Letter to a recent college grad

Congrats on graduating college. And to put it in the words of one of my best clients/colleagues, "Sure, there's a recession going on. But the way I see it, it's up to me whether I choose to participate in it or not."

To answer your question, "What path did you take after you graduated, did you launch into having your own studio right away?" – I'd say that my career path was a bit winding. At the end of college (Rhode Island School of Design, degree in 2D Film Animation), recruiters from Nickelodeon came to campus and reviewed my portfolio. Short answer–they didn't like it. Not to let that discourage me, I re-vamped my portfolio over the next month, contacted the people who had come to campus to let them know I took their advice, and got a few interviews. I called people, showed them my work, and got more interviews. I got a couple offers, & ended up working at Nickelodeon for 2 years on a TV series.

TV series work takes a special brand of creativity, to keep things fresh and interesting with the same darn characters and terribly similar situations from episode to episode. Lacking that, I got bored. After the series wrapped, I moved on to education graphics (gag, really ugly stuff), video editing, producing for animation studios (which i loved), and eventually landed in grad school at NYU. I don't recommend it, I was at the Center for Advanced Digital Applications, and while I made some awesome contacts, I could have just networked and learned the material on my own and saved the money.

Throughout grad school I freelanced, and eventually started a small studio with 2 friends. They dropped out (1 now lives & works in LA as a motion graphics and compositing artist. The other went on to direct a series for Disney), I stayed. It's sort of a "virtual studio" in that I work out of my apartment with a couple interns who come in a couple days/week, and the rest telecommute via AIM and FTP. I've taken some on-site work doing rotoscoping and motion graphics, one of which lasted 9 months, but mostly I do a big variety of character animation (2d), motion graphics, digital compositing, video editing, and software training. I use Adobe After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash (but no programming), Apple's Final Cut, Shake and DVD Studio Pro.

I teach at a couple of schools, NYU and Pratt mainly, to have a steady income to rely on when client work is low. Currently, I'm creating a tutorials website, teaching After Effects at NYU, and working on a short film about a woman who did 1 new thing every day for a year: a compositing and animation extravaganza to present what could be mundane material in an extraordinary way. Her exploits ranged from changing a lightbulb (!) to racing a baby (?) to winning 25K on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" (whoa!). Her blog: http://jen365.blogspot.com

The key, I think, to having a successful animation career is to be very honest with yourself about what you do and do not want to do. And to be flexible to change those ideas when you feel like it, and to learn the new skills to match. And to love it enough not to ever, ever give up, even when a client is a jerk, even when a former student surpasses my skill level, even when I have to scale back my spending a whole-lot in response to tough economic times. I maintain a huge network of professional friends and contacts, try to be friendly and helpful to anyone who needs it, and have a lot of fun doing what I do. You can check out my work at http://www.nikebackyourblock.com (I did the animation & digital compositing for the video promo), and my reel is at http://antidotefx.com/kalika.mov

I'm sure a lot of people have told you that your best asset from college is your friends and colleagues. Stay in touch with them, and appreciate that you have been through many unique experiences together and can hopefully grow those experiences outside the protective walls of college.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or would like to get together at some point. I'd love to see your work!