From a young age, Angela loved watching The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights and spent hours drawing. Animation wasn’t on her mind as a career path, but she knew she wanted to be an artist in some capacity. A series of classes, connections, opportunities, and dedicated work brought Angela to where she is today, working as a Storyboard Revisionist (she’ll explain that) at Nickelodeon. In this episode, Angela details the skills she has had to develop to maintain her career, how the industry works in terms of hiring people for projects, different types of roles she has had through her career, the movies and television shows she has enjoyed working on, in addition to sharing valuable advice for students interested in this career path. If you are curious about the world of animation, don’t miss this episode!
From a young age, Angela loved watching The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights and spent hours drawing. Animation wasn’t on her mind as a career path, but she knew she wanted to be an artist in some capacity. A series of classes, connections, opportunities, and dedicated work brought Angela to where she is today, working as a Storyboard Revisionist (she’ll explain that) at Nickelodeon. In this episode, Angela details the skills she has had to develop to maintain her career, how the industry works in terms of hiring people for projects, different types of roles she has had through her career, the movies and television shows she has enjoyed working on, in addition to sharing valuable advice for students interested in this career path. If you are curious about the world of animation, don’t miss this episode!
Thank you for joining us today on Paths in Progress. I'm your host, Carrie Young. On this podcast, people in a variety of career fields, talk about their journey from choosing their college, deciding which majors and minors to pursue, their first jobs out of college, and all of the hurdles, detours and victories along their path through today. Our goal is to help students hear about a variety of exciting opportunities out there and understand what day-to-day life is like in these careers. I hope you enjoy and learn from our story today. Thanks for listening. Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We are here today with Angela, who is a storyboard revisionist in animation for Nickelodeon. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art. Angela, thanks so much for joining us today.
Angela:Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having me.
Carrie:I'm so glad you're here. So can you take us back to your high school days or perhaps even earlier, and tell us a little bit about how you got started in art and what you were thinking about regarding college and your education and career path?
Angela:Well my interest in art started when I was really young, like as far back as I can remember. I loved Disney movies and animation. I watched animated stuff on the weekends, Saturday morning cartoons, all of that. And I really loved when The Wonderful World of Disney would come on on Sunday nights. I was always so excited to watch. Yeah. And I loved all the Disney movies and I remember when I was about six or seven years old, I just thought to myself, wow, I just have to work for Disney someday. I have to draw cartoons like that. And then I thought, no, I can't, because I would never be able to figure out how their mouths matched the sound of the voice actors for some reason. That, to me was the biggest obstacle of magic that just, it was a witchcraft. It never mastered which is kinda funny. But I always drew, and that was my favorite thing to do. I would sit for hours, I would always beg my mom for art supplies, clay watercolors, coloring books, paper, anything. As I was growing up, we didn't have like a whole lot of money. So there are other things I was interested in. Like I remember asking for piano lessons, but we didn't have a piano. I wanted to play violin, but my parents couldn't afford violin lessons, but we could always afford paper and pencils and stuff like that. So yeah, that's what I always did growing up, like obsessively. And then when I got into high school and I started thinking about what I wanted to do, I still wasn't sure. I knew I wanted to be an artist, but for whatever reason, animation didn't pop out in my head as something that was doable at the time. Cuz it wasn't like as huge as it is now. There weren't a lot of jobs. It wasn't like people are telling you you should go in animation. So I was thinking maybe I would go into graphic design or illustration. I started looking at what I wanted to do and I wasn't even sure, I didn't have any guidance anywhere. I didn't know anyone who was an artist. I didn't know the path to take. And so, I went to junior college and started taking some art classes, asking my teachers where I should go to school, and they told me that I should go to Cal State Northridge, which was nearby where I lived. So I was like, okay, that's easy. So I transferred there and got my degree in just fine art. But I focused mostly on illustration because once I started doing graphic design, I realized it was like so meticulous and at the time I just didn't have the patience for the exactness of it. I just wanted something more free flowing and natural.
Carrie:Was that the main difference? Because there obviously there is a big difference between graphic design and illustration, not just the classes you take, but often the career trajectory for that. So, you mentioned a little bit how you felt the difference, but can you talk a little bit about the difference in like classes and kind of what led you to that decision and why you were leaning one way over the other?
Angela:Yeah. When I would take the, the graphic design classes, cuz you were required to take a little bit of everything in that program. So I took them and I thought, oh, this will be kind of fun. And computers were being used for the for graphics, but for whatever reason my university like wasn't quite there yet. They weren't wanting to do it. I don't know if they didn't wanna spend on the equipment or whatever. So they decided that we should all have to do it by hand. So it was all on paper with this rubdown lettering, which was really difficult. If you screwed it up you'd have to start completely over. It just, I found it so incredibly annoying and I didn't wanna sit and measure everything perfectly. And then I would get into my illustration classes and it was working with different medium squash, watercolor oil. Ink and it was more tactile and I just, I just had more fun. It was just a lot more free and a lot more fun. Nobody was sitting there measuring to make sure everything was centered properly. So it was just a lot better. And I really loved working with paint. That was always really fun. So that's what led me more down that path. And I still didn't know what I was gonna do with it. I was like, huh, how may to make money doing this? But I just went, you know what? I'll figure it out later. I just kept doing it. And then it started occurring to me that I probably should look into animation because I was kind of starting to look into it and reading like a lot of people with fine art degrees were going into animation. So that's when I started getting interested in it. And then I started checking into schools, like the obvious ones, like Cal Arts and stuff like that. And then I found out how much they cost and I was like, oh my God, this is like way, way expensive. So I thought, there's gotta be some other way. You know? I, I just didn't know the way. And my sister was also always into art and we both were trying to figure out what to do with our degree and for a career. She was talking to somebody that she knew, he was older than us. And he said, oh, yeah, I've always wanted to be an animator, but to be an animator, you have to go to Cal Arts. If you wanna work at Disney, they don't hire anybody that doesn't go to Cal Arts. And so I'm never gonna be able to do it. And if my kids ever wanna be artist, I'm gonna take away their crayons. And I thought, what? Oh my God, that's like the most awful thing. And I went, okay, that's never gonna be me. I will never say anything like that. And it made me realize, cuz I was kind of thinking the same thing. Like I had to go to Cal Arts. Just the ridiculousness of it came to me hearing it out of somebody else's mouth. And I went, statistically, there's really no chance that every single person in animation went to that school.
