A piece of advice for those considering being professionally creative · 6:42am May 28th, 2013
I was looking at an impromptu Q&A w/ Lauren Faust, when I found something I thought the other writer folks here would be interested in:
Q: Lauren, since you gave some life advice to someone else - I've been wanting to break into the animation or art-for-television type of field, but my background is in graphic design. I live in the Midwest and I'm in my mid-twenties and I feel like I'm in a rut - not qualified with nothing nearby to push me where I want to go. What should I do? Do I need to move? Take classes? How do you do it?
A: Being in the right place makes a big difference, if you can afford the move. Otherwise, classes, and try to get animation work online, where your location doesn't matter. Once you develop good relationships, you'll get more work and it will be easier to move to where you can get even more work
Q: Faust, is there anything you would recommend to someone who is about to do their first big animation project?
My capstone for college has to have 8 animators and a minimum 16 crew total, and I'm kinda running short on what and where exactly I should be looking for everything. Like, is there anything specific I should look for in an animator's reel, aside from just strong and fluid work?
I'm the school's "test student" to see if they'll start doing an animation program, and a lot rides on whether or not I succeed, and any advice you might have would be more than valuable.
A: Strong and fluid work--- but also you need to gauge whether they are a good creative fit for your project. Someone can be amazing, but a bad fit. Unless they're very versatile--- those artists are gems!!! Look for people who can work reliably, and artists who can take the lead when you have too much on your plate.
Q: Our whole system of corporate patronage makes it nearly impossible to generate good art. In television, there are a few cable channels that are hands-off and give their shows a budget and some standards and practices and then keep their grubby hands out of the pot, so great shows like Louie and South Park can be themselves. Louie because of the low budget, and South Park because of runaway popularity.
Everything else is executive-meddled to death. You want to produce a pilot? Fine, here's 30 pages of notes, and you have to product-place this windshield wiper fluid, and none of the characters are allowed to smoke, and can we add a wacky neighbor character, but make it more edgy? The risk for that will be there as long as power is in the hands of the executives. And they own all the copyrights and trademarks too, so they can do to everyone what they did to Faust.
The only way out is to cut the executives out of the loop, like Homestar Runner did. They did cartoons. They made it mostly family-friendly but The Cheat has been seen smoking, guns have been visible, and a few references to adult concepts that wouldn't be subtle enough to slip past a censor, but don't really do any harm to kids anyway. They released on their own schedule, and sold a butt-ton of DVDs and T-shirts. I own more H*R merch than I'll ever own of MLP merch.
Except, they got hired and now they're in The System now. Because The System always has more money. Why wouldn't they; they still get licensing fees from every TV station that wants to show reruns of their 30-year-old shows or play their 50-year-old movies.
Is there any hope for the future of animation?
A: On my more cynical days, I'd agree with you. It comes with the territory, unfortunately, and a big part of working in this business is looking for the studios that will support you and your vision as well as constantly evaluating the atmosphere. Sometimes you just have to wait for your idea to be something people are looking for. There will always be good animation, just hardly ever in the same place.
