Hey y'all,
This question goes out to any animator in NewGrounds who has found steady work or made a living out of animation.
[This is all stuff about me you can skip to get to the question]
I have been coming to NewGrounds since I was 8 years old. When I turned 12 and learned how people were making games and animations in NG it immediately caught my attention. I "bought" my first copy of Macromedia Flash 2004 and ever since then all I've done is learn as much as I can about animation, script writing, storyboarding, animatics, color theory even. I enrolled in SCAD for Animation until I got an understanding of how money works and realized I can't afford that. Graduated from a University in my home country of Puerto Rico with a bachelor's in Digital Animation. This university focused a lot more in 3D animation and Game Design; not what I wanted to do but was pressured to finish my bachelor's regardless. A bachelor's is just a piece of paper, I believe, and the true value of college comes from networking. In Puerto Rico I swear there are at most 20 2D animators, myself included; and none of them make a living from it, so networking in the 2D animation field was impossible.
I decided to move to Texas and started finding work in Sales. Sales is not my passion. So for a few years, while I was working in Sales, I would work on other projects in my free time: Drawing projects, video editing projects, animation projects etc. etc. all in the hopes of reaching some sort of notoriety online and finding someone looking for an animator. I got 8k+ followers on TikTok from some animations I made about Puerto Rico, but alas, no one in Puerto Rico is looking for an animator, much less one they have to pay.
I ended up opening an UpWork account to do freelance animation for anyone willing to pay and was approached by a small studio looking to start up a project. This was my first time ever doing animation for payment. It went great. They were happy with my work and I was happy working for them, but being a small project, it eventually came to an end. It helped me acquire SOME experience, but not the kind of experience I can see landing me a job in a studio.
In the past 2 months while seeking jobs in anything, I decided to create a short funny demo reel showing some old animations plus where my animation skills are right now:
(At the time of this forum post it's still Under Judgement. If it gets blammed I'll link the YouTube ig)
Now, I hope it doesn't look too unprofessional, but I really wanted to highlight the years of comedy timing experience and abilities in fields other than just drawing.
I've googled Animation jobs, Storyboarding jobs, Concept Art; just about anything and applied to them.
[Origin story complete. Questions start:]
If you have ever gotten a steady livable paycheck off animation:
-Where do you look for work?
-Where do you network to find work?
-What advice can you give to animators with no professional experience?
-What can I do RIGHT NOW to increase my chances to find paying work?
-Are you living off animation? How long have you lived off animation? How often do you have to find other work?
I can't think of too many more questions on the spot but I guess any and all tips and advice on how a 2D animator can find a job in this field or start a career out of it will be appreciated.