Why I 'Quit' My Dreams of Working in Animation
Being a failure is great, actually
Today, we are talking about dreams. Specifically talking about the concept of dream jobs, the pressure to succeed and fear of failure. Something different, something a little cheesy or whatever.
I made this post on December 31st 2018, four whole years ago and it basically talks about why I decided to ‘quit’ my dreams of working in animation.
For those of you who don’t know, I currently work as an award-winning children’s book writer and illustrator, but for most of my life (since I was 15) my absolute biggest dream was to work in animation. Specifically working as a character designer or visual development artist at a big fancy studio like Disney or Pixar. I wanted this more than anything else in the world and worked so so hard to get there but it just didn’t work out and I got rejection…
after rejection…
after rejection…
However, this is not a sad story, because my decision to change my career path and go into children’s illustration was the BEST thing I ever did and every day I wake up grateful that I made that choice. Although working in animation was a huge dream of mine for ten years, it ultimately wasn’t right for me. But out of pure spite (and fear of failure) I was trying to cling to it even though it wasn’t great for my career or my mental health. And making that hard decision to let that dream go, ultimately, was the metamorphosis I needed that made me go from an anxious little caterpillar into this super happy butterfly I am today.
Ever since I made that Twitter post about my journey, I’ve also had a lot of people telling me that it resonated with them, and either helped them come to terms with their own career change or give them the boost to do it. So because this is a third of the way through the new year, and we’re all reflecting on our resolutions right now, you can sometimes end up feeling a lot of pressure to try to achieve your goals, or you weren’t able to tick some of those goals off, you might be feeling a little hard on yourself.
But I’m hoping that after sharing my personal journey with rejection and evolution, you might look into your goals in a healthier way.
I’m going to share my artistic journey and career from high-school until now as a 29-year-old; My struggles of trying to work in animation, why I decided to change paths, and how I ended up where I am today. But apart from that, I really wanted to discuss the sometimes toxic concept of dreams and that it’s great to have goals but that there is a negative mentality our society has in regards to ‘giving up’, or as I like to call it, evolving.
So first off I’m going to give some background information on my career path, then my series of failures, why I made the switch, and then some advice on what to do if you’re also confused about your goals.
Let’s go!
Where it Started
Let’s go back in time to 2010, I’m a teenager in Pakistan who liked to draw. Honestly, my art wasn’t really that good especially compared to kids today, but in a small school, I was kind of known as the ‘artist’. And as a nerdy kid, of course I was really into cartoons and stuff, and I watched them well into my teens when it wasn’t cool to do so. But I remember this distinct moment in 10th grade when I got a comment on my work on Deviantart, and someone said, Wow! This looks great, you should work in animation.
And that’s when it kind of clicked for me that, oh right, this is a paying job that people could have.
And around that time, was when we were starting to see a resurgence in animation with movies like Toy Story 3 and How to Train your Dragon. And then… I saw Tangled in the cinema.
Literally when I tell you that Tangled singlehandedly is the reason I am an artist today; its unbelievable. This is still one of my all-time favourite movies and just watching it in the cinema I was blown away; the floating lantern scene especially filled me with so much love for the medium.
And then a few months later I found the book The Art of Tangled in a bookstore and was like, oh hmm what’s this, and AGAIN was blown away. Seeing all the behind-the-scenes artwork, all of the details and the research that the design team did to recreate the old Disney movie aesthetic into a CG film. The inspiring work of Claire Keane, my queen. I’ve bought many more art of books since then, and I did a whole video reviewing them but Art of Tangled is still my absolute favourites. And again I realized that this could be a job. Being a character designer, being a vis dev artist. And from then on I was set. This was my dream, I wanted to work at Disney and help make meaningful movies like these and I was ready to do whatever it took to get there.
When I graduated in 2011, I really wanted to attend a big fancy school in America for animation, I really wanted to go to apply to CalArts or Sheridan. But at the time my parents didn’t want me to study too far from home, and being brown parents, they weren’t really convinced that art was a valid career option.
Initially, I went to the American University of Sharjah for Visual Communication; pretty much as far away from visual art as you could possibly go it was like, branding and logos for businesses. I only lasted there for a semester and was so miserable I came back home feeling super dejected and ended up spending the rest of the year back home. At that time my family had moved to Switzerland because of my dad’s job and I ended up moving with them. There, I enrolled into Ceruleum Ecole d’arts Visuels, since it was the only school in the area with an animation program.