Carrie:Right, right.
Angela:I was like, there are other options. And then I started asking around and somebody told me that the animation union had subsidized classes that were really cheap. They're like a hundred bucks, 200 bucks for a class. And I was like, oh my God. So I soon as I was done, graduated, signed up for classes and it was great. I learned everything that I needed to learn there, which was fabulous. So then that's what led me to my first job, which was at Warner Brothers feature Animation.
Carrie:Were they like recruiting people out of that course or was the union helping get people into jobs or what was that process like?
Angela:They wouldn't recruit out of it or anything like that. And those classes were intended for artists already in the union to develop their skills, but they would let anyone take'em. They're gonna obviously help already signed to the union members find work, so you're just kind of on your own. But it was a great place to network and find out who's hiring where and who's doing testing and where you can submit your portfolio just from your peers. That's how I ended up finding out that Warner Brothers was doing a training program for feature animation, which is like the best cuz you really learn on the job much better than you do in school. And I still had basically just mostly taken drawing classes and I hadn't done a lot of animation, so that was perfect for me. I'm like, okay, I can get trained. So my sister and I both applied for it, and then we waited, I don't even know how many weeks. And then we got notified that Warner Brothers was too busy with their production schedule and that they wouldn't be doing a training program. So we were really disappointed. We're like, wow. That's it. Okay. You know, and I kind of went, okay, I'll just wait for the next thing. Kept working on my portfolio, kept drawing. And then I wanna say about a month or two later, I get a call from Warner feature. They left me a message and it was like right before the Thanksgiving holiday. So it's like, oh no, I missed the call. And I tried to call back and they were gone. So I had to wait all weekend to find out what that call was about. I was like, oh no, like this could be like really awesome. And I'm having to wait the whole weekend. So when I did get ahold of them on Monday, they said, well, we did cancel the training program, but we're also so busy that we just need help, so we're just gonna train you on the job. So they hired me and my sister. We were so excited. They were I think about 250 applicants and they hired like eight or nine of us. It was pretty cool to make it through that process and get hired. So that was really exciting.
Carrie:Did you have to submit like a portfolio when you applied for that? What did they require?
Angela:They required a portfolio. We had submitted that. Back then it wasn't digital, so you had to hand in a hard copy and go and pick it up. They don't even wanna do that anymore because they don't wanna be responsible for people's artwork and stuff. I was so proud of myself cause I'd worked so hard, so that was pretty exciting. The movie that we worked on at the time was not a very good movie. It was A Quest for Camelot. It was Warner Features first feature film. When we were towards the end of that production, they were saying like, okay, well we're gonna need people for the next movie, the Iron Giant, but we don't have as big a budget and we're gonna have to have a smaller crew. And I thought, oh no, I'm, what if I don't make the cut? I had seen stuff and Brad Burr had done a pitch and showed the studio everything. And I thought, oh my God, this movie's gonna be fabulous. I hope I get to work on it. Just busted my butt and found out that I did get hired to continue on to the next film. So we did have a hiatus of about, I think five or six months that I had to wait in between and then I got to roll onto the next thing. So that was another big accomplishment. But I had just started in animation and I got to be one of the people kept on.
Carrie:When you said you had a hiatus, are you hired like per project, like on a contract or how does that work? Okay.
Angela:Yeah. Per project. Back then we had to sign a contract. Now they don't really do that anymore. I guess it depends on your position maybe. Back then I had to sign a contract saying that I had to stay to the end and I wouldn't quit. And that they couldn't fire me or let me go unless they weren't gonna replace me. So it's kind of nice you were kind of protected that way. And now it's just like, well, they just have to give you a week notice, or two weeks notice might be the contract. Any kind of contract you sign is more beneficial to the studio than it is to you as an artist in most cases. Yeah. But at least you're not locked into things and you're free to leave and go to another studio if you want. So it's good and bad.
Carrie:Yeah. So when you're first starting out like that and you're first kind of position on a project, what does the work look like? What are you doing in that capacity?
Angela:Well, they don't really do what I did anymore, at least not in the United States, a little bit here and there. But what I did, I was an in-betweener, it's like the very beginning job that you'll get like bottom of the totem pole. So what I would do is I would take other drawings, it's called, there's cleanup animation. So there's the animator's rough drawings, and the animators get paid more than like an in-betweener would. So what the studio wants to do is like have the animator do some roughs. Then there's somebody called a key that goes through and puts all those drawings on model. So they're exact and there's no discrepancy between one animator's work and another. They'll all look the same. So a lot of changes happen to the drawings. A lot of people think it's tracing, but a lot of changes happen to those drawings, to lock them down and keep them consistent. And then it gets passed down to a key assistants, a breakdown, and then an in betweener. So I was at the very bottom. So I would fill in any missing drawings in between that weren't done yet that needed to get done. And make them all clean and pristine and follow that exact model that the other artists, that had worked on the work previous to me, that I followed through and kept it all consistent.
Carrie:So when you're watching an animated film, how many artists have worked on a single character?
Angela:Oh, a lot like our cleanup crew I think was 90 people. Okay. And then that the animators, that doesn't count the background artists, that doesn't count anybody who does anything with CG and computer animation. It's a lot. It's a lot of people. So that's why you look at the credits for an animated thing, it seems to go on forever because it takes a lot of people to get everything done. And then sometimes there'll be other studios mentioned in the credits and you won't even see the artists that work there. They'll be uncredited, but they'll be other artists at another studio that have worked on it. So it's a lot.
