How do they eat? We all know that animation festivals are full of talent scouts from major studios looking for the latest crop of graduates to work on their productions, but what if independence is your thing? What if you want to make your own personal films? In this scenario, put simply, how do you eat? How do you sustain yourself job to job?

To the independent film maker, the outside world can be a hostile place. A side-effect of the current boom in the genre is that more animators are being churned out, which means that filmmakers aren't just competing against their peers but against other animators, a sort of stockpile of talent competing for the same jobs, and increasingly doing it at an international level. The competition is rife and not only for work. Schemes such as MOMI and Animate offer animators an opportunity to make personal films and get paid for doing so. The MOMI scheme, an initiative between Channel 4 and the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI)which is now in its eighth year, is in particular a lifeline to new graduates as it offers enough money to live on. The Animate award only offers commissions to a maximum of U.K. £25,000, which isn't a lot to make a film and keep body and soul together.

Kayla Parker's Cage of Flame. © Kayla Parker

MOMI's Lucky Few
There's another difficulty with MOMI which has nothing to do with the selection procedure. Animators selected have to work on display in a glass booth measuring just 3m x 3m and colloquially known as the `fish tank.' If such conditions have adversely affected the work of candidates, it hasn't affected the number of entrants. This year there were 80 applicants, and with only four awards a year that means a lot of disappointed people. As you'd expect, most of the MOMI people are apprehensive of being on display, even if only at the start. However once acclimatized, they soon settle down, or so I'm told, and even start to have some fun with the audience. For instance Sam Fell, a model animator, sat stock still until he'd garnered quite a crowd and only then would start to become animated himself.

The latest inmate is Lizzie Oxby, who's currently working on her film Villa 21, a model animation about a man that's been pushed into a madness which centers around his growing paranoia of the telephone. Previous to MOMI, which graduates have up to five years to take up, Oxby has found a living through a variety of means, including producing and directing an MTV Europe station ident called Flick Flack and as a model maker for another MTV logo for Star TV called Star. Oxby is also a keen proponent of new media and has provided the animation for various CD-ROMs including animating and designing a skeleton puppet for Real World's CD Rom Griffin and Sabine and creating a photomontage for a CD Cover called Schitzoid for Readymade Media. Her particular style of animation has also attracted the attention of the music industry: EMI commissioned her to make a promo for an artist called Adam F after seeing her degree show, a stop frame and mixed media work which won rave reviews. Oxby has also been a regular on the festival circuit with her short film The Lacemaker, which was sponsored by BBC Bristol and won a gold medal at the Bilbao Short Film Festival. Her experience in the glass booth, she says, has so far been "not as bad as I imagined it to be," although size wise, the room is known to be tough on model animators. Despite the drawbacks - the security camera and the vague impression that you're an exhibit in a zoo--MOMI retains its popularity and is seen as more than a first foot on the ladder. Previous MOMI participants have included Ruth Lingford with Death of the Maiden and Ian Clarke with Deviant, both of whom have captured international attention.