It’s finally over. You’re free. You’ve got your degree, your freedom, and the whole wide world to explore. Sure, everyone says the industry is a little rough right now. You don’t know this yet because you’ve just graduated, but the industry is always “a little rough right now”.

Just keep applying, they say.

Just keep applying.

Suddenly, twelve months have gone by. You don’t have a job. Maybe you’ve had to pick up something full or part-time to make ends meet. Applying takes time. Writing cover letters takes time. Reformatting your resume to be ATS compatible takes time. You don’t have any time.

But somehow, somehow, one of your old classmates got a job in the industry. An internship. An offer. How? What makes the difference?

I’ve been trying to answer this question for the past five years. Without getting overly specific, I currently work at a large university where I help manage a highly competitive animation program, and I’ve been paying attention to which graduates ‘make it’—and which don’t. Before I continue, I want to be clear that the opinions expressed here reflect my experience and observations, which are not universal. However, I want to share this insight as I think it will be valuable to both recent graduates and aspiring animators.

Who Makes the Cut?

When it comes to walking across that stage with a degree? Everyone. Everyone makes the cut, and that’s part of the problem. Having a degree does not mean you’re hirable. And I don’t mean that in the, “Ohoh, you thought getting a degree was a one way ticket to employment? Aren’t you entitled!” way. I mean that it is entirely possible that you left your institution without the skills required to compete in the field even though you were told otherwise.

You can’t know what you don’t know. If your instructor says that a walk cycle, weight exercise, and ball bounce is enough for an entry level portfolio, why would you expect anything else? The greatest disservice an institution can do for its students is tell them to get out there when they really needed to keep improving.

This alone sets some students at a massive disadvantage post-graduation, and it leads to what I’ve identified as the number-one early career killer: stagnation.

Cool Degree, What’s Next?

Your schoolwork has a six-month shelf life. Work you create after graduating has a 12-month shelf life. If you don’t have something new that demonstrates an improvement in your skills over the course of a year, it’s over. This is the #1 indicator of employment I’ve seen over the last five years.

Strong students who coast on what they made in undergrad stall out. Strong students who grasp onto something new—go out of their way to pursue curiosity and find resources to really dig deep into niche facets of our industry—they’re getting picked up, and they’re getting picked up by big companies.

This isn’t to say “make more work”. You should make more work, of course, but a lot of soon-to-be grads ask me, “Well, what kind of work should I make? I want to get hired.”

I used to say, “Look at the work that your dream studio makes and cater your portfolio to that.” I’ve learned that’s not the answer. The real answer is “whatever makes you just frustrated enough that you can’t leave it alone.”

It’s something that challenges you, demands your time, and forces you to learn something new. If you make something you think is cool, odds are you’ll fight to finish it.

It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know.

I used to roll my eyes when I heard this. “Great,”  I’d say. “So now I’ve got to compete with nepotism, too?”

Turns out, this old adage isn’t as dread-inducing as it might seem. Now with a few years behind me, I’ve come to understand our industry is a game of who knows who—but if you play your cards right, it’s a game you can win.

Get out there. Go to conferences. Go to film festivals. Post on Linkedin. Follow up with old classmates. Ask what they’re doing. Collaborate. The more present you are, the more likely it’ll be that one day an acquaintance will say, “Wait a minute—I think I know someone who does that,” and they’ll be talking about you.  

If all of this is making you think,

Man, This Seems Tough… I’m Not Sure Animation is For Me.

You might be right. I’m not here to be the Crusher of Dreams, but this field pretends to be a lot more accessible than it is. Anyone can be an animator, but there is a distinct difference between the sort of person who daydreams about their successful indie pilot and the person who gladly stares at a screen for weeks on end, moving little curves around in a software that likes to crash every few hours.

And beyond that, you’re expected to have the business sense you need to market yourself and the soft skills you need as a collaborator. Yikes!

Okay, So… Now what?

1.      Make sure your resume is presentable and ATS compatible. If you’re a recent grad, it shouldn’t be more than one page.

2.      Set up your Linkedin. Connect with peers and old instructors—most instructors have massive networks and connecting with them will give you access.

