Milking the Pro's - Part 3

JF: Why did you choose to do what you're doing?

DL: I'm a big believer in choosing what you'd like to do by DOING IT. As you start your animation career you pay your dues and work your way up from there. I never made a goal that I would be a director by age 30 or anything like that. We're lucky in this business because nobody can stop us from being anything we want to be. Sure, you may have an entry level studio job by day, but by night you could be a storyboard artist, a designer, an animator, a director, a producer and much more-simply by working on your own independent animated film. If you are sincere and stick around long enough in this industry, opportunities will come up, but you need to make sure you are ready for them.

JF: How do I get to be an animation director?

DL: There's no one single path to anything. Although, I would advise that sometimes we should be wary of what we THINK we want. In Star Trek, The Motion Picture, Spock described the evil satellite run-amok as, "...only knowing that it wants. It knows not what." It's fine to want things or to set goals for yourself. Yet, you should be realistic about what it may really mean to do those things. It's a long road to a long career. Good work gets recognized one way or another. John Lasseter, of Pixar, started out wanting to emulate the Nine Old Men of Disney. Instead, he ended up as a key player of the 3D animation age. Is that something he could have known at age 21? Just hang in there. Make films. Earn experience on the job in any role you've got. Be the person that others want to work with for 8 hours a day, five days a week ... and then maybe, just maybe, you might be qualified to quote a passage from a Star Trek movie in an interview one day.