Mission Status... Failure

Some people say that you only fail if you refuse to get back up. From falling or whatever. In this case, I'm failing as an animator because I've decided that it's time to pursue a more lucrative job position. Contrary to what I believed and what some people still seem to be insisting, there just aren't that many animation jobs available. Granted, I spent much of my time in 3D graphic areas outside of animation, so I'm not quite as specialized as some of the animators I'm competing with. But I'm really not seeing many job openings weekly, and I just can't compete with the international community of people who have gone to school for animation or have been practicing it much longer than I have.


So starting in January, I will be taking classes in Web Development and Design. I've already had several classes regarding the design elements of web pages, but there's some new stuff on the programming side that I need to learn. When I started the art program at UW Madison, I was expecting the market to be completely saturated with web designers by the time I graduated. That's definitely not that case. A friend of mine has so much work as a freelancer, he's nearly doubled his hourly rate in less than a year.

But most importantly, I think I could enjoy life as a web developer. The thing I love about art is creation. From the first painting I did in the very first art class I took, I was so happy to have something I completed that I could step back and be proud of. I'm sure I could get this same feeling from designing web sites in an artistic way.

And just because my situation dictates that I put the whole animation plan on hold for now, doesn't mean I can never go back. I'll work hard as a web developer, and if I have the chance I'll return to animation with the funding and resources to work even harder as an animator. In fact, I was just intending to use animation as a stepping stone. The part of animation that I really enjoyed was the storyboarding, concepting and design. But I never really thought my drawing skill would be good enough for that. Now I can keep working on drawing in my free time and maybe return to the entertainment industry as a level designer or storyboard artist.

Though I do consider this attempt at becoming a professional animator a failure, I've lost the battle but I can still win the war. And this loss will motivate me to work even harder.