3.      Post regularly on LinkedIn. Seriously. Make sure it’s solid work, or solid work-in-progress.

4.      Go to events in your area. You can post that on Linkedin, too.

5.      Say yes to every opportunity, even if it’s not the exact job you were hoping for. Sometimes your first gig might be volunteering somewhere- if you can take it, take it.

6.      Make more stuff. Every piece should be more challenging than the last.

7.      Learn how to teach yourself (if you don’t already know).

Our field changes (I am not exaggerating) every year. New software, new tools, new everything. Don’t get stuck. Play with new tools when they become available—make a mess.

8.      Don’t be afraid to make bad art. Doing something new is almost always synonymous with doing something badly. The sooner you do it poorly, the sooner you’ll do it less poorly.

But I Don’t Have Time!

Big disclaimer here: there will be at least one person reading this post who genuinely does not have time. Only you, reader, can know the details of your situation. However, in my career, I have only met one person who really and truly could not fit anything else into their schedule, and they were working 2 full time jobs as a full-time student*.* With that in mind, I will (perhaps controversially) say to most folks reading this:

Yes, you do. Or you could. How much time do you spend scrolling on your phone/social media/TikTok every day? Truly—check right now. All of that time could be put toward creating new work or researching new tools. If this is what you want to do with your life, working toward it needs to be something you factor into your schedule. I know you’re tired after work. I am too. But even one hour a day will make the difference!

For the sake of transparency, this isn’t equally easy for everyone. There will be people competing with you that have money, and that money buys them more time either because they can afford to work part-time or not work at all. It isn’t fair.

But! Money isn’t the deciding factor. I’ve seen recent graduates with every advantage flounder because they wait and coast. I’ve seen recent graduates with next to nothing—*and I really and truly mean next to nothing—*make it, all because they refused to slow down.

All of the above is the culmination of my reading, attendance at professional seminars/talks, and personal observations. No AI was used in writing the content above. If you have personal anecdotes or insight, please share below!

I have been trying to fix this issue for two days, and I don't know what else to try. I just got a Samsung zFlip7 after nearly 19 years with an iPhone.

I spent the first day thinking Android just... didn't show notifications. Turns out, it should. I hear the notification sound, but nothing shows up on screen. This is true whether the phone is locked or unlocked.

I've tried the following:

- Check to make sure notifications are on in settings.

- Checked each individual app to ensure their settings allow notifications to appear.

- Reset my app preferences.

-Deleted apps that could interfere (Zedge).

- Cleared the cache of apps affected (all of them).

- Downloaded Nice Catch to see what apps the notifications are coming from.

- Exhausted ChatGPT (fuck chatGPT. It had me searching for menus that didn't exist over and over again.)

- Hunted down other Reddit posts that discuss the same issue. One mentioned changing the notification mode from "brief" to "detailed", which fixed the issue for... 5 minutes. I swapped it back to brief hoping it would fix the issue. It broke again, I switched to detailed and nothing changed.

- I restarted my phone several times. It sometimes works on boot for a few minutes, sometimes it just doesn't work at all.

- Fully updated my phone.

I can't enjoy this stupid phone because I have to flip to my notifications page every. Single. Time. I get a ping.

The only apps I downloaded that would interfere would be Good Lock and Zedge. I deleted Zedge.

Not to mention, whenever this feature breaks, I also can no longer receive text messages from iPhone users. I've been testing it with family, and where there're no notifications, there're no iPhone text messages. When notifications work, so do the iPhone chats.

I do a lot of tech troubleshooting as part of my job, and I cannot believe I'm dealing with this BS for a brand new phone with a freshly installed OS. I really want to make the switch-- I would appreciate any help.

https://reddit.com/link/1th84ui/video/4jg4dktxyz1h1/player

Inspired by a 17thC Polish saber. Chipped away at it after work for a few weeks... modeling/texturing isn't my specialty, but I really feel like I pushed my skills with this. I definitely see areas I'd like to improve on for next time, but sometimes you've gotta call it.

Would love y'alls thoughts!

https://preview.redd.it/qnnbd7ebss1h1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=dd005c817e064c5313b449ea53d25581de600530

https://reddit.com/link/1tg7z3y/video/uoh3jb5dss1h1/player

I'm more a tech/rigging person than a 3D modeling person, but I try to keep my skills sharp. This took about a month of work-- every minute I spent on this was stolen after-hours when I got home from my job. There're a lot of things I'm not happy with, but I'm proud I got it done.

