The stuff of nightmares
One time I dreamt my brother got killed by wolves. Another time, a lovebird pet of mine from my childhood was there in person to see me. Both times I woke up with a tear or two and this heavy sense of melancholy. I just had a dream where I woke up sobbing hysterically.
So what was it?
I dreamt I was at a room full of animation prospectives and a panel of reviewers looking to recruit people to their studios were looking at people's reels one by one. I was sitting in an awkward spot behind a wall jutting out at an angle so I couldn't even see other people's work. I decided to tidy up my portfolio and was tucking folded up notes into my portfolio and they gave me a warning that they wouldn't look at my work because I was disruptive (they scribbled my name on a whiteboard by their table), but in the end they let me go up as the last person. Only two people remained out of the panel of 5.
As my reel started playing I realized I didn't recognize any of the work, starting with this elaborate hand drawn environment. I scrutinized the signature and couldn't recognize it. I mentioned it might have been from when I was school (they laughed and said how long ago was that? They thought I went to animation school in my early 20s like all the other young talent these days. I thought, it wasn't that long, I went to animation school recently). As the dream progressed with more clips, I couldn't remember in my dream if I worked on any of it. A lot of it was stop motion (to show Laika, but Laika wasn't even there), and animation from other people that might have been from my own storyboard sequences but I didn't recognize them. There was a Tom and Jerry chase sequence but the soundtrack was all wrong. They were looking impressed but I just had a feeling of dread creep over me thinking they were going to realize it was all a sham. I am not a plagiarist but why was nothing mine? And then a miyazaki sequence played and the guy asked if I worked on it. I looked at the credits and realized I was listed as a guest at a Miyazaki lecture, and in horror, everything that I put in the reel must have been work I mistook as my own.
By now I was insisting they look at my paper portfolio, the stuff on the screen was not in sync with my real portfolio so they should look at it instead. The recruiters started to flip through the real paper portfolio in front of me, but pages from my model sheets were out of place and missing, then just out of their sleeves in the wrong section. Somehow I must have been fixing it up before and didn't put them back. I realized my reel had started midway through, and all of my work was at the front end. All of my best work was at the front and it was skipped. By then they were done, didn't want to spare any more time to look at it in its entirety, and were in a rush to leave. I asked if they could give me their cards so I could contact them and show them my real portfolio (as one of them gave me a handful of his own worn out business cards), and I said 'Please take one of my cards' but the cardholder in my portfolio was empty. "Of course it's empty," I said. I knew I had a thick stack of my cards in my backpack and when I dug them out to give to them (they were all walking off in the meantime) they were all cards of other people I had collected. I flipped through them frantically. At that point I started getting emotional and insisting they didn't see any of my stuff that I worked so hard on for this past year, that the stuff shown wasn't mine at all. Before I could squeak out that it wasn't fair I woke up and completely broke down. Worst nightmare ever.
The irony is that rushed no nonsense attitude of the reviewers is real. You don't have your shit together, they have hundreds of other equally talented if not more so young people's work to look at. I just feel kind of done with animation, or that's my state of mind right now anyway.
----
So, to give some background to show how real this dream was, for the past year I have been taking extremely expensive art classes online, focusing on some of my artistic weaknesses. I felt like I finally had a body of very new work I was proud of. I really made a lot of progress as an artist, and felt like I did a lot of thinking and evolving as an individual this past year in where I want to go. Yearly there is an animation expo in Burbank. My first experience there was entirely negative, I took a poor portfolio review personally, when in reality and in hindsight it was a portfolio full of completely inappropriate material for that particular audience, and the advice he gave me hit the nail on the head but I couldn't accept it. It was all of my old work cobbled together, and while the artwork itself was ok, it's like showing up with a zeppelin to a drag race. Completely out of place. I gave up on the industry pretty quickly from that. I didn't know any better. Many of my peers looking for pats on the back also had their work thrown back into their face. None of us knew what was wrong or realized not to take it personally. We felt hurt and rejected, and rightfully so. We were looking at this racetrack of cars and wondering why our zeppelins were being turned away. Fast forward this past year, and my online instructor gave me incredible insight on what the industry looks for in portfolios. We were running marathons and quitting in the middle without doing the training for it and knowing there was an end in sight.
At this recent expo I had a completely different attitude. This time, I drank in everything. I observed and appreciated, and had a great time. I didn't care as much for the reviews (such a contrast from my 'world has ended' attitude out of school) though I did have some insightful input that I appreciated (Constructive criticism is "it is hard to design for a large chunky character. There is a lot to consider when it is being animated. You should add some larger characters". Constructive criticism is not "This looks like game fan art.", a real comment from my first expo, which wasn't too far from the truth as the mobile game I was doing work for recently was doing just that, riffing actual DnD monsters.)