Carrie:Wow. So that next movie that you were really excited to work on, what was that experience like and what kind of work were you doing?
Angela:On the Iron Giant, it was the same work, and that was intense because we had half the size crew that we should have, but the same amount of time to get it done. Mm-hmm. so I worked a lot of extremely long days. There's different levels of overtime. So there's like regular time, then there's overtime, and then the highest level that you can get to is called golden time. And that is when you've worked so much that you're getting paid, double your hourly. We would get into golden time a lot. We would eat all our meals at the studio. We did everything at the studio. You'd go home, I wouldn't even open my mail. I wouldn't even turn on a light. I'd go get in bed, wake up in the morning, shower, and go right back to work. So it could be very draining. You can only do it because you know there's an end at the tunnel that you're gonna be finished and you won't be doing it like that forever. But yeah, that was a really tough movie to work on. But we loved the project so much and the movie and the story that everybody was on board with, just making sure it got done. It was kind of neat to be part of that and now it's such an iconic animated movie, so I feel really lucky that I got to work on it.
Carrie:So once you've worked on a movie that's done really well, does that help you move on in your career in this field? Or is it just people trusting the quality of your work? Or is it kind of a combination of that? Like what are the things that help you get on the team for the next project that you wanna work on?
Angela:Yeah, it's a little bit of both. It's your reputation and your connections that you have. It's a lot about who you know. But definitely having the Iron Giant on my resume helped me get other jobs cuz people would say, you worked on that? And they knew how hard it was to even be part of that project and how hard you had to work. So it did look really good on my resume, but, there's other factors too. So then after that I would go, for other jobs you have to take a test on a lot of jobs. So you have to go in. In traditional animation, we would go in just for a day and do a test and do a day's worth of drawings. Unpaid, mind you. As time has gone on and now traditional animation is phased out, now that I'm in story boarding now, the test could be a full 40 hour work week unpaid. So it's kind of grueling. Yeah, it kind of sucks, but if you know somebody and you get recommended, a lot of times you can skip over taking that test. And those are the jobs you usually get, is the ones that you don't have to test for.
Carrie:Okay. So when you're working on a team, like when you're working on the Iron Giant, is it like a communal workspace? Are you all in separate offices or cubicle spaces? Like what does that environment look like when you're all working on something together, but obviously you each have individualized work you have to get done?
Angela:It depends on the studio. Some of them are the open, communal kind of workspace, and a lot of them you have cubicles that you work in. So it just kind of depends on where you are. Right now, being at Nickelodeon, if I was in studio, I'd be in a cubicle. I'm working from home though, because they hired me, a couple of years ago, during the pandemic and during that time they hired on 500 extra people on staff. Oh wow. They don't have room for us all. So yeah, we were given the option to come in, stay at home. But even if you were to come in, they said like, oh, we only have enough space for you to come in one or two days a week. And I prefer not to do the commute, you know, in LA it's a lot.
Carrie:What are some of the projects that you worked on after you completed the Iron Giant?
Angela:After that I worked at Dreamworks on Sinbad, their animated feature, which was fun to work on. I got to work a really neat character, Aris, and she was really hard to draw and she was fun. And then after that work was getting kind of sparse here and there. I was having trouble finding work. Everybody was, cuz it was like everything was going CG. So then I managed to get work. Freelance at home on the Tigger movie, which was really great to work on. I loved drawing the Winnie the Pooh characters, especially Rabbit. But after that it was like there really were no more projects. And so I got to a point where I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do. And I took a class in Maya, which is a animation program that a lot of stuff is done in for 3D stuff. And I hated it. I didn't like that I wasn't drawing. The program was really hard to use. And all you're doing basically, it's just really technical. You're just moving all these little elements around these little handles and little things in the rigging of the thing to animate it. It didn't feel organic at all and it didn't feel fun. So I decided that I couldn't do that and I would just have to figure out how I could still be able to draw and work. And a friend of mine gave me the opportunity to work as a storyboard revisionist on a show called Wow Wow Websy. I went over there, took the job. I had zero clue what I was doing, but luckily they were really nice with me. I got that job partially because I worked on the Iron Giant. So it was still good to have that on my resume. Yeah. I just jumped right in and learned on the job and just tried to really make sure that if I made a mistake, did anything wrong, I fixed it. I asked lots of questions. That got me to be able to draw by hand still and get to do what I love. It was a really good lesson just being flexible and not thinking, because a lot of people that I knew just quit working in animation altogether. They didn't try to pivot and I was, oh wow. I was glad they tried other things and I kept pushing through it and stuck with what I wanted to do with what I loved. It was fortunate that I got the opportunity to do that and I was just really glad that I had this stamina to do it.
Carrie:So when you said so many people just left animation altogether, how drastic did the pivot need to be for people to stay as far as their skills and their experience? I know you said you didn't really like it and it didn't feel organic to you, but was it difficult to obtain the skills you would need? Like if you did like it or if you did wanna continue in that, what was your sense of why people were leaving so much?
Angela:I think it would've been difficult, especially since I didn't love it, because you really would have to work hard at it to master it. And if you don't love something, you are not gonna put in the work to get there. And I already knew how much effort it takes to get a job in animation and how dedicated you have to be. And I knew I would never have that for this program. I would never be able to get to that point. I think for a lot of people, too, the idea of starting over and having to start at the bottom, they just didn't wanna do it. That was part of it.
Carrie:As an artist and somebody who does wanna do something organic and utilize your talent, do you feel like the industry has lost some things because of how it's pivoted and where it's gone?
