Little Airplane flies high on preschool series, like Wonder Pets. © Nickelodeon.

Longtime Sesame Street writer/producer Josh Selig launched Little Airplane five years ago to create live-action programming for the preschool market. After a stint as head writer on Nick Jr.’s Little Bill series, he expanded into animation production. “I had previously thought of it as fast and furious, Road Runner style action, but with Little Bill, I realized the medium could develop characters & tell rich stories.”

Today the lower Manhattan, Tribeca-based company’s animated output includes shows and interstitials for Nick Jr., Playhouse Disney and Discovery Channel. Clients come to their door with specific projects, as Nick Jr. did when they needed an on-air host; the company’s creation, Piper O’Possum, is on his way to appearing in some 150 interstitials. Little Airplane also develops and sells their own properties to the preschool market, placing Wonder Pets on Nick Jr. and Go Babies on Playhouse Disney.

“We have a house brand,” says Selig, “our own shows.” He credits his partner, Little Airplane’s creative director Jennifer Oxley for bringing in former staffers from Little Bill and Blues’ Clues. Twenty of the company’s staff of 50 do animation, design and storyboard work. “Expansion allowed us to bring people on fulltime, and to give them full benefits. We want to build up loyalty & make them feel like part of the team.”

Little Airplane is unusual in keeping a large, in-house staff. One of best ways to keep overhead low is to have a minimum number of fulltime employees. By and large, New York animation producers reach for their rolodexes when projects come through the door — but it often seems as if everyone knows everybody already. “Generally, there’s one degree of separation between you and the person you need,” according to Augenblick. “It’s sort of a communal thing — New York’s good that way.” Asterisk’s O’Connor describes it as a network, “that’s kind of clubby, but not exclusive. You go to the same parties and screenings,” while Graf observes “you’d be hard-pressed to find two experienced producers in the city who don’t have similar lists [of people] they first call on for a project.”

“My personal process, and what I’ve observed from colleagues is that at some point we all worked for the same big company,” says Kimson Albert, currently working as an animation director on Venture Brothers at Noodlesoup. “When you’re associated with a big studio, you gain experience and you make contacts that stick with you along the way, so people tend to know each other.

Bill Plympton continues to create independent features like his latest Hair High in the New York area and is always looking to talented new artists for help. © Bill Plympton.

“Word of mouth spreads pretty fast when something’s setting up,” he continues. “It’s not ‘send in your résumé’ — the production manager has a list of names, and the person he calls knows someone else.”

“The more people I’ve gotten to know, the easier it’s getting,” confirms Fran Krause, a digital animator at Curious Pictures. “Three or four years ago I had to call everyone I knew, I had to sell the hell out of myself. For the last three years I’ve been a commodity — I haven’t had to look for work now for a while.” It’s a boom that’s driving up wages, according to Graf. “In the near term it’s been kind of a pinch for studios like us, but in the long term it’s great, it bodes so well for the industry.”

Breaking into the ranks can be daunting, but it is far from a mission impossible — especially at a time when labor is in demand. Step number one: make a damn good animated piece of your own, whether you’re still in school or just starting out. Step two: don’t bother sending it out unsolicited.

“I’ve been to offices where there are stacks of hundreds of DVDs and videos that will never get looked at,” says Bill Plympton, New York’s (if not the country’s) best-known independent animator. “The key is the festivals — that’s where people find talent. [Buyers and producers] are all there, looking for product and looking to meet the animators.” Plympton recommends France’s just-completed Annecy festival, (where he sought out short films for inclusion in four different animation compilations), as well as local festivals in New York City, Woodstock and Ottawa. “When I find something I like, I go up to them and say ‘give me your number, let’s keep in touch.’“

Augenblick advises job seekers to “just build a good website” where they can digitize and display their work. “The easiest thing for me when I get an e-mail is to click on a link. It takes two seconds and I’ll know really fast if this person is a good match for the job.”

Joe Strike is a NYC-based writer/producer with a background in TV promotion and a lifelong interest in animation. He is writing a children’s novel.