I went to some panels where independent, freelance artists had great and inspiring panels. Most of the information they told me were in line with my epiphanies and realizations, only all spelled out in concrete sentences not just hunches and feelings that I had on what I needed to do. Still, the overhanging tone of the expo is that the market is flooded with extremely talented and well-trained talent, and the industry is a shrinking one job-wise. It's like running as hard as you can to just keep up. Studios have so much talent to choose from you have to be screaming good, or be lucky enough that some person decided they like you're work from this y person's work. Another director from the same studio can decide they prefer y's, not yours. Chance and timing plays a bigger part in this than a lot of us care for. One of the panels I attended said, "Don't chase the moneybags. Chase what is attainable. Improving your own skill is attainable. Chasing some job at xyz studio is not in your control. Don't make it your end goal."
For years I thought I had no dream. My friends aspired to be storyboard artists or directors, or be actual animators not layout artists. Many of them worked so hard and their work paid off. I realized what I wanted wasn't anything they wanted. It wasn't to be at xyz studio or be this or that. Even though I really grew to appreciate character design (what I enjoyed was seeing my work improve and to be challenged), even that isn't what I really want as an end goal.
My dream I realized, is to strive to be the best artist that I can be. To continue expanding and improving my skills, to tackle all of the weaknesses I feel embarrassed about that I see in my work. Ultimately, I want to be able to be an independent artist whose work is appreciated for being from me. It took a really long time for me to take accountability for the past 14 years of my life and realize I was just hiding my weaknesses and making excuses for them. It takes a lot of damn hard work and failure and learning from said failure to finally eke out some success. Everyone figures this out at some point.
I have this 'Don't ever give up' attitude. I am really inspired by Naruto actually, he just never quits. But some studio job isn't what I really wanted. I think to myself, what if I get this job and I hate it? Then what was all of this for really? I know now what it is really for. A studio job might fall into place someday but not before I continue improving my skills and who I am as an individual.
Another important piece of advice I got from those panels was, "Don't take your studio work personally. Keep your personal work separate from your day job. You are in someone else's kitchen, it is their rules." So many of these professionals had such a jaded roll your eyes tired look about their experience in the industry, but at home, when they worked on their own passions and artwork, they had such a shine in their eyes.
So what was it?
I dreamt I was at a room full of animation prospectives and a panel of reviewers looking to recruit people to their studios were looking at people's reels one by one. I was sitting in an awkward spot behind a wall jutting out at an angle so I couldn't even see other people's work. I decided to tidy up my portfolio and was tucking folded up notes into my portfolio and they gave me a warning that they wouldn't look at my work because I was disruptive (they scribbled my name on a whiteboard by their table), but in the end they let me go up as the last person. Only two people remained out of the panel of 5.
As my reel started playing I realized I didn't recognize any of the work, starting with this elaborate hand drawn environment. I scrutinized the signature and couldn't recognize it. I mentioned it might have been from when I was school (they laughed and said how long ago was that? They thought I went to animation school in my early 20s like all the other young talent these days. I thought, it wasn't that long, I went to animation school recently). As the dream progressed with more clips, I couldn't remember in my dream if I worked on any of it. A lot of it was stop motion (to show Laika, but Laika wasn't even there), and animation from other people that might have been from my own storyboard sequences but I didn't recognize them. There was a Tom and Jerry chase sequence but the soundtrack was all wrong. They were looking impressed but I just had a feeling of dread creep over me thinking they were going to realize it was all a sham. I am not a plagiarist but why was nothing mine? And then a miyazaki sequence played and the guy asked if I worked on it. I looked at the credits and realized I was listed as a guest at a Miyazaki lecture, and in horror, everything that I put in the reel must have been work I mistook as my own.
By now I was insisting they look at my paper portfolio, the stuff on the screen was not in sync with my real portfolio so they should look at it instead. The recruiters started to flip through the real paper portfolio in front of me, but pages from my model sheets were out of place and missing, then just out of their sleeves in the wrong section. Somehow I must have been fixing it up before and didn't put them back. I realized my reel had started midway through, and all of my work was at the front end. All of my best work was at the front and it was skipped. By then they were done, didn't want to spare any more time to look at it in its entirety, and were in a rush to leave. I asked if they could give me their cards so I could contact them and show them my real portfolio (as one of them gave me a handful of his own worn out business cards), and I said 'Please take one of my cards' but the cardholder in my portfolio was empty. "Of course it's empty," I said. I knew I had a thick stack of my cards in my backpack and when I dug them out to give to them (they were all walking off in the meantime) they were all cards of other people I had collected. I flipped through them frantically. At that point I started getting emotional and insisting they didn't see any of my stuff that I worked so hard on for this past year, that the stuff shown wasn't mine at all. Before I could squeak out that it wasn't fair I woke up and completely broke down. Worst nightmare ever.