Angela:I don't think so, other than I do think that it's a shame that we've lost traditional animation as an art form. When I first started doing storyboards and storyboard revisions, it was on paper. Now it's all digital. And I feel kind of sad that there's no more tangible original art at the end of a project. For the most part, it's all just, you know, zeros and ones in a computer. So I think that's one thing it's kind of lost. But I think that the industry has just, you know, taken a lot of what it had and moved it into the CG world. And so a lot of it's so excellent and really good. But I do miss seeing hand drawn things because it's different when you're working digitally and you have a computer, you're generally moving everything but the computer is filling all the spaces in between in. And when I was doing animation cleanup and inbetweening, you're thinking about every single line and its placement and the way to do it in the most beautiful way. And the computer will never do that, right? It'll never have that human connection. It's not going through another filter of another thing. It's like direct to the paper and direct to your eyes. So it's just different I think in that sense.
Carrie:When there's like an initial idea for a story and characters, are people still hand drawing that at all? Like when they're sketching things out at the very, very beginning of a project or is that even done digitally now?
Angela:It depends on the artist. There is still some that's done by hand, but it's mostly digital for the most part.
Carrie:So what was the first project you worked on that you felt like was a true pivot into this new way of doing things?
Angela:I would say when I went to Nickelodeon and I worked on a show called Ni Hao Kai-lan. That was when the first time we really had to like work in Photoshop. That was really challenging. I kind of knew it, but I didn't know it in the way that they were using it. That was different. And then we eventually, I went back for the second season of Webs and we started kind of dabbling in that too. We ended up using Photoshop. And then when I really started feel that I had to make a big jump was when we switched to Storyboard Pro. It's a very powerful program for storyboarding and you have to learn a lot. And it was just a big learning curve, I guess. So a lot of that was, again, another time when people left animation, when it switched from like paper storyboards and stuff to digital boards. People that weren't willing to learn the program and said, I don't like drawing in a tablet, I don't like drawing in a que, they would just bail out. And I found that a sinti was great. Originally it was, you'd have this little tablet on your desk and you're looking up at a monitor and you're drawing down on the tablet and looking up to see what your drawing is. So it's kind of disconnected and I didn't like that. But as antique, it's an actual monitor that you draw directly on and it feels very natural and it feels like regular drawing. So I was really okay with it, but a lot of people didn't like it.
Carrie:Did the industry kind of have this overall understanding that a lot of people were in transition as far as how things are done and new skills they needed to learn and new programs they needed to learn? Was there kind of like an industry-wide transition? Like, okay, a lot of people are going through this change, but their experience is valued. So was there like a level of patience with that?
Angela:At the very beginning, I think there was, and then after a while they just kind of expected you to know it. The union did step in though and start offering some digital classes, instead of just the regular traditional art classes. And that helped a lot. So you could take these free classes through the union and you still can, they still offer them and get the training that you need. I think the union more so stepped into help more than the studios.
Carrie:So when you went to Nickelodeon, about how far into your career were you? How many years had you been working in animation at that point?
Angela:That's a good question. I have to do the math. I had started in 1997 and this was 2004.
Carrie:Okay. So like less than 10 years. Mm-hmm. Yeah. When you enter this field and when you start in the type of position you started in, is there kind of a traditional career trajectory that people who are the artists who are working in animation kind of go through? Or is everybody just kind of on a very different path?
Angela:It depends on what your specialty is. For storyboards, it's very similar to mine. You'll start out usually as a revisionist and then move up to boarding. On occasion, I've done story boarding, but I prefer revisions because at that time when all that switchover happened, I had my daughter in 2003 and I didn't wanna work really long hours. And sometimes storyboard artists, they don't have ample enough time in their deadlines to do it in a 40 hour work week. So they're working a lot of overtime and long hours. And I didn't wanna do that. I wanted to have a 40 hour work week and then have my family time with my family. Myself, and a lot of other women that I work with, have chosen to do revisions. Because you're still doing boards, but you don't have the crazy hours. You have much better deadlines.
Carrie:Yeah. A lot of women have to make those kind of choices, right? Yeah.
Angela:And the pay difference isn't that much. To me it's not enough to make it worth it.
Carrie:Yeah. That's a really important thing to point out for students and really everybody to think about when you're going into a field. Sometimes what you have in your head that feels like what you're supposed to be doing is your next step, or perhaps what you think you wanna do is your next step. Sometimes it's you just have to step back and say, you know, what is everything that's important to me, not just within my career path, in my job, but in my life, right? And yeah, is it worth doing this thing that I was initially set on doing or that I'm being encouraged to do? Are there too many sacrifices I have to make? Is it just as good and just as fulfilling to do it in a slightly different way, or to alter this path a little bit, to be able to accommodate those other life things that are so important.
Angela:Yes, for sure, for sure. Because as much as it's a dream job, it is ultimately a job, right? And you will get to the point when you want to do other things. And then there's people who, you know, they're very driven. They wanna have created their own show and they wanna be a showrunner. They have these different ideas they wanna do, which is fine. So everyone takes their own path. If you wanna go that far, you can go that far. But for me, I was like, I don't need the ego boost. Like for me, my life legacy is not gonna be just about work. It's gonna be about 4 million other things too.
Carrie:Can we pause for a minute, cuz I realized we haven't really talked about what exactly storyboarding is. So can you just explain what that means and what the actual, you know, work is that you're working on every day?
