ideas they will be illustrating.

Graphic designer

The Graphic Designer job may include the entire process of defining computer graphic requirements, visualizing and creating 2d motion graphics, kinetic typography or illustrations, animated logos, layouts and photos. They are out there to shape the visual aspects of websites, books, magazines, product packaging, exhibitions and more.

Games developer

Game developers or the so called video game developers, are responsible for designing and developing various genre video games for PC, mobile applications and console. Their primarily job is to code the base engine out of the ideas of the design team. They may also be engaged in the character design, level design, narrative, animation, and unit testing.

Web designer

Web designers can plan, create, as well as code websites or separate pages, many of which may combine texts with pictures, graphics, sounds, and video clips. A web designer is responsible for making design and layouts of a website or web pages. They may be working on a brand new website or update an already existing ones.

Illustrator

Illustrators are associated with the creative art of still drawings and various images that serve to communicate a story, message or idea, which are then used in advertisements, books, magazines, packaging, greeting cards and newspapers.

VFX artist

VFX designer (Visual Effects Artist) is a collective image of all specialists who deal with visual effects: 3D Generalist is a generalist in 3D. They may create any 3D models of characters or objects for movies. They are also called Modellers (Modelling artists).They makes videos that are captivating and memorable, which is why they are popular in film industry, advertising, and the gaming industry.

Animator Duties and Responsibilities

What does a multimedia artist and animator do? Here’s the tasks may typically involve:

• Producing high-quality titles, graphics, and animation.
• Creating animations and mock-ups for visual concepts.
• Creating art for video games and software.
• Creating stop-motion videos with movable models and a series of photos.

Animators as professionals may also be liaising with their clients and developing animation from their own concepts. They create storyboards that will depict the script and display the narratives.

They often draw in 2D to create various sketches, artwork or beautiful illustrations, design models, backgrounds, sets, depict characters, objects and create animation environment.

Education Requirements and Qualifications

Which are the animator education requirements? Animator like a motion designer or other multimedia artists may typically hold a bachelor’s degree in the realm of animation. This degree may qualify the graduates for fruitful work as art directors, video game designers, film and video directors, etc. Students may earn a bachelor’s degree either online on a part-time or full-time basis or while visiting arts school.   

Animator Skills and Competencies

Creativity is the key skill needed as animators are people who need to generate ideas and bring them to fruition in no time. Classy animator skills and competencies may also include the following:

• Having a creative mind vision, and a strong imagination.
• Having an eye for detail and good colour vision.
• Powerful drawing ability, good skill in making models and/or use computer graphics software.
• Patience and stamina are also needed because the work is painstaking, detailed and you may need to work long hours before you’ll be able to approach the results and meet the deadlines.

Besides, a huge plus will be having strong communication and interpersonal skills because people like motion designers mostly function as part of a team. While meeting clients they should be able to listening and speak, understand and deliver accurate data for creating the needed animation. Time management and leadership will help to make initiatives and meet schedule deadlines.

Animation Artist Salary career foundry

How much do animators make is another issue in question. An average pay for animators may reach $70,000 a year. Glassdoor survey however had the national average salary a bit higher – $74,000 annual. Like many other creative fields, compensation for animators also depends on experience: it’s not uncommon for senior-level animators or art directors to earn well into six figures. Here’s the infographics that will help to compare regionally:

Animation Artist versus Graphic Designer

How to become an animator may be quite clear. But the confusion between animation artists and graphic designers may still interfere. Let’s check out the key difference. That’s true that both graphic designers and animators may work in a creative field that involves developing creative visual designs primarily using a computer. But whereasgraphic designers may create designs used in clients advertising, that’s a more commercial purpose, animators are more likely to create motion designs and animations that are used in arts mostly: to entertain, educate, engage audiences, etc.

Conclusion

How to be an animator and create great videos? It’s quite clear that thee should be some education required to be an animator and the set of skills and desire to work. After training,  a great motion designer or animator is in demand in filming companies, advertising agencies, design studios, TV companies, in educational projects and IT startups. About 60% of specialists work on a freelance basis, preferring remote employment with the same salary rage. The average annual salary of an animation designer may depend on the country, company and qualification, as well as project requirements and other factors. Anyway, tend to hire a video explainer maker or any other animation design motion graphics production company specialist from a proven source.