Unfortunately, the art school was taught entirely in French, and while I did learn French in school, I definitely wasn’t fluent so even though I wanted to join their animation degree I was placed into Ceruleums’ three-year Illustration program instead. The reasoning was that the animation classes would be way more technical and I’d have a harder time understanding anything, but I could probably survive in Illustration. I was told that if I practiced my French and got better at it, next year I could switch over to Animation.
Obviously, this was a bit of a setback, but it kind of ended up working out in the end. I actually really enjoyed my time in my illustration classes, and as I researched more and more into the animation industry, I became more sure that I wanted to be a visdev artist, not an animator. And I felt like maybe my illustration classes would be better suited for building my design portfolio, rather than the animation program which really was all just animating and no design classes.
So for three years, I worked my butt off in the illustration program, and when I got home, I focused all my time on studying books and artists and working on my portfolio.
I would try to apply to art and animation internships, (for example, both Dreamworks and Disney have a yearly summer internship program), however, because I was an international student I did not qualify for them.
In terms of my art school, all in all I wasn’t super happy with my experience (which I hear is a pretty universal feeling among art school alumni). There were definitely good parts to it; for one, it was a really small school, so there was a lot of attention from the teachers and I was able to have a strong relationship with my classmates.
They also allowed a lot of creative freedom in interpreting assignments. I would try to modify all my school assignments to be centered around visual development so I could create more portfolio pieces. Like, if there was an assignment to draw some animals at the zoo, I would take it one step further and do a character design sheet of those animals.
However, there were a lot of negatives as well. I feel like I didn’t really learn much in school, and kind of was forced to do a LOT of self-learning in my own time to make up for it, especially in terms of the business side of art, like marketing yourself and even creating a website portfolio.
The reason I’m bringing this up is that I kind of became a little spiteful of my school experience. I would see other artists my age going to schools like CalArts and Gobelins and having access to all these resources and professors, and networking opportunities and job fairs, and creating these gorgeous short films, and so even at 19 I already felt like I was falling behind.
Obviously going to these schools doesn’t guarantee you a job, and there are so many industry artists who have gone to other schools around the world or are even self-taught. I mean, eventually, I turned out ok too, but my point is that I felt like I didn’t have the same access to resources and education that other people had, and like, I was in last place and was struggling to catch up with everyone else.
However, school was where I first started getting a taste of a life of illustration.
I was really into midcentury animation and artists like Mary Blair, and absolutely devouring all her concept art and then her books, so I eventually looked into other midcentury picture book illustrators of the time like the Provensens, J P Miller and Miroslav Sasek, and it really influenced my art style and ended up creating more illustration pieces that were geared towards children’s books rather than animation. And then when I got to my third year of school, and we had to create a thesis project I decided to write and illustrate a whole picture book.
This was Chip and the Rainy Day, which I’m still proud of to this day. When I completed this book, I was like, huh what if I try to get it published. Of course, back then I had no idea how the publishing industry worked, and while I did try submitting it to publishers, I found that most publishers don’t accept unsolicited submissions and require that an illustrator have an agent.
Meanwhile, I’m still applying and applying to internships and getting rejections, and as I’m getting closer to graduation, I start applying to actual full time positions as well. For context, this is the portfolio I submitted, that I worked on in my personal time.
This was an original concept I did visual development for, including examples of character design and prop design. While there are a couple of decent pieces in there I’m still happy with, all in all I completely understand why I was rejected. My art wasn’t at a professional standard yet.
So since I was applying to job listings anyway I thought, ok why not see if I can try to get an illustration agent so I can publish this book.
And I applied to like, 30 different agencies and was only rejected by literally every one except for one agency, and ended up joining them.
Anyway! I had an illustration agent! You can kind of see that it sort of just… happened? I wasn’t really focused on making illustration my career, but within two months of joining this agency I was starting to get a couple jobs through them and started working on books, because, why not?