Angela:Sure. So storyboarding is the initial artistic impression of the script. So somebody writes the script. The very first person who visualizes that script is the storyboard artist. So you will talk with the director and get an idea of what they're visualizing in their head. You'll make notes and then you go sit down and you do a rough pass of what you are seeing and what the director is seeing to bring that to life. Then the director will look at that rough pass, show it to producers and executives. Then they decide what's working and what's not. Not that it's necessarily wrong, but does it follow like their vision? So then the board artists will make those changes and do a clean pass of the board. Then at that point it gets looked at again by executives and again, by the director. They always have more changes and more ideas. By that point, the board artist has already moved on to their next script and that's when the storyboard revisionist comes in. So then I will meet with the director and they'll say, okay, this is what we wanna change from what's originally in the board, then I make those changes. That's kind of the process. And one of the reasons that I chose storyboarding to go into, besides having that opportunity to initially slide in, I was looking for that opportunity because when I was an in-betweener and everything went overseas, or it just wasn't being done anymore for traditional animation, and I saw CG animation coming in and I thought, you know what, I bet you eventually those jobs, those animator jobs are gonna go out of the country as well. Because it's lower down in the creative process. I knew that the studios like to keep the initial creative stuff as close to the original people, you know, making the decisions. So I decided that I needed to be further up the food chain to have a better chance of longevity in my career. And I was really glad that I did because then I heard about after so many years, a lot of studios were shutting down because it was getting sent out overseas, it was getting outsourced. I think I made a good decision there. And I think that's a good thing for a student to keep in mind is you wanna be one of those initial people to touch things. You wanna be a designer or a layout artist or a background artist or a storyboard artist because that's the initial creative process they want a lot of control over and they want it locked down before they send it overseas. They basically want everything worked out and it to be basically foolproof by the time they send it to someone else, that it will still come back the way they want it to look.
Carrie:Did you seek out any advice from people in the field or perhaps people you had worked with before or people who had already moved into storyboarding work? Did you talk to people or were you just kind of making that decision from what you had been observing?
Angela:Yeah. I did talk to people, and all of us would talk to each other with what we were figuring out to do to pivot. It was kind of a collection of all of that.
Carrie:Yeah. That's such an important thing to think about because there's periods of time that we all face right along our career path, whether it's the industry changing or whether it's we feel like we need to make a change for life circumstances or perhaps you're bored or uninspired or you want to progress more, you wanna grow more and it's so important to talk to other people. Right. Obviously take it with a grain of salt. Cuz sometimes people will give you bad advice, frankly. But the more people that you talk to, that you trust and people who you see are successful in doing great things within your field, it could really help inform your decision.
Angela:Yes. For sure.
Carrie:So how long have you been at Nickelodeon and what has the trajectory of your time there looked like?
Angela:I have been there, it will be two years in April, so it's almost two years. And that's a pretty long run. A lot of the times you won't have that long a stretch, especially now that a lot of animation is done for streaming services like Nickelodeon and they'll only order 10 episodes. Right now, I'm working on a regular season long show. They put two episodes together in one episode basically, and they're about 10 minutes long. So right now I'm working on episode 95 for season two. So it's really nice to have that longevity cause I've worked on things where it's like, as soon as I start, I know we're done in three months and I'm already job hunting at the beginning of a job. So this has been great and very much appreciate it.
Carrie:From the mid two thousands to this most recent job you took at Nickelodeon during the pandemic, obviously we have a lot of years to account for there. So can you describe kind of how you were moving from job to job and what that is like when you're living this life between different studios and different projects?
Angela:Yeah. So what it was a combination of is some good longer term steadier sort of jobs, although nothing's really super steady. Although I have friends who've worked on The Simpsons and they've worked on it since the nineties and are still working.
Carrie:Oh my gosh. Wow.
Angela:Amazing. And so rare. And they feel very, very lucky. And then there's some studios too that are really good about moving you around. Like I've never gotten in-house at Disney, but I've always wanted to work in-house there. And they're great because they will try to move their artists. Their recruiting department consciously tries to retain you and move you to another show. So I know people who have worked at Disney for a long period of time as well, but on different productions. So that might still look like a layoff in between projects if one is finishing before the other one's gearing up. So you do always have to save your money to be prepared for if it's a temporary thing and you're signed up to do another thing. It's a hiatus, so that could mean another show or you're going on to the second season of a show, but they didn't green light any time. A green light is when the studio actually says, yes, we're gonna do a project. Here's the budget and it's locked and ready to go. That might not happen right away if they're waiting for reviews to come in, if they're waiting for readings to come in, if they're waiting to see if the products they have associated with the show, the merchandise are selling well. That's another big consideration studios have. Sometimes there's a waiting period where they're trying to figure those numbers out, and so there's a delay. So you might have three months off before the next season starts. Or you might have a year before the next season starts. So it's kind of crazy. You never know. So sometimes you might not even end up waiting for that to happen if you really don't want a year off. So basically I've just gone from jobs like this one here where I've worked on a couple of seasons to jobs where it's a few weeks. Some of the things I've worked on was a show called Randy Cunningham, ninth Grade Ninja. I worked on a little bit of The Simpsons. I got to fill in for somebody who was on maternity leave for a few months. I got to work on F is for Family. I was actually invited for a second season of F Is for Family, but it was a year between, so I was already on another show. I've worked on projects for a studio that does stop motion animation and I had to learn how to do the boards for that, which is a whole different thing. It was another cool thing to learn, but that was again, another like short period of time. Was there for like six months. You're just kind of all over the place. I worked at an educational company for a while. That was a nice, long, steady thing. They had a bunch of educational. Movies. They wanted to make like little shorts for teaching math and English. And so I was working there for a while, which was a whole different thing. That was neat. So there's a lot of variety and that's good. But I spent a lot of my career networking, job hunting, building my portfolio, learning new. Animation tools. One of the things I had to do during the pandemic, I got hired on by a director I'd worked with before to work on a show called Mom and Amy Sheriff. But the director said, yeah, this one we have to use Adobe Anime. Do you know how to use it? And I said, no. And he said, well do an animation walk cycle in it and I'll show it to my producer and get you a job. So I said, okay. I kind of looked at everything online cause I couldn't like go take a class or anything, so it was a pandemic. So I just went on YouTube and found some videos, quickly did that and set it off and then got hired. While they were doing my paperwork and getting ready to onboard me, another artist left who was actually a designer, a prop designer. My director just called me out of the blue like, okay, change of plans. You're gonna be doing storyboard revisions for two weeks and then you'll do two weeks on design doing props. And I was like, oh, you know, I've never done prop design before, right? And he's like, yeah, you'll be fine. And so I was like, okay. You always say yes, I always say Yes, job strategy of mine. And then I figure it out later. And so I was like, oh no, I gotta learn how to do really do this program. I have to learn prop design, I have to learn so much. I have to learn a new show. Cuz every new show has different ways they wanna do things. That alone, just switching gears to a new show is a big learning curve. Adobe animates a really tough program to learn, at least it was for me. It was a lot of work compared to other programs that I've used. So I would spend a regular full workday just on YouTube trying to figure out how to work the program and then another full workday actually doing the work. And I was pretty exhausted by the end of that four months And then also, I didn't even know too, once I started doing the props, the guy who was like mentoring me and training me, who's the head of that department, he was like, these have to be set up so the animators can use them. So it was a big, huge learning curve. And after I was done, I was like, oh my God, I'm never working in anime again. I'll never take another job like that. I probably won't even have the opportunity, cuz most places don't use anime for boards. They use Storyboard Pro. Sure enough about a year later I got recommended for Baby Shark at Nickelodeon and they used animate. And I got the job because I knew animate, but I didn't really know it as in depth as the show. And I hadn't used it in about a year. So then I had another struggle ramping back up, working a lot of hours trying to figure it out, trying to get it locked down and managed to do it and kept my job. And I'm still here, which is great. But it was a lot of work. It's a lot of juggling around. You have to be very flexible in your career if you wanna do this. You have to be very open-minded and be willing to work really hard for what you want and just hope that it pays off. It always has for me. I've never regretted any of the time that I've put into really learning something that I wanted to learn. So that's kind of how my career has gone as I've moved along to this point.
