Transition: From a Job to a Passion
In 2001-2002 about 30% or 850 members of the Animation Guild Local 839 in the U.S. took advantage of the Contract Services Administration Fund (CSATF) Grant for retraining, according to Steve Hulett, business representative for the union.
Members who do hand drawing are retrained in storyboarding and CGI skills. The union has not been able to track these brave souls seeking new careers if they’ve made it or not. Hulett guesses that maybe 20% have made some sort of transition into another animation job.
There are also countless people who have transitioned from what they considered a humdrum life into becoming part of the “exciting” industry of animation and visual effects.
AWN wanted to find some of those transitional people to see how they did it and why.
Moving from the Humdrum to Animation and Beyond She started at the Art Institute of Seattle 1986 to become a graphic designer, but as life has it she needed to find a job and she joined the post office. She traded postal routes from rainy Seattle and moved to Tucson, where she drove her postal route and she also bought and sold houses to build a nest egg.
Eleven years with the USPS in 110 degree temperatures drove her to make some decisions. She needed to express herself creatively. She got her pilots license so she could do aerial photography, but the job was not there when she was ready. So she was off to Art Center of Tucson (no relation to the Pasadena institution) to get her degree in graphic design, while she still drove the dusty rural route. She was bored with graphic design and couldn’t see the potential in it.
Just as she was ready to quit school, the chair of an emerging new animation department grabbed her and asked if she would like to make pictures move. Of course, this sounded a lot better than graphic design, but the catch was all the classes were in the daytime. Within a day to decide, Kate up and quit her job and spent the next 18 months learning animation.
Kate Crandall was driving a Tucson rural delivery route for the post office in her right-hand drive 1997 Jeep, which she still owns. But art was always on her mind.
As she was nearing her graduation, she applied for the first-ever Women In Animation Phyllis Craig Scholarship, which she won. It brought her $500 and a trip to Los Angeles to attend the World Animation Celebration. She got so much encouragement that she packed up her oldest living pet rat, along with her other belongings, and moved to L.A.
It took five months for her to land a job, but she volunteered at ASIFA-Hollywood, and was hired to help coordinate the Annie Awards. This led to a job in digital ink-and-paint at Klasky Csupo, which she held for six months.
The day after she was laid off from Klasky she had Disney, DreamWorks and several other places calling to hire her, without ever sending out a résumé. Disney was her choice, because of a recommendation from Bill Turner, a member of the ASIFA-Hollywood board. She also made the decision, with much encouragement from so many, to steer her career from art to production management. Two transitions and the promotions came fast. From production assistant working on three Disney direct-to-videos to coordinator in six months. Then six months later bumped to supervisor. She has found her niche in the industry.
She left Disney in June 2005 to freelance as a production manager for Curious Pictures and to take the summer off to visit Machu Pichu as a big birthday gift. Ron Diamond of Acme Filmworks wanted her as an associate producer. Six months later she left Acme and is now a production manager for an all-CGI feature film.
She is continuing to work on one of her independent animation shorts this summer to keep her hand in the art, but she knows she is great at being an animation production manager. Three transitions and see what you get.
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