The irony is that rushed no nonsense attitude of the reviewers is real. You don't have your shit together, they have hundreds of other equally talented if not more so young people's work to look at. I just feel kind of done with animation, or that's my state of mind right now anyway.
----
So, to give some background to show how real this dream was, for the past year I have been taking extremely expensive art classes online, focusing on some of my artistic weaknesses. I felt like I finally had a body of very new work I was proud of. I really made a lot of progress as an artist, and felt like I did a lot of thinking and evolving as an individual this past year in where I want to go. Yearly there is an animation expo in Burbank. My first experience there was entirely negative, I took a poor portfolio review personally, when in reality and in hindsight it was a portfolio full of completely inappropriate material for that particular audience, and the advice he gave me hit the nail on the head but I couldn't accept it. It was all of my old work cobbled together, and while the artwork itself was ok, it's like showing up with a zeppelin to a drag race. Completely out of place. I gave up on the industry pretty quickly from that. I didn't know any better. Many of my peers looking for pats on the back also had their work thrown back into their face. None of us knew what was wrong or realized not to take it personally. We felt hurt and rejected, and rightfully so. We were looking at this racetrack of cars and wondering why our zeppelins were being turned away. Fast forward this past year, and my online instructor gave me incredible insight on what the industry looks for in portfolios. We were running marathons and quitting in the middle without doing the training for it and knowing there was an end in sight.
At this recent expo I had a completely different attitude. This time, I drank in everything. I observed and appreciated, and had a great time. I didn't care as much for the reviews (such a contrast from my 'world has ended' attitude out of school) though I did have some insightful input that I appreciated (Constructive criticism is "it is hard to design for a large chunky character. There is a lot to consider when it is being animated. You should add some larger characters". Constructive criticism is not "This looks like game fan art.", a real comment from my first expo, which wasn't too far from the truth as the mobile game I was doing work for recently was doing just that, riffing actual DnD monsters.)
I went to some panels where independent, freelance artists had great and inspiring panels. Most of the information they told me were in line with my epiphanies and realizations, only all spelled out in concrete sentences not just hunches and feelings that I had on what I needed to do. Still, the overhanging tone of the expo is that the market is flooded with extremely talented and well-trained talent, and the industry is a shrinking one job-wise. It's like running as hard as you can to just keep up. Studios have so much talent to choose from you have to be screaming good, or be lucky enough that some person decided they like you're work from this y person's work. Another director from the same studio can decide they prefer y's, not yours. Chance and timing plays a bigger part in this than a lot of us care for. One of the panels I attended said, "Don't chase the moneybags. Chase what is attainable. Improving your own skill is attainable. Chasing some job at xyz studio is not in your control. Don't make it your end goal."
For years I thought I had no dream. My friends aspired to be storyboard artists or directors, or be actual animators not layout artists. Many of them worked so hard and their work paid off. I realized what I wanted wasn't anything they wanted. It wasn't to be at xyz studio or be this or that. Even though I really grew to appreciate character design (what I enjoyed was seeing my work improve and to be challenged), even that isn't what I really want as an end goal.
My dream I realized, is to strive to be the best artist that I can be. To continue expanding and improving my skills, to tackle all of the weaknesses I feel embarrassed about that I see in my work. Ultimately, I want to be able to be an independent artist whose work is appreciated for being from me. It took a really long time for me to take accountability for the past 14 years of my life and realize I was just hiding my weaknesses and making excuses for them. It takes a lot of damn hard work and failure and learning from said failure to finally eke out some success. Everyone figures this out at some point.
I have this 'Don't ever give up' attitude. I am really inspired by Naruto actually, he just never quits. But some studio job isn't what I really wanted. I think to myself, what if I get this job and I hate it? Then what was all of this for really? I know now what it is really for. A studio job might fall into place someday but not before I continue improving my skills and who I am as an individual.
Another important piece of advice I got from those panels was, "Don't take your studio work personally. Keep your personal work separate from your day job. You are in someone else's kitchen, it is their rules." So many of these professionals had such a jaded roll your eyes tired look about their experience in the industry, but at home, when they worked on their own passions and artwork, they had such a shine in their eyes.