Carrie:You've talked a lot about how you have to, you know, look for the next job and look for the next gig. Can you talk a little bit about that process, like when you're getting close to the end of a job or whatever the timeline is for when you know it's time to look for the next thing. What are steps that you're taking? Like do animators have any kind of agency or organization that they're using to kind of put the word out or put something out there that you're looking, or are you literally going in and applying to individual jobs? Are you calling people and just saying, Hey, I'm looking. Let me know if you have something. Like what are the types of things that you're doing when you're looking for that next thing?
Angela:There are artists that use agents I never have. They take a cut of your paycheck every week, basically, once you're hired, and even if you get a job that you found yourself because you're signed with the agent, you're still paying out of your paycheck. The nice thing about it is, is they help negotiate your salary and things like that. So if you have a hard time with the idea of like, somebody's paying you too little. I had that happen at one studio. They were like, okay, it was a non-union job, so it's, we don't have the union rates involved. They said, oh, by the way, it pays$25 an hour. And I was like, that's not enough. You know? I was like, that's way low compared to what I'm used to making. Yeah. So I said, I'm gonna have to make more, you're gonna have to pay at least 45 an hour. And they came back and, and sure enough, I got what I wanted. because I was comfortable enough to ask and know my worth. But if you feel like you're the kind of person who would just be like, okay, and too scared to speak up and say anything and getting underpaid, especially women, women have a really hard time doing it and we're typically underpaid. It's easy to find out. I've worked on many shows where I found out that I was making 10,$15,$20 an hour less than my male counterpart on the show cuz they were getting paid so much above union minimum. And they were just offering me the union minimum. And saying like, oh, that's it, that's the most. But they had enough experience to know at the time or they had an agent. But I've learned over time, the good thing to do, when you're a woman in this industry is share with other people what you're making. Ask other women, what are you making there? What are you making here? And ask the guys, what are you making on this show? What's your hourly, what do they give you? Keep an open dialogue so that you know when you're aware of when you're not getting paid enough. Cuz for some reason there's the stigma about talking about what you make. But unless a company is in a contract, like barred you from saying or asking, you should just go ahead and ask and find out so you know what your actual worth is.
Carrie:So what are some of the other steps that you're taking when you're looking for that next gig? Since you don't have an agent and you're doing it all on your own, what does that look like?
Angela:It's just staying in touch with people that you've worked with before. Planning to have lunch and keeping in touch. Another thing you have to keep in mind is the fact that once you're job hunting and you have to ask people for recommendations or to be helped or whatever, you wanna make sure that you have offered to do that for others as well. So you don't feel like, I can't ask, I can't say cuz now I feel bad. I don't wanna bother anyone. But if you've already helped other people and they're gonna feel that they owe you a favor, I think it's good. So you wanna make sure that you're doing that for other people. Even if it just, you hear somebody is looking for work, just say, send me your portfolio, send me your resume, and I'll keep it on hand and if I hear of anything, I'll make sure to pass it on. Even if you don't have anything to offer them right at that moment, just the fact that you've reached out and you're willing to help, then people be more likely to wanna help you when you're in the same situation and you won't feel bad about taking their help. You really do have to suck it up and ask though for help. That's like the hardest thing. And you can look online and you can apply for stuff online, but it's just really, really hard to get your work in front of somebody unless you're getting a direct recommendation from someone.
Carrie:Do you find yourself going up for the same jobs, with the same groups of people consistently? Is there kind of a group of you with similar experience and similar networks who's kind of traditionally considered for a lot of the same things?
Angela:Yeah, a lot of times we will cross paths or you'll know if a friend has also applied for the same job. So that is common. But there's so many people now, the union's so big and there's so many artists that it's very common to go into a job and not have worked with anybody on the crew or anything. So for Baby Shark, I had not worked on this crew with anyone. I knew a producer that I worked with before and I said, you know, I'm looking for work. Can I just send you my stuff in case you hear of anything? And she passed along my work and her word was good enough that I got the job. So in that case, like there was nobody that I knew that was going for it, but I just had somebody recommending me. So that's really common too. It's kind of a mixed bag I guess. But you could very easily be in competition with a friend for a job. I had a job that I really, really wanted and one of my best friends also had applied for it and I was so bummed cuz I was with her when she got the call that she got hired and I knew there was only one spot and I had to be happy for her. Oh my god, it's so hard sometimes. Yeah. But most of the time I feel like I am the only one applying for stuff that I know of it seems like, but it's hard to say these days with everything being online. It used to be more obvious cuz we'd all show up for tests together at a studio in person. Right. You know? Yeah. And so it probably makes more than I'm aware of.