And then in May 2015 I graduated from art school, and shortly after moved to Canada since I knew that Toronto had a lot of opportunities for animation. Over the summer I worked on a couple books with my agency and after applying to a bunch of places in Toronto, by November I had my first job in animation at Industrial Brothers.
The Rejections
At Industrial Brothers I was working as a concept artist on the preschool show Dot, which was a pretty fun experience.
So for a year, I would work 9-5 at my job in animation, then after a horrible 90-minute commute, come home and work on my illustration jobs until midnight. I can’t even imagine doing this now, I wish I still had that kind of stamina but I’m also glad that I have better work/life balance.
After a year of working at this studio though, I decided to leave my job. At that time I started to have issues with anxiety and panic attacks and was having a hard time going to work and I really needed some time off. In that time at home, with the support of my family I began to freelance full time.
I was slowly starting to enjoy children’s illustration more and more, but I didn’t want it to distract me away from my dreams of animation.
And so after a little break and reworking my design portfolio, I began applying to studios again.
For the next two years, this just became an endless cycle of me applying to animation studios whenever a new position came up, reworking my portfolio and repeat. I applied for visual development, color design, character design, prop design, and background paint, literally anything.
I don’t even know how many positions I applied for; and just either an endless stream of rejections or total silence which was even worse since you were just waiting.
And of course, the rejection was super frustrating. I was putting in all of this work, and I thought I was doing everything right that people told you you were supposed to do.
I thought I had a solid portfolio. I attended animation industry events like CTN every year, where I’d show off my work at the artist alley, do portfolio reviews with industry professionals, attend panels and network with other creators there. Even though I grew up outside of North America and didn’t really have access to networking resources in school, through social media I was able to connect with other artists in the industry and really involve myself within the animation community and made a lot of friends. I connected with recruiters and art directors, and was having regular conversations with them. Basically I had all the networking part covered.
However, although I thought I was doing everything right, the main issue was my portfolio, the most important component. I just didn’t realize it then. First of all, like I said I was applying to all these different positions, but not changing my portfolio to fit the role. Like, if I was submitting for Prop design, I still used my general vis dev portfolio. You should always adjust your portfolio for the position.
Secondly, while it had some decent pieces, for the most part it wasn’t a functional design portfolio for animation. Especially for tv animation, your portfolio needs to be designed for a production use, something that can actually be animated. Drawing super painterly elaborate character designs is fun, but could never be animated with tv budgets, so is essentially useless. You need pieces that give a lot of information, which means a lot of things like turn-arounds, model sheets, expression sheets, orthographics, dynamic poses, showing your characters in every angle and just making it clear how they move. But instead my pieces were too… illustrative.
But like I said, I didn’t make that connection yet, and instead I just became super depressed and had all sorts of bad feelings. I felt insecure of my work, and an absolute failure that I didn’t get a single yes in two years.
And although I was blaming myself, I also fell into the trap of blaming everything around me.
Some of these traps include:
I’m an international artist and studios don’t want to put in the effort of hiring me and getting me a visa, thats why I’m not getting hired.
Which is partly true, it is a lot harder for international artists to get visas for work, but it’s still possible to get hired as an international artist so that couldn’t be the reason.
Or getting that school insecurity again and thinking,
“Oh schools like CalArts have a direct pipeline to studios, that’s why they won’t hire me.”
And while it’s true that some schools have better resources, I already mentioned that people from all different schools or even self-taught get hired all the time.
OR I would think,
“This industry is all about connections and who you know! Sure studios will make a job posting public, but we all know it’s just for show! They’ll just hire from within, or artists will get jobs through their friends.”
And yes, while a big part of the industry is networking, again it’s not the whole story, and I’m just blaming the system instead of really examining why I’m not getting hired.
And worse than the blame game, is the feeling of jealousy. It’s common to have a bit of envy towards your peers, maybe being in awe of someone art style or skill, or getting a bit jealous when someone announces they’re working on a super cool project. I’ll be the first to admit that a bit of spite and jealousy really inspires me to work hard haha.
However, I fell into a horrible jealousy PIT. This was a kind of envy that just ate up my soul, it was so bad.
Because, here I was getting rejection after rejection, and then I see everyone around me getting their dream jobs. It was like, every other week on twitter one of my friends would announce that they just got a job working at a cool studio, and it was horrible because, they were my friends and I was proud of them for their achievement and I was trying so hard to be happy for them, but I couldn’t help but feel a little mad at their success, and wondering, why not me. Why do you get to be happy and not me?
