Your Guide To Getting Started With Freelance Animation
Video ads are a hot topic with marketers, so if you are interested in becoming a freelance animator, you may be entering into a booming field. Like any freelance job, animating takes a great deal of skill and a jack-of-all-trades attitude. Learn the steps that you’ll need to complete to become a freelance animator.
Practice Your Craft
As an artist, you will be getting paid for the creative work that you produce. A resume will no longer suffice when it comes time to apply for projects. Instead, people will judge your skills based on the quality of your work.
Practice your animating skills so that you can put together a fantastic portfolio. You may need to take classes to get your skills up to a competitive level. Do what it takes so that your work is the best that you can create.
Build Your Portfolio
Once you’ve learned and practised, weed out the best results, and only show these to potential employers. The rest was a learning experience, and should not be displayed.
The items in your portfolio should highlight your work that makes you stand apart from the rest. Does your greatest talent lie in the area of humor? Feature an animated short that makes the viewer fall out of his or her seat in gales of laughter. Are you more technically inclined? Create a demo reel that highlights complex 3D modelling.
These demos should be perfect. Your potential clients may only sit through the first ten seconds, so make sure that the first seconds display your skill level. It is best to have several demos in your portfolio so that you can match the work that you show to the style that you know the client is looking for.
Get Your Name Out There
Next, you will need to find your first job. Remember that as a freelancer, you need to be proactive when it comes to finding jobs. Search through job boards and freelance work sights, and network among your family and friends. If you skip this step and sit back waiting for work to pour in, you’ll likely be disappointed!
When potential clients do come your way, make sure that you accept the work. In the beginning, your neighbor might not be your ideal client. But he’s a client none-the-less, and you shouldn’t say no. This is true even if he is only paying half of what you hope to charge one day. You may also have to take on some work for free. You aim to get your name out there.
Freelance animator Todd Rosenberg, who created one of the first viral videos, says that it is essential to nurture the relationships with clients. If you build the relationship correctly, the client will think of you as a “go-to source” for animation, and your client base will accumulate over the years.
Once you’ve improved your skills, created an impressive portfolio, and have begun to build a client base, you will be well on your way. The freelance animation field is an exciting one at this time because so many businesses are hiring freelancers to create video advertisements. However, animating is competitive, so you need to make sure that your product can stand up to the competition.