Carrie:And when you say you're applying, does that mean you're actually going in and applying for something that's posted or it's something that you heard about or you just know there's a consideration going on? Like what does that mean in this context?
Angela:It's both. Like sometimes when I'm job hunting, if I don't have anybody to recommend me and I don't have anything going on, I'm just applying to everything online like everyone else. So you do the typical online form, the job application, and then the link to send the portfolio. Some of the studios have it set up where they keep on file, like Disney will have everything uploaded and they don't even allow you to apply more than every so often and they have your work on their file. Then other times it's like the job isn't even posted yet and you just happen to know somebody ahead of time, which is awesome cuz then you get the leap on the opportunity, you get the first crack at it before everyone else.
Carrie:In one of those jobs you were mentioning that someone was mentoring you. How common is a mentorship as you progressed through your career and you've worked on all of these different shows and different projects, is there usually kind of a mentor figure, management figure? How has that dynamic been throughout your career?
Angela:There's always somebody to mentor you no matter what. Like whoever's working above you, you can always get better. The story supervisor worked for now, he will show me things that I didn't know and do things that I didn't know about the program or storyboarding or drawing. You're always kind of learning from somebody that's above you. If you're playing your cards right, if you're doing it correctly and you're open to suggestions and you're open to feedback, a lot of people. If you're the kind of person who can't take constructive criticism and can't take feedback, it's really hard for you to advance in your career and do things. In that case, with the prop design job, since I'd never done props and the crew knew I hadn't done props, it was definitely a real mentorship kind of situation where I would ask him a lot of questions and for a lot of feedback, it was great. I learned so much from him. I'm always grateful those people would take the time to teach you new thing. And people in animation are like usually pretty kind, generous people, and they wanna help each other and they wanna help bring everybody up with them. You do encounter that a lot in animation.
Carrie:When people think about working for Disney or working for Nickelodeon and working on these shows or these movies that people have heard of and you know, they kind of hold dear as part of their childhood or as part of their adolescent years. Is there kind of pinch me moments for you when you're working through this? Or is there kind of this fun environment or childlike aspect to the energy with, of the people that are working on the project with you? A lot of people's work environments, if they're doing some traditional fields that we know about, you know, they're an accountant, they're an attorney, they're a nurse or a doctor, you know, that childlike kind of excitement and that fun is not necessarily part of people's everyday work. Right. Do you feel like that's true for animation? Have you experienced that as you've gone through your career?
Angela:Oh yeah. Lots of times. Like I, there's so many times when I think, oh my God, seven year old me, you know, the one who thought they wouldn't be able to do this because of moving the mouth to the words and I'm sitting at my desk editing the audio and checking in and changing the mouth shapes and making sure the acting works. I'm like, oh my God. Seven year old me would be like, you're amazing. You figured it out, like you can do it. And then just being in some of the studios and stuff, it's really neat. This is my third time at Nickelodeon, and when I was there before working in the studio and stuff, I was like, oh my God, this is so fun. And I had like one day that I, I just had recently had surgery and I just came back and I was kinda recuperating and I was at my desk, like really not ready to work that day. And somebody came by my desk and said, oh, you know what they need in record. They need people with high pitched voices, we need this background, they call it background Walla, where you hear characters kind of talking off in the distance, but it's not specific to a character. And they're like, mm-hmm could you please come into the sound booth and do some recordings for us for the day? And I was like, yes. So it's like certain things that'll pop up like that you're like, oh my God, I just had the best day ever. So that day I got to be a group of ants in a playground. There were a bunch of us in there, and it was really neat. We're each had our own sound booth with the big fancy microphone. And yeah, there's things like that that are just, they're just so neat. They're so fun. And one day I got to have lunch with, uh Michelle Kwan. Oh, oh my gosh. Wow. She was at the studio when I worked at Film Roman on Wesley, and she was going to be the voice of one of the characters. The head of the show's wife was like, come on, you would have lunch with us. And this boardroom's like, yes. So I got to have lunch with her. Like, it's just weird things like that'll pop up that are really, really neat, neat little moments. Yeah, definitely. There's a lot of pinch me moments that are fun.
Carrie:Are there some things that you did in college that you're really thankful you either participated in or learned? Perhaps an internship or a job you had that gave you some skills? And then also, are there some things that you wish you would've done in college to help you on your career path?
Angela:I wish I'd known earlier on that I wanted to do animation because I would've switched my focus of my classes to be more specific. I would've taken more life drawing and I would've saved myself time of then having after I graduated to have to go to another school to master it better. And then I also wished that I had reached out more to animation professionals. I wish I tried to find a way to get mentored at that stage in college of the directions of things that I needed to do and get better at ahead of time so that I could have started my career a little sooner.
Carrie:If a college student were to approach you today mm-hmm. and say, I'm really interested in the career path that you have. Are there some things that you recommend that they do while they're in college to help them? Like is it beneficial to start learning particular programs? Or is that gonna be kind of changing by the time they get into their career path? Like what are some key things that you think would be important today for somebody who's in college and has an interest in doing this?
