Animation Recession

An excerpt from Mark's Open Letter to Nova Scotia Animators:

Consider yourself a professional in an actual career as opposed to a collector of Green Lantern comics who works in animation sometimes. Research your field, learn new technologies, challenge yourself to improve your skill-set, create a network and use it, communicate with peers, work on updating/creating your portfolio. All of the tools are at your disposal to make an informed, educated, well thought out decision on the future of your career. A slow period in this industry often has the effect of purging the weaker workers who don’t take their jobs and opportunities seriously, and that’s a healthy thing for the region and the industry. Is this your career, or is it just a job?

Download the five page document here.

Though it's specific to NS animators who have been hit hard in the last 12 months during this drought of work, it applies to places like western Canada as well who are suffering from lots of unemployment in the character animation industry. It's all commons sense, but as I'm swamped with many e-mails as well, asking about the sad state of affairs, many of us need constant reminders that this IS the industry we're in. Every few years we hit very busy times then it's usually followed by times of unfortunate hibernation where animators in film and television have to sit and wait for things to happen, or find work elsewhere, in other fields.

See related articles here:
The Animation Guild Blog
Canadian Animation Jobs list
A Strange Payscale Chart for Animators
Panel Discussion about the Industry
MarketWatch
A Stupid Article from the Metro Newspaper
A depressing article about the Canadian Animation Expansion of 19 months ago