Industry Practices
Now, entering the Animation Industry, we should be made aware of the different practices we would encounter; these range from how we should behave in the workplace environment, what agencies should we look to for help when getting us hired, along with how to deal with crunch time and the average pay salary of an artist in the animation industry. This is to help prepare us for when we leave university and start applying for jobs as this industry just as hard as it is rewarding.
Behaviour in the work place
Naturally, like any other work place, you would need to behave while working in the animation industry; this includes the usual good behaviour such as being compassionate, considerate and professional, while avoiding greedy, rude and defiant behaviour which would give you a bad reputation for the industry and could result in you being kicked off a project or not being hired for a new job afterwards.
But despite this, there are two important behaviours we would to keep an eye out for in the industry as they stand out for being special to the industry; so I'll describe them and how I would follow them.
Conduct in the office
Conduct in the office mainly revolves around keeping an eye on your opinions. Sure, naturally we would have to avoid talking about opinions about political things like religion for example; but this conduct means keeping an eye on your opinions of animated products, mainly negative opinions, as you could end up working on a project with someone who worked on a thing you didn't like and undermine their effort. And with that possibility being someone's first impression of you, it would make some workers feel uncomfortable to work with you for being a judgemental jerk and make it difficult to make contacts for future works.
To counter this, I would always find a way to compliment any film or TV show, even if I don't like it so I would still be honest with my opinion but in a way that would compliment the artist's work on it. For example: "While I may not like the Toy Story series, I do really like the animators attention to detail when it comes to the way the characters move."
Dress code
Now, the dress code while working in the animation industry is quite casual; as you can just turn up in a t shirt and a pair of jeans and still appear professional for the job. So no wearing your pjs to the office no matter what.
But, a more casual work attire might make it difficult to remember that you're working in a professional environment and slip up into unprofessional behaviour by accident.
So, I would combat this obstacle is by separating my t-shirts and tops into two categories; my casual t-shirts, which would more than likely feature licensed characters and properties; and my work t-shirts, that would just have simple colours and patterns on it. This would work as not only would this dress code avoid awkward encounters with other employers (like wearing a Disney shirt while working at Dreamworks for example), but also to help avoid conflict in the office as it could unintentionally break conduct silently by showing my opinions on my clothing.
Agencies and how to behave around them
So, what is an agency? Well, an agency is a organisation that helps with providing a service on the behalf of another person; for example, a advertising agency would help a company in getting their product advertised. And the same thing could be said for a hiring agency, where they would help you find a studio looking to hire someone or finding a job that is in your skill set; so instead of worrying about finding a job, they would look for the job for you while you could focus on preparing your portfolio and what to say during a interview. Basically, they'll help you find your next job, no matter what, and even help you out with how to improve your CV and portfolio if needed.
One job agency is known as Aardvark Swift, which was founded around 30 years ago; where they help with putting their candidates into their dream roles and helping to develop a massive network between different companies and industries to have different studios working together.
They even run two competitions to highlight student talents towards big name companies to help improve their chances in being hired; the competitions being "Search for a Star" and "Rising Star"
And some of the companies that they work with are; Nintendo, Rockstar, Hasbro and Mattel to name a few.
When it comes to how I should behave in the presence of a job agency; I would still treat them as if they were the company I would be wanting to apply for a job in, with a professional mindset. So I would be polite and kind towards them since they would be helping me with finding work and could sabotage me in retaliation; but I could show a bit more passion for the jobs I want to apply for, those being a storyboard artist or character designer, so the agency can use my passion as a positive element about myself to companies to convince them to hire me.
But I should be careful of predatory agencies that would not do any work to find me vacant places in the industry while taking some of my money or would try and convince me to give up my dream of working in the industry; both of those examples being things that have happened to real people. However, when I would be looking for a agency to help with finding me a job, I shall look at reviews and ask around to know ahead of time which agencies I should avoid and which one should I give a chance.
Expected work hours and crunch time
As a animator, they would be working at the studio for six days a week, meaning they would be working between six to seven hours per day. This is perfectly average since most work places would have that same time length for the days of the work; and with the full twenty four hours off to catch up on sleep or enjoy your time off. And with each individual projects, they have a six to nine production schedule for the animation to be worked on so when animating for a animated film or series, you would have enough work and make enough money to survive. (Which we will come to later)
However, during the last half or quarter of the animation production; the studio would enter a state called "Crunch time". This is where there is more pressure by the studio to have their workers do overtime and work faster in order to meet the deadline of the product's release; where some people would go into work earlier or not even leave work and sleep in their car in the carpark to have more time to finish their task and get the production finished. And in some countries in the world (America), they would have to take their off day to come into work and continue the project during crunch time, which the UK is techically not allowed to do, YET. But with Brexit, it could be a possibility. This pressure can usually overwhelm any newcomers in the industry, causing them to have a mental breakdown and have some of them leave the industry to avoid damaging their mental health.
Now, as someone who can get extremely and easily overwhelmed, I am a bit nervous of having a mental breakdown cause I can easily see them getting very emotional thanks to my disability. Luckily, I have had the experience of dealing with stressful situations such as balancing different coursework projects over the course of my college and uni years; so I should be ok with the workload and still enjoy the work hours, crunch time or not.
Average starting wages and budgeting
Now coming back to the money an animator would be making; a average starting wage for someone working in the animation industry would be in the range of 18,000 to 20,000 pounds per year. Now this, seems like a lot to the average person working in something retail or something similar. But as you work more in the industry and get more experience, the average animation industry employee would receive a average payment of 45,000 pounds per year.
But before we celebrate this massive amount of money, we would have to be aware of taxes as they would have some of that payment to pay for it. So, using the website "Money Saving Expert" and using their tax calculator; rounds us down to officially receiving a payment of £16,562 per year.
But that's not the full amount of money you would be able to spend freely; as we take five thousand away from that would then have us with around £11,562 to spend.
Divide that by twelve months of travel would give us something in the £964 range to keep for personal use
But then, if we take into account the rent for where you would live would cost; we would be left with a life budget of £264 or £514 (depending on if you live alone or share rent with a roommate)
However, before we can spend our own personal allowance on what we would want with our earnings; we would have to spend our money on making sure we have the essentials to live such as food and household utilities such as electricity and heating. And so with another bit of calculating, we would arrive at a price range between £64 and £364 (once again, depending on if you will share rent with a roommate).
Leaving us with a average allowance budget of £300, for us to spend on anything we would want.
As for me, I'm not too worried about my allowance budget as my parents aren't too fussed about trying to kick me out the house once I'm done with uni and won't be asking me for rent money while I'm at home; so I won't have to worry about paying for rent and utilities just yet. Plus, I don't really use up my allowance anyway since I don't usually go out for shopping sprees or days out, even before lockdown; which is another reason I'm not moving out yet since so far, it isn't safe or easy to get a new place.
But, I am now more aware of how much having a roommate will help with budgeting since it would take a load off me with the amount of money we would have to pay. And this shouldn't be a worry for me either, since I have a few close people in my life I could move in with when I feel comfortable enough to move out my parent's home and when the pandemic calms down to where we can live normally without social distancing.