Animation Is a People Business (Whatever the Software Says)
Everyone tells you to get good at your craft. They’re right. They just stop one sentence too early.
This week I spent a day at In the Frame, a Screen Queensland event that puts people from across the screen industry in the same room. One of the sessions was about longevity, how you actually stay in this industry for the long haul. And the answer wasn’t a software tip or a showreel trick. It was a plain, slightly uncomfortable truth: being really good at your job is the starting point, not the finish line.
Good Is the Entry Fee
I don’t want that to read as “skill doesn’t matter.” It does. Work on your craft, keep working on it, and then keep working on it some more. I used to laugh that doctors, after all those years of advanced education, still call it “practice”. But anyone who stops getting better is quietly getting replaced.
But skill gets you into the room. It doesn’t keep you there. Screen, animation and film are all about people. Stories exist to connect with people. And the only way to produce a story is to connect with a whole crew of them, over months, under pressure, across disagreements about what the shot is supposed to be. The person who is good at the work and easy to work with gets rehired. The person who is only good at the work gets admired, and then forgotten.
Why the Best Idea in the World Isn’t Enough
There was a session about commissioning bodies, and how they work. One of the harshest realities is that there are only a very small number of commissioned shows in Australia each year. Of those commissioned shows, more often than not, the commissioning body is going to work with someone they have worked with before and know they can deliver. That leaves the person with “the best idea in the world” a very slim chance of being picked up.
I don’t say that to be gloomy. I say it because it flips how you think about relationships. If the people who hand out the work back the ones they already know, then being known isn’t a nice side effect of the career. It’s part of the work.
What My Two Decades Actually Looked Like
I’ve been in this industry for over 20 years. Looking back, it has been a career, but if I’m honest, not a tidy one. For the first 15 years I chased the work wherever it was. Different cities, different countries, different crews, different pipelines. Networking wasn’t my highest priority, but I was eager to learn, forced myself to be sociable and genuinely had fun. Being a little older when I entered the industry also helped me be more grounded than a lot of my younger peers. I was just trying to get the next job and do it to the best of my ability.
What I didn’t realise was that every one of those crews was quietly building something for me.
For the last five years, for personal reasons, I’ve worked remotely. On high-profile projects, delivering quality work to people and teams I have worked with before. Not strangers who found me through a portfolio site. People who watched me work for years, who know what I’ll hand over and how I’ll behave when a note lands at 5pm on a Friday. The relationships I made in the first 15 years are what made the last five possible. I didn’t plan it that way. I just kept turning up with an attitude of gratitude and a thirst to learn, and it compounded.
The Industry Changed, and So Did the Risk
Here’s the part I think younger artists need to hear. When I started, nobody could work remotely. The technology wasn’t there and neither was the acceptance. If you wanted the job, you were in the building. That forced connection on everybody whether they wanted it or not.
Then COVID arrived, remote infrastructure had to be built, and now it exists. Working from home, from another city, from a spare room, is a real option. That’s a genuine gift, and I’m living proof of how well it can work.
But it comes with a trap. You can now be good at your job, hit every deadline and still be completely isolated. Nobody bumps into you at the coffee machine. Nobody sees you handle a bad day. Nobody thinks of you when the next project spins up, because you’re a name in a delivery folder, not a person they know.
I’d argue that isolation is bad for longevity. And I think it’s bad for the work itself, because stories are always about connection: how people relate to other people, or other animals, or the thing in the cupboard that magically moves when you’re not looking at it. It’s strange to spend a career making that kind of work while living a working life with none of it.
Why Rooms Like This Still Matter
This is why events like In the Frame earn their place. A forum with a good agenda is nice. A room full of people you can talk to between sessions is the actual product. You meet the person behind the name on the credits. You find out what a producer is struggling with right now. You have a coffee that turns into a better understanding of how the whole pipeline hangs together, and who carries the risk in it.
None of that shows up in a deliverable. All of it shows up in who you work with five years from now.
So, Practically
If you’re early in your career, or you’ve gone quiet and remote like I have, here’s the short version of what I took away:
Get good, and keep getting better. That’s the entry fee.
Be someone people want back on the next project. Reliable, clear, kind under pressure. That’s the renewal.
Go to the rooms. The festival, the forum, the screening, the coffee catch-ups. Show up, be curious about the other person, and follow up afterwards without freaking out.
Keep the old relationships warm. The people you worked with ten years ago are the people who might ring you next year.
It isn’t glamorous advice. It’s just the part of the craft that doesn’t happen at a desk.
Your Turn
Who in your industry would you actually want to work with again, and when did you last tell them? Send that message this week. It costs you a minute, and it might be the best career move you make all year.
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