The animation industry needs trained people who can hit the ground running. There are many schools where industry professionals and faculty with skills to match pass on the secrets of their trade. Image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com.

"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach" has never been a fair aphorism, particularly when it applies to the study of animation. Cartooning is both an art form and a craft, one passed on to new generations by its current practitioners. In the old, pre-CGI days an on-the-job apprenticeship was the only way to learn. Today however, there's no small number of schools where industry professionals and full-time faculty with skills to match pass on the secrets of their trade.

It's a good thing, too; the animation industry needs trained people who can hit the ground running. Feature and TV animation is booming... the Internet is continually growing as a market for new work... and companies creating high-end videogames need more skilled CGI animators all the time. Expensive software packages (and computers powerful enough to run them) are beyond the average person's budget, but a promising portfolio (and a tuition loan) will more than likely let you get hands on the equipment at one Cartoon U or another.

Then what happens? At the end of three or four years' worth of study you're ready to step out into the "Real World" (if that expression can be applied to anything having to do with cartoons) and show you've got the right stuff. When things go smoothly, everyone benefits: a student becomes a professional, the school proves its worth to both future students and the industry, and the studios get the trained personnel they need to stay at the top of their game. Making sure things go smoothly for the kids falls to the adults involved -- the schools and the studios.

More often than not, an unpaid internship is a student's first step out of the school and into the business. Finding an internship can be a challenge, involving factors out of anyone's control. "Last year we had no interns. We were too busy to spare senior people who could mentor them," says Joe Caggiano, Digital Domain's recruiting manager. "If we don't have a strong person to lead or hold hands, the intern would sit here all day and stare at the keyboard. It depends on our production needs as well. This year we're very intern-heavy. We have a show ramping up at the end the end of summer. We'll be looking for a lot of entry-level people because the tasks are simple. Somebody out of school would be able to jump into it a lot faster than they could on a more intense project."

With its ties to the Hollywood animation community, CalArts makes sure to keep the lines of communication between its students and the studios wide open. First- and second-year students are invited to Friday night pizza parties with studio recruiters and the occasional creative talent. "It's a fun and easy-going event," according to Jessica White, the school's career and internship advisor. "They talk about how their studios work and how they go about recruiting. We do it during the fall semester when the students are less busy -- in the spring they're animating their films."

A Friday night visiting lecture series is a year-round event at the school, one that students can take for credit. "It's at 7:00 pm, right after the pizza party," White explains. "The studio artists are much more influential than the recruiters -- students will say, 'Wow, I want to be like that person, I want that job.' Fridays are just hours and hours of studio interaction. Some nights we'll have DreamWorks for pizza and afterwards somebody from Pixar for the lecture."

Some 40 companies show up for CalArts’ year- end portfolio review. The school’s main gallery is filled with rows of tables for students’ portfolios, résumés and reels for the visiting recruiters. Photo credit: Scott Groll

Duck season, rabbit season... As far as the animation world is concerned, April and May is recruiting season. Animation studios, staffing up for fall TV series premieres are looking over the latest crop of graduating students in search of top talent. Some 40 companies show up for CalArts' year-end portfolio review and student film screening. White describes an "elaborate" event, with the school's main gallery filled with rows of tables, one for each student and grouped by year of study. Students leave their portfolios along with résumés and copies of their reels for the visiting recruiters to pick up. "There's a huge quantity of material the studios have to go through in a limited amount of time," White reports, "not just portfolios, but armatures, sculptures -- all sorts of work."

The studios spend the morning reviewing the students' efforts, then post their callback lists. Their tables line the gallery's perimeter, where they interview students of interest. "I'm surprised how diverse the studios are," White says. "It does seem like some studios jump on the same person because another one wants them. I'm always surprised looking at the callback sheets. Everyone has a different style. Some studios are looking for someone with a wide variety of work; others are looking for a niche artist. It's a pretty diverse list of people who get called back; some studios call back almost everyone."

A similar process takes place at Sheridan's School of Animation Arts and Design in Canada. The school's April "Industry Day" event has been going on for "a very long time, several decades at least," estimates Sheridan's Tony Tarantini, with some 160 reps from 60 companies attending this year. After industry representatives look over the students' work, "they give us a list of students they want to see and we set up rooms for interviews the following day. It takes a bit of work to get all that done overnight.