And it didn’t help that I was getting older and felt like time was running out. There’s this weird mentality of ageism in the industry of getting successful as young as possible, and if you’re not a success by age 25 you’re pretty much worthless. I don’t know where this came from, I think it’s partially because social media really loves to highlight the wunderkinds and prodigies, partly because big corporations love hiring newbies so they can be easily exploited, and also because digital art has become a lot more accessible so kids are able to start drawing earlier. So yeah every year we’d see a new crop of artists graduate, with all this fresh new talent and I’d feel my chances getting slimmer and slimmer.
And then all of my friends who are in the industry would ask how my job search is going, and they’d say that they can’t believe I haven’t been hired yet, and that it’s only a matter of time until I get picked up by a studio. And they were being kind but it always hurt a little bit
And yeah, I absolutely hated that feeling of jealousy. And I wish people talked about this more because I felt alone in feeling this, like I was a monster for having these emotions that no one else was having.
It took a while, but eventually I was able to control my envy by reframing my perspective.
Controlling Your Envy
The first thing to remind yourself is that everyone is different, so there is no point in comparing yourself to other people. Each of us has been given a unique set of opportunities, different privileges and hardships. Don’t focus on what other people are doing, your job is to do the best with what you’ve been given. Life isn’t a race, just go at your own pace because your individual journey is unique to you. You also never know what people are going through. Social media gives a pristine, curated look into everyone's lives, and while you might be seeing someone's positive successes and comparing yourself to them, you have no idea what struggles they have behind the screen.
Secondly, companies and art schools might push the mentality of scarcity and that there are only a few jobs out there and you’re going to be in competition with all your peers, but that’s not true!!
While it can be a competitive industry, there is no shortage of work, especially today when so much content is being made and it’s more accessible for small creators to create their own projects. Apart from major studios, you have smaller studios across the world, indie productions making content on patreon and youtube, and twitch or crowdfunded websites. Any scarcity is made-up.
So when another artist gets a cool job, that doesn’t affect me AT ALL. Them getting that job doesn’t mean that in turn I can’t get a job, they’re not taking anything away from me. And in any case, I WANT them to succeed and live their dreams and be happy, and I wouldn’t want to take that away from them for myself.
And, on another note, it’s entirely possible I’m not the right person for that particular job anyway. Maybe that artist is really good at drawing monsters and I’m not, and there’s another opportunity out there that would be a better fit for me.
And finally, when you have jealousy in your heart, there is no room for gratitude. I know there are some things in my life that I feel are missing or things that I want, but I have to remind myself what I do have, because to someone else, that’s whats missing in their lives. I could be jealous of someone else's success, and wishing I was them, but meanwhile they’re wishing they were me. The grass is always greener on the other side, right?
Anyway, while I was applying to all these studios, I was still working as a freelance illustrator. And although it started off as a side gig, I found myself enjoying it more and more.
I joined a new literary agency that was a better fit for me and we discussed the possibility of me writing my own book. I was working on several picture books, and I was illustrating award-winning covers. I was starting to make these bigger leaps into this industry, however, I never fully committed myself to the job. I still spent a huge chunk of my time reworking my portfolio and sending out job applications, and overall distancing myself from the illustrator identity so people were fully aware I wanted to work in animation and illustration was just a side thing. When people asked me about my picture books I shrugged it off as a hobby, almost embarrassed by it, and said that my main goal was animation.
Because of this, I never fully committed to my illustration work. For example, I would purposefully avoid accepting certain book projects especially if they were really long schedules. I wouldn’t work on more than one book at a time, because I was worried that, if somehow I got a job offer next week, I would be too overworked.