Angela:I would tell them to take a lot of drawing classes, life drawing classes, and to draw a lot on their own. Take a sketchbook, go out and draw. If they are interested in doing storyboard, that they master Storyboard Pro and drawing in Storyboard Pro, cuz it's a little different than drawing on paper. Look for ways to get internships. Look to find someone, to mentor them if they can find someone who can give them advice as they go along. I will periodically mentor if one crosses my path that is curious and wants help, I will help recommend them. Sometimes Nickelodeon has a thing where you can recommend a student for one of those kind of projects. That's like an internship type of thing. So I'll do that and I'll give them pointers on how to write their cover letter, what type of things should be in their portfolio, and just give them general encouragement to keep going. If you can find anybody like that, if somebody comes across your path, ask'em. Mentorship doesn't mean that they have to be attending to you 40 hours a week. And if you're gonna ask somebody to mentor you, just say, if I could come to you and just ask for pointers here and there, as I go along my path and get ready to apply. If I could get suggestions from you or periodic portfolio reviews, place it in such a way that you don't seem like you're gonna be dominating their already busy life. Yeah. One girl that I worked with, she was an intern at this one particular studio, and I asked her, You know where she was going to school and she said, I believe it was Cal Arts at the time. She said that she was having a hard time cuz she was in the master's program, but they wouldn't let her take any drawing and where should she take drawing? So I recommended the union, but then I said, I think that's kind of weird. They're not offering a life drawing and you can't take life drawing for a master's degree. I said, at this point, I don't know how helpful it is. I said, what kind of program is it? She said, oh, they only offer experimental animation. And I said, well, I don't really know how practical that is. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But I said, Maybe you should just take classes at the union or, I have other schools and other teachers that are amazing who, who also teach at Cal Arts and Art Center. You can get the same information from, but outside of that environment so you can get more focused where you need to be. And she said she couldn't because her parents were insisting that she get a master's degree. Oh. And I told her, I'm like, well, are they paying for it? And she said, no. And I said, well, I know how much it costs to go to school there. I said, I want you to go outside at lunch. And I want to look in the parking lot at the cars that are parked in the parking lot. We are not driving Mercedes-Benz and BMWs and stuff like that. We are not like getting doctor salaries. So you're paying that kind of tuition as if that was what you were gonna make when you're done, but you're not. Really think about how you're doing this at this point. Do you need a master's degree or do you just need some skills? Because I told her when I got done with college and I needed some skills, I found those classes. That's kind of how I've given people advice. So it's always good if you're a student and you're looking, find people in the industry ask, what should I do? What's my best way in? What's the way I can do it spending the least amount of money because when you get done with school, if you wanna be an artist, you better make sure that you can afford to be an artist and you're not so saddled down with debt that you have to take another job to pay that down. That's just kind of the way that I look at it.
Carrie:Yeah, that's a great point because I think a lot of people assume to go into a certain field, I have to get this degree, or I have to go do this thing. Where sometimes that's not the case. Some people will tell you, you know, sure, if you have your bachelor's degree, great. Instead of the masters, go have this mentor, take this other class, learn these programs. Especially if they're not being offered within the master's program that you're looking at. Sometimes there's just more practical skills that you need to learn either on the job or in another capacity that could actually bring more value to the work that you're doing than what you assumed would bring more value, right?
Angela:Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, you don't wanna go down this path, and do the experimental animation and find out nobody's looking for whatever weird thing you've done, Yeah. And a different doesn't translate to anything that they're doing in the real world. It's really important to make sure you're always on the right, most productive path. I think it's great to have a bachelor's degree because a lot of times those job sites and things, if the job says they want a bachelor's degree in art, you will get filtered out. Yeah. Which is awful. even though most of us don't lean on that degree or need that degree per se, I'm just glad I have it because if I do apply online, I don't get filtered out. But, master's degrees, that's not really something that's ever comes up as a requirement. I've never seen it on a job.
Carrie:Yeah. And I think that's also a great point with big name schools or schools that have a certain prestige, particularly in different fields. I think as time goes on, sometimes. it's not giving you what you actually need, you know, other than the name. Right? Some people want to go to a particular school for a particular thing because they want the name of that school on their resume and they want the connections to the people who teach at that school. Whereas sometimes something that's not a big name school can give you so much more value in the actual content that you're learning, mm-hmm. that can help you go forward. I think sometimes we have rose colored glasses on when it comes to big names schools, so it's so important. Don't just assume cuz you've heard that the school is so great and it's been like that for so long. Don't just assume that that's the best place for you to be, because it actually, it might be outdated, it may not have the specialization that you're looking for. It may not have the actual skills that you're gonna need on a daily basis. So it's so important to kind of dig down into what the content of that degree is and the courses that you're taking and ask people in the field like, what do you need? Is this going to even help me? Or would it be better to go do this less expensive, less famous, whatever institution that's actually gonna give you what you need.
Angela:Yep. for sure.
Carrie:Well, looking back over your career path, do you have any kind of big picture life advice that you've learned along the way? Whether it's specific to your career path or it's just kind of helped you make decisions, you know, between making choices in your career path for the life that you wanna live. Do you have some big picture advice for students to make sure that they're considering as they go along their path through college and into their career?
Angela:I would say just what I said before, make sure that you are flexible. Make sure that you are always willing to learn a new thing and not get in a stubborn mindset of where, okay, well this is all I know how to do and I just can't learn that other thing. I'm just not gonna do it. I think people need to make sure that they're really keeping in mind that their career will evolve and change as technology evolves and changes, and that they should be willing to put in the time, learn new things and stay open-minded.
Carrie:Yeah. Well, that's great advice. Angela, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your story and giving us a glimpse into the industry where you work, and a little bit about the decisions you've made along the way and the things that you've had to learn.
Angela:Oh, you're welcome. It was my pleasure. It was so fun.
Carrie:It was. Thank you.
Angela:Thank you.
Carrie:Do you know someone I should interview? Please DM me on Instagram@pathsinprogresspodcast and let me know who I should talk to. I would love to hear about how these stories are impacting your journey. Please follow Paths in Progress wherever you download your podcasts and leave a review to let me know what you think. You can also follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at Paths in Progress Podcast. Our music is by John Grimmett and the artwork is by Edgar Alanis. Thanks again for joining me today.