Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher
Creative COW Magazine
Finding the Way
to Real Money,
Full Time.
Industry pros reveal
how they got ahead —
and ways to stay there.
O ne of the most frequently asked
questions I hear is, “How can
I work with tools like After Effects
(insert your favorite tool name here)
full time?”
You might expect me to get the
question from students, or others
just starting to make their way into
professional production. Actually,
I hear it at least as much from
seasoned geezers.
Judging by the frequency and
12
fervency of the question, I
may be making the answer
more complicated than it
needs to be by assuming
that people would like to
get paid for full time AE-
ing.
In any case, that’s
what I assumed. To find
the real world, real money
answer, I asked some
of the industry’s most
talented and respected
artists how they got their
first jobs and how they
built their careers.
From there, we covered every
aspect of the business you can
imagine: education, experience,
sharpening your reel, favorite
features of working pros, and much,
much more.
Get out your pencils and start
taking notes. Even if you’ve never
used After Effects, you’ll find tips
here that you can start using today
to have your best year ever.
December 2006 / February 2007 — Creative Cow Magazine
THE PLAYERS:
An Introduction Before We Dig In
The single unifying trait in the
backgrounds of the people I spoke
to is that all of them cast their
educational nets much, much wider
than computer graphics. Many of
them also came into the game late,
as second or third careers.
“I have, perhaps, one of the
most useless degrees one can
get,” Lars Bunch told me, “a BA in
Theater.”
Actually, the most common
college major among the people I
spoke to: theater. Not computers.
Not graphics, although graphics was
number two. Not TV. Theater. You
know, with people and everything.
At least theater is one of The
Arts. Several studied
something not even
remotely related.
GERMANY
Although Mylenium (at
right) enjoyed animating
for fun as a youngster, he studied
dentistry. In addition to his full-time
After Effects job today, Mylenium
has composed just over two dozen
tutorials for The Creative COW. It
all started with an internship at
an industrial design company. “All
my compositing knowledge is
self-taught,” he says. “Beyond my
internship I had no education in the
field. I learned it all as I went along.”
NEW YORK CITY
The highest-rated After Effects
podcast at the iTunes Store is
Creative COW’s AE podcast, hosted
by Aharon Rabinowitz,
(at left) the Creative
Director of All Bets Are
Off Productions. The
company’s client list
includes Nickelodeon,
HBO, Showtime, MTV
and many more.
Aharon had a double major
with theater (see?) and psychology.
He interned at Kohler Memorial
Hospital, which inadvertently
provided the first step in his After
Effects career. Barely into the
internship, Aharon said “No way I’m
going to do this.”
THE NETHERLANDS
Barend Onneweer (below, left) is
an animator and filmmaker in the
Netherlands who uses After Effects
for his work, while also
teaching After Effects
at the Art Academy in
Rotterdam. He came
closest to having an
education in the kind of
work that we generally
associate with After
Effects – his second time
around.
After his first four years in
college, he earned a second degree
in Audiovisual Design, but even
there, he received only the briefest
introduction to After Effects. “It was
a fairly broad program,” he says,
“ranging from dynamic typography
— which we started doing as cut-
out stop-motion — to documentary
and drama fiction.”
His first degree was in Art
Education, and offers an insight into
the advantages of a broader focus
Creative Cow Magazine — December 2006 / February 2007
than computer graphics alone. “I’ve
always felt really glad I took the
‘teacher training in Arts Education’
detour,” says Barend. “It gave me
such a thorough understanding
of human visual perception, color
theory, composition, perspective
and a good basis in art history.”
So don’t hold yourself back
because you think you’re getting
started with the wrong education,
or starting too late. Or too early.
Several folks I spoke to went
pro straight out of high school,
including Sean and Scott. Another
was Andrew Kramer.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
Andrew Kramer (below, left) is
the author of one of the industry’s
all-time best-selling After Effects
tutorial DVDs, a series of DVDs with
AE projects for design elements
such as loopable
backgrounds, dozens
of video tutorials and
the Serious FX podcast
for The Creative COW.
Before starting his
own production
company, he worked
as a compositor for several major
Hollywood movie studios.
To prepare for all that without
college, he surely went to one of
those arts high schools, right? “I
had a video class in high school,”
Andrew says, “but the teacher didn’t
know what a computer was.”
The moral of the story: start
where you are. Just start.
Call it bluffing. Though you know
what your mother would call it.
But your mother isn’t paying you.
Want more? Here are three stories....
FROM WALL STREET TO ADOBE
“In the mid ‘90’s I was working in the
Art Department of a big Wall Street
firm in New York City,
creating interactive
CD-ROMs,” says Bob
Donlon (left). “One
day, the head of the
video department
came into my office
wanting to know if
I knew After Effects, and asked if
I could create some animations
Emmy®is a registered trademark of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
for one of his videos. “I said ‘Sure,
no problem,’ despite the fact that
I hadn’t a shred of an idea of what
After Effects was.
“Leaving work in a panic, I ran
to a bookstore and picked up the
‘Adobe Classroom in a Book for After
Effects,’ and spent the next 24 hours
soaking in the basics of AE. That
gave me enough to get started.”
There were some steps for Bob
after that, of course. User groups,
forums, more training, and lots of
experience led to him becoming his
company’s art director. From there,
Bob started his own production
company. Today, Bob is Adobe’s
Senior Marketing Manager for
Digital Video & Audio.
UNITED KINGDOM
Antony Buonomo (here, right)
worked for The BBC as a researcher,
producer and director. An early
design job was on
the Royal Television
Society (UK) and
Emmy® winning
documentary, “The
Plot to Kill Hitler.”