On a side note, another weird sticking point for me was that I couldn’t really accept that freelancing was actually a valid job. Like, I know it is, but because it wasn’t a traditional job that I was exposed to when growing up, I had this bizarre disconnect and didn’t really feel like was I was doing was serious. Sure, I was making money and working with cool clients… but I didn’t really have a boss, I was at home all day, I didn’t have benefits or a salary, and it was all very self-guided. I think it’s also partially because I’m brown and I come from a background where it’s drilled into your head that the only career paths out there are Engineer, Lawyer and Doctor. And it didn’t help that a lot of extended family saw my freelance work as a cute little hobby. I think this was also a reason why thought I needed to work in a 9-5 job, and even now, after six years of freelancing I still have to remind myself that this is a valid career. I also didn’t really have any friends who were freelancers, all of my friends were either freelancing part-time or working full-time in animation, so I didn’t really have a good frame of reference for what being a full-time illustrator looked like.
So although I was making a lot of progress in my illustration work, and it started to feel like a more viable option, I couldn’t bring myself to make the switch because I felt like, if I made that final leap to freelance and completely cut myself off from animation… I’d be giving up. I’d be abandoning a dream that I’d had for ten years, and that to me felt worse than all the rejections.
And so I kept going, purely out of pride and spite, because I didn’t want to admit to myself that I just wasn’t meant to work in animation. I didn’t want to tell all my peers that I was ‘giving up’. I was worried that they’d think I was a loser, and I just couldn’t handle it, that I was weak, that I wasn’t good enough.
Pride is… weird. I was literally depriving myself of a possible happy future just because what other people might think… and the concept of ‘dreams’.
Dreams are Toxic
In media, especially the stuff I grew up with in the 90s, there was just such a strong emphasis placed on ‘dreams’. Movies where someone has a dream of being a big-time baseball player, and no one thinks they can do it, but through all their hard work and believing, and a fun training montage, by golly they did it! They achieved their dream, and so can you if you just believe!
I know everyone loves an underdog story, and movies with a happy ending, but like, it was a pretty harmful mentality.
Because, media will also say that people who give up on their dreams are weak. You have to keep pursuing that dream no matter what, even if the whole world is against you, even if kills you.
There might be a movie where like, the side character has a dream of being a baseball star when he’s a kid, but you know, he grows up, and has a family he has to support and he’s working as an accountant. And the main character looks at him and is like, wow man what happened to you. You had all these big dreams and goals, and now look at you. Working at a job you hate. If you only believed and worked hard like I did, you could be a baseball star too.
And like…
Here’s the thing.
Dreams can change. Because, you, as a person, also change. I’m not the same person I was ten years ago, I am almost unrecognizable. My goals have changed, my wants and needs, and my priorities. And following that logic, your dream can change too.
So if we’re following the movie example; yes sure the side character once wanted to be a baseball player. But as he grew older, his needs and priorities changed, and he doesn’t really want that for himself anymore.
If he had become a baseball player, maybe he never would’ve met his wife who he loves more than anything. Sure he doesn’t like his job, but it provides for his family who is his main priority now. He still loves baseball, but he feels like, if it were a job he’d end up hating the sport eventually. He’s happy keeping it to himself as a hobby and playing with his kids and friends. He’s happy where he is. And maybe his new dream is just making a nice home for himself and having a little vegetable garden. And maybe it’s not as glamorous as being a famous baseball player, but I don’t think dreams have to be these big grand things. Dreams can be quiet, and they’re just as important.
Making the Switch
What finally triggered the switch to illustration was an artist residency I took in the summer of 2018. This was the Light Grey Art Lab Iceland residency, where for ten days you and like, 12 other artists explore Iceland and draw and collaborate and learn. This was a life changing experience for me, and I got to spend ten days non-stop with these super talent artists from all sorts of industries and I kind of got to discuss what I was going through. And the funny thing was that a lot of people in this residency were kind of going through a similar situation, where they were at a crossroads between two major life decisions and we were all trying to figure out what to do.
One example is my friend Jay, at the time they were working in the mobile games industry after studying animation and it just wasn’t fulfilling at all and they were at a crossroads. The good news is that they eventually did a complete career change to becoming a tattoo artist and is absolutely THRIVING, like you cannot tell me they weren’t born to do this, they are so so talented.
So anyway, seeing other artists going through this internal battle really helped alleviate some of the concerns I was having, because I felt a little less alone and it made it clear that it was ok if my original plans were changing and that my path was headed in a different direction.
So then finally I asked myself; do I even want to work full-time in animation?
Ok, yes, this is a dream I’ve had for a decade. But if we look at all the facts and the pros and cons, does it even really make sense for me? It can be so easy to idealize a dream without understanding what it really means for your life.