Most frustrating was getting the textures from Painter into Renderman. I've rendered whole films in the engine, but for some reason I could not get the blade to take roughness properly or the hilt to process the normals correctly. You can see what the hilt looked like in Painter below:

https://preview.redd.it/qrzeq7kzss1h1.png?width=1018&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f1c33fd47a098ba7df0ec3b91cb581b680176e3

The blade itself was designed by me and modeled off a Polish saber. The idea was a fantasy blade with a chimera spin. Let me know what y'all think! Texturing/surfacing is where I'm weakest, so I'm always looking to improve-- though it's unlikely I'll be revisiting this thing.

A fullbody digital illustration of a red Tiefling. She wears a leather jacket, thigh-high boots, and has wild black hair. Her tail has been replaced with a multi-joint prosthetic, tipped with a blade.

Hey, everyone!

I'm a professional artist, but I'm trying to up my game. This piece took about ~15-17 hours, and there are a lot of parts I'm happy with-- the pose,the linework, the overall polish-- but I still feel like I'm falling short of really capturing the different materials in the outfit. Metal gets close, but the difference between leather and cloth is just sort of... eh.

I'm looking for tips/feedback on how to really differentiate matte materials, and/or really getting leather to look/feel like leather.

I am so, so, so proud of my students. I teach in a pretty tough program at uni. It's selective, and it takes a few years to get in. We had a bit of a rough patch recently-- a lot of turnover, a lot of settling, a lot of restructuring. It's clear to me that our students last year felt it, too.

But I just finished reviewing the books, and I haven't seen such phenomenal attendance in years. This group has been fucking amazing. They're helping each-other, and putting in extra hours to make sure everyone else in their class makes it through. They're well ahead of their benchmarks because of it, and they just want more! I actively look forward to teaching their courses every day (granted I always enjoy my job!) because they genuinely want everything they can get out of my teaching.

The self-directed learning is out of this world, too. They're not asking me the basics-- when something goes wrong, it's always "I tried A, the thing you told us to try, and then B, the thing we're supposed to do if A doesn't work. Then I looked it up and tried C, but that got me here... help?"

It's been broadening my scope of knowledge, too, because they're so hungry for the latest and greatest of what our field can do. I'm going to give this group everything I've got, because they've proven to me that they're all-in! COVID really impacted student learning habits, and this is the first year things have gotten better, not stayed the same or gotten worse.

I dunno, y'all. I'm just so proud of them! :)

I have to say, when I first started Frontiers of Pandora, I thought it was terrible. I bought the deluxe edition shortly after watching The Way of Water, a film I enjoyed way more than I thought I would, and when I booted my PS5 I was met with beautiful graphics and a criminally bad UI.

But it was fine, I told myself. I’d get used to the layout eventually, even though it felt like it was made for PC. What I wanted to dig into was the story. The allure of Avatar, for me, comes from the visuals and the worldbuilding. The idea that we could freely explore a vast expanse of Pandora was enough to have me hooked.

The opening was promising, if heavy-handed. Your and a few other Na’vi children were taken by the RDA to be trained as ambassadors. Alma, your primary teacher, hoped that you and your other clan members would help broker peace between the RDA and the natives of Pandora one day. We see the cruelty of the antagonist immediately; he kills your sister for refusing to denounce her culture. Unfortunately, we have no time to get to know her or the culture she refuses to leave behind, so her death feels hollow.

Time passes. You and the others continue to learn English, politics, diplomacy… all while the world of Pandora and the history of your clan, the Sarentu, remains a mystery to you. After a crisis lands you and your companions in cryosleep that skips us forward a few years, members of the resistance free you from your pods and the real story begins.

This, in my opinion, is a fantastic premise for a game that needs to be accessible to newcomers while also letting die-hard fans experience new facets of the world. Players who don’t know Pandora feel at home in the shoes of the protagonist, who’s never explored the world before. Fans are satisfied with a narrative justification for the protagonist’s lacking skill, and it all culminates in a strong through-line for the story: you were stolen from your world and brought to another, and now—in some ways—you belong to both and neither.