“At some point
the producers said they also needed
some animated maps, and asked
could I handle that?” says Antony.
“As we all do, I said ‘Yes’ - knowing
that After Effects would do the job
but having never touched it.
“This was Tuesday. I took a gulp,
bought AE 6.5 Pro on Wednesday,
and had a mock-up animating by
Saturday morning. It was a very
simple and badly put together
animation — lots of redundant
layers and keyframes, etc. — but it
looked good. I was amazed.”
As Bob did, Antony put in plenty
of work to get to the next level. He
recently did the title design and
graphics, as well as exercising his
refined map animation skills, for the
BBC series “Terry Jones’ Barbarians,”
with another series on its way.
OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA
Sean Cusson played an even bigger
opening bluff because the job he
landed was more than just a one-
time gig – it was on a national
animated TV series!
“I had some idea what After
13
Effects was from a friend who
showed it to me.”
What?!
“Yeah, a friend of a friend
pointed me to the job. They asked
me if I knew AE, and I said yes.”
Sean, too, did what it took to
actually deliver on his bluff, and
has become one of Canada’s most
respected motion graphic artists.
As you contemplate this path,
remember that this kind of bluff
always, always gets called. If you
choose this strategy, prepare to
deliver. Fast.
THE MATRIX
You probably already know the
person who’s going to help you land
your first full-time After Effects gig.
They’re not just business contacts,
either. They’re often part of your
network of family and friends.
Barend was primarily an editor
until a friend on one of his projects
introduced him to the producer,
who wanted a cinematic feel for the
finished project. Barend achieved it
with a combination of Premiere and
After Effects, and has spent virtually
all of his time since then in After
Effects. His expertise with both film
look and greenscreen techniques
have brought him as a speaker at
conferences around the world.
“Actually, one of the camera-
operators was my girlfriend’s friend’s
sister,” recalls Barend.
“It turns out that all my work
has come to me through friends
of friends, or people I’ve met
personally,” he says. “For a long
time I felt my work should speak
for itself, so I didn’t put any effort
into networking. Although I did
get some work that way, it wasn’t a
reliable source of income.
“The reality is that people hire
me after they’ve bumped into me
at parties, or talked to a friend of a
friend,” says Barend. As technical as
the business can get, in the end it’s
really about people working with
people.”
More examples: Aharon’s
brother-in-law connected him to his
first job in television production.
Sean’s cousin-by-marriage ran
a production company that brought
him in. He eventually left to go solo,
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saying “I made two calls to say ‘I’m
on my own,’ and haven’t made a call
since. It’s all word of mouth.”
Scott Rocha (here, left) is part
of the progressive design company
Project Rooster. “A friend called
and said I don’t have time do this,
can you do it? I got
my second job from
another friend who
didn’t have time to
do it himself.
“That’s how it
started with me. You meet people,
and all of a sudden they know you
and start throwing work at you.”
Wait a minute! I have friends! I
go to parties!
Lars Bunch (below) says it’s not
just knowing people. It’s knowing
people who know you’re a reliable
professional, who
know that you do high-
quality work. Even if it’s
another kind of work.
He saw his motion
stand animation
business slipping away as former
clients did more of their own stills
animation in After Effects. Rather
than lament being passed by, he
saw an opportunity to make a new
future by learning After Effects
himself. He knew that his experience
in art photography and even theater
gave him tools for success that
others lacked.
Just as he felt ready to make
the leap to full-time After Effects
animation, “an old client walked
into my shop just to say hello after
picking up some photographs at a
nearby lab. I asked him if he needed
any computer graphics.” The client
did, and soon, says Lars, “I was
getting as much work as I could
handle.”
You may recall that two of the
three people who bluffed their way
into After Effects animation were
editors first. You’ll see this pattern
continue in the rest of the article,
too: about 2/3 of the group I spoke
to started as editors.
For those keeping score,
Premiere is the most commonly
used NLE in the stories I heard. Its
interface and integration make
Premiere an obvious choice for AE
artists who want to use editing to
December 2006 / February 2007 — Creative Cow Magazine
open AE opportunities).
Mark Allen (right) agrees that
editing is the shortest path to a
job using After Effects.
“Editors sit with clients
for weeks or months, and
eventually have a great
deal of weight in the post
production process.”
Scott is also one of
those who came into compositing
through editing. His first foray
into After Effects wasn’t exactly
promising. “I was 17 and doing grunt
work at a post house. I got on AE the
first time and took three hours to
make a title move from right to left.”
How did he get from there to
the job a friend handed him for the
Robert Mondavi Vineyard based in
the Napa Valley? From internships
across LA, he’d built a reputation for
reliability. “My friend would never
have handed it to me if he didn’t
think I’d handle it like a professional,”
says Scott. “If I messed up, he’d be
the one that would look bad.
“There are so many people who
are awesome at motion graphics, but
don’t understand the professional
side of it – it’s a business. You have
to be good at what you do, but you
have to be the kind of person that
other people want to work with.”
Sean observes another
advantage of a referral that covers
both technical skills and personal
professionalism. “If I come to a client
having already been recommended,
I’m already qualified. By the time
we’re ready to get started, the deal
is done.”
It also puts Sean in a stronger
position. “I’m not asking for work. I’m
taking work that’s offered to me.”
DREAMS SO REEL
Although they all had very different
takes on the specifics, nearly
everyone agrees that a reel is
important.
At the same time, nobody I
spoke to, or heard about from them,
got even a single job from sending
an unsolicited reel.
Aharon tells a great story why:
“I was a producer at Noggin on the
night shift. It wasn’t a paid gig as an
AE artist per se, but I did interstitials
continued on page 53