First, I needed to analyze why I wanted to work in animation in the first place, what is the core reason for this dream.
Because somewhere along the way, that reason got muddled up with other things like pride and spite, and sunk cost. But the core reason was that I wanted to create works that mattered. I watched Tangled ten years ago and it made my heart soar and made me so inspired, and I wanted to help create things that made others feel this way too.
And so, If this was my big reason…. Why did it have to be animation? If I wanted to create meaningful art, it can be done through anything. Poetry, novels, pottery, youtube video essays, it can all have meaning. And why can’t I do that with picture books. And with picture books, I found the thing I loved about it was that I could create stories that had meaning, but also specifically for children. And since I had a lot more creative control, since I could write and illustrate, I could make my stories inclusive, featuring brown characters who looked like me, creating stories I wish I had when I was a kid. I found that with picture books I could fulfill my core dream, but even better than I could with animation.
And then I made a list, summing up why I shouldn’t work in animation.
Freelancing has a lot of cons that to this day I still don’t like. It’s very isolating and I miss having coworkers and getting out of the house. I’m a kind of person that needs a lot of structure to function, and freelancing makes it very difficult since it’s very self-guided and you have to keep yourself accountable. But all in all, there are a LOT of pros. I love the flexibility it brings. I can choose my own hours, who I work with and the projects I work on, I don’t have a commute, and as someone with a history of anxiety, freelancing makes it A LOT easier to have a ‘bad day’ and look after myself. Working fulltime has it’s perks but it wasn’t really the lifestyle I wanted.
Like I said, I can choose the projects I work on. If you’re working with a company you don’t really have that luxury.
Art-of books have really glamourised the job of a character designer, because like I said, it isn’t always going to be all fun illustrative complex designs. Especially in TV animation, you are creating designs that can be animated within the budget, and because you’re working within a team you have to create informational work like turn-arounds and mouth charts and honestly, I hate doing that, it’s just not for me. It’s a very important job and some people are brilliant at it, but I’ve come to realize that it’s not something I’m good at. My style is very stylized, and it doesn’t really work well in animation production. And similarly, because animation is a very team-based, collaborative process, you can’t really work within your own style, instead you have to adjust and work within the style of the show. With freelance illustration, I LOVE that my clients want to work with me specifically for my style.
And finally, money was also a big factor. While I don’t get benefits, I found that I was earning more as a freelancer than I would have working full-time.
And so in the summer when I got back home from the residency, I made an action plan to myself. In autumn I was going to move out of my parents place, and officially work full-time as an illustrator.
And I did. I stopped the applications, and job hunting and instead devoted all my time and energy into freelance life instead.
And it took a while for me to fully get myself into it. Like, I would still find myself looking at job listings now and then. And when I’d see someone on twitter announce they’re working on a cool new job I might still have that pang of jealousy. But over time it got easier. I become more invested into my own projects and found that I really enjoyed what I was doing, and started creating some new goals and focused on my own progress instead of anyone elses.
I wanted to illustrate a novelty book! I wanted to win literary awards! I wanted to write my own book! I wanted to do readings for schools and libraries.
I found a new community in the picture book world, and made a lot of new friends!
And then a year later, I looked back at all my progress made this post. I believed that this was the best decision I ever made, and three years later I still 100% agree.
As much as I still love animation and admire all these amazing artists working in the industry, I don’t think it was meant to be and think I’m much better suited in illustration. This is my dream now.
In these three years, I’ve worked on a celebrity book, I won an award for one of my picture books, and more recently I wrote and illustrated my very first picture book THAT’S NOT MY NAME!, which came out last summer!
I’ve definitely been thriving these past five years, and I don’t think I would’ve been able to if I still had a foot in the animation puddle, since I was being stretched too thin and not being able to properly invest myself in either industry. Like a wise man once said, never half ass two things, whole ass one thing.
And the funny thing is, is that now as a freelance illustrator I work very frequently in animation, just not how I imagined I would. Instead of working full time, I get contacted to do freelance development character design. Basically, development is like the very early stages of animation before any actual art is done. The studio has a concept for a show and is trying to figure out what the style could possibly look like, and they reach out to artists with a unique style for their take on it.