The other Sarentu you were locked away with all exist as different shades of the protagonist’s experience. Nor wants to return to his roots. Teylan feels more comfortable with the humans, fascinated by technology. Ri’nela feels distant from her culture, and doesn’t want to cause trouble.

Couple this with the reputation of the Sarentu—a vanished clan that was beloved across Pandora, known for their ability to capture the beauty of life in their stories and settle disputes with nothing but their words—and you have the foundation for a compelling story.

Unfortunately, the game doesn’t capitalize on any of this in a way that lets it live front and center. The protagonist is immediately rushed into conflict, and we as a player aren’t given any time to feel the weight of returning to a world that should be yours but… isn’t. Plus, by merit of being a Ubisoft game, there isn’t an option to resolve problems diplomatically despite diplomacy being the premise of the protagonist’s existence.

Perhaps more injurious is the writing and voice acting during the front-facing hours of the game. Priyah Chen, the woman who’s meant to be leading the resistance, reads like a scatterbrained teenager. The game’s weakest characters and performances stem from its human actors, which are a major focus at the start.

Stepping outside for the first time is almost overwhelming, and there’s a wealth of land to explore. Too bad for me, I couldn’t figure out how to alternate between eating food and using my weapon wheel during the first combat. After getting my ass handed to me six times in a row (skill diff), I chalked it up to a $70 disappointment and put it back on the shelf.

But watching Fire and Ash inspired me to give it another shot, and I am so, so glad I did.

This game is excellent. I don’t regularly play Ubisoft games—my last foray into the publisher’s work was Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, but so many of the reviews I could find about Frontiers of Pandora said it reeked of Ubisoft’s same old problems. As someone who doesn’t know what those ‘same old problems’ are, I found my gripes with the game slowly fading away over time.

The mediocre voice acting is largely relegated to a few characters near the beginning. The Na’vi deliver performances that range from ‘passable’ (usually from minor NPC’s) to ‘wow, that was impressive’.

I eventually mastered the UI, too. It is one of the worst UI’s I’ve had to figure out in a triple-A title, but now that I’m more familiar with the system I see it’s designed that way to offer the user on-the-go flexibility that minimizes the amount of time spent in deeper menus.

I love the way leveling up & trade are handled. Leveling up isn’t about killing enemies—it’s about getting better gear. You forage for materials, craft a better version of a recipe you’ve earned, and that determines how combat ready you are. It actively incentivizes exploration and material gathering in a way that feels consistently rewarding.

Likewise, there isn’t any currency on Pandora. Quests make you more favorable to the clans you work with, and you can exchange your positive reputation for gifts. While this isn’t mechanically much different from “do quest, get money”, it certainly feels different! And it preserves the lore of the world.

Combat feels snappy, and I feel powerful when I play. I imagine that some people would find it too easy, or too repetitive, but newer, tougher enemies are consistently introduced that have a wider variety of more lethal attacks. Areas that are well above your level come with a little verbal warning, but you’re never told you can’t do something.

Skillfully and mercifully hunting grants better rewards than wanton destruction, and the weapon variety is fair. Mounted combat was a bit tricky for me at first, but now I’m a huge fan—I’ve never had such an easy time engaging in aerial combat before!

My only real complaint at this point is that I wish the story, and our character’s reputation, was more fully ingrained into the interactions the protagonist has with the other characters in the world. We’re “the Sarentu”, and it’s clear that other clans have expectations of us that derive from our heritage. We don’t really get to see the ramifications of not living up to those expectations, or the conflict implicit in having someone returned to you who has had their entire identity reshaped by the enemy. It’s always “you’re back!”—rarely suspicion, hatred, disgust, or pity. I’d have loved to see more of that conflict!

I’m also beyond impressed at the level of gear customization. The different hides change the appearance of what you craft, and you can’t craft everything. Raiding RDA bases is still rewarding in the form of mods for weapons and gear, and… I mean, come on. You can pet the Ikran!

All that to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the game and I can’t wait to sink more hours in. I can’t help but wonder if this game would’ve gotten as much flak as it has if it wasn’t a Ubisoft title—the visuals alone are groundbreaking.

But that’s all just my opinion! I’d love to hear why y’all did or did not enjoy the game—please no spoilers for the new DLC or major story beats in the main campaign.

 [No AI was used in creating or editing this review.]