And so in this way, I’ve had the chance to work with a lot of great studios, like Disney TV, Dreamworks TV, Netflix and Warner Brothers. And funny enough it’s always been for preschool tv animation. Since I work as a picture book illustrator and have a strong kidlit style, it’s actually perfect for preschool shows, and I’m able to have a small part in helping to design some really great characters. And I think development is a great compromise for working in animation but I still get to work within my own style and having freelance flexibility.
My Lessons to You
And that’s basically my story! Why I ‘quit’ my dreams of working in Animation, and why it was the best decision of my life.
And who knows, my stance on this might change in the future, and I might decide I want to try working in full-time animation again. If Pixar wanted to offer me a job, I’m not gonna say no to that. But that’s kind of my point. I think it’s counter-productive to try to focus on one singular goal and just like, having those horse blinders on and keep going in a straight line to your final destination.
Because if you’re single-minded like that, you might end up missing forks along the way. Keep yourself open to new opportunities and possibilities! You literally have no idea where life can lead you, and you might find yourself doing something you love.
Another thing I find a lot of comfort in, is the idea that everything happens for a reason. My parents always drilled this into me that like, if a door is closed don’t try to force it open, it’s closed for a reason because what’s behind it might not be meant for me. Does that make sense? Like, I might want something really really bad, like working in animation, but if it isn’t happening for me, I should accept that it’s probably for my own good and that there might be a different and better door waiting for me down the hallway. I might not understand it now, but it’ll all work out in the end. Just trust the process, and go with the flow.
So if you’re watching this video and you’re in the same boat I was in, and you don’t know what to do, I want you to do a couple of things.
First, watch Monsters University.
No, I’m not kidding. When people ask me what my favorite Pixar movie is, I point to this one. It completely deconstructs the concept of dreams in a way I’ve never seen before.
Spoilers, but basically Mike wants to be a Scarer, that’s been his dream since he was a kid. He goes to college and works harder than literally everyone else. He aces all his exams, he’s doing everything right, but the problem is, he just isn’t scary. And there’s nothing Mike can do to fix it. A similar analogy would be like a short basketball player.
In this movie, even though he works hard, Mike DOESN’T GET TO BE A SCARER at the end. Isn’t that crazy? But he learns that he has other skills. It turns out he’s really good at the behind-the-scenes stuff, better than anyone else, and he ends up becoming Sully’s technical partner, working at their dream company. And Sulley, who’s the scariest guy in school, is in awe of MIKE and his skills.
And in the sequel, scaring becomes obsolete anyway, being FUNNY is how Monsters get their electricity now. And guess who’s funny? MIKE IS. Mike just being himself worked out in the end.
Sorry I have a lot of feelings about this movie.
Anyway, then I want you to examine why this dream is your dream. Figure out your core reason, and see if there are any other ways of fulfilling this goal.
Then make your pros and cons list. Write down your priorities, and see if that dream fits within it. Maybe a priority in your life is that you require structure, or maybe it’s flexibility. Maybe a priority is that you want to stay in your hometown, or a job that allows creative freedom, or a stable income. It’s easy to get hooked on the concept of a dream, without really looking into what it actually means for your life.
And especially if you have a creative-based dream, ask yourself if there is a way to incorporate it into your life in a smaller way that makes sense for your life. I ask this because, with our current capitalist culture, there’s this sense that, if you aren’t making money out of your craft, it’s not valid. Like, if you’re not animating for a big studio, or selling your art in galleries, or marketing your crafts on etsy, you’re not a real artist.
But even if you’re painting for yourself after work, you’re still an artist. A job doesn’t define that for you. And honestly, its a known fact that as soon as you start to monetize your art, you start to hate doing it a little, because its tied to money and it becomes work. Honestly, I kind of hate drawing now. I mean, I love my job, but after working all day illustrating books, I DO NOT want to draw for myself. And I miss drawing for myself. And I’ve had this conversation with a lot of people, who’ve told me that initially they wanted to be a working artist, but realised they didn’t want to have that ‘hate’ for art, and so they kept that part for themself as a hobby and they couldn’t be happier.
I also want you to just keep an open-mind. Keep yourself open to new doors, new opportunities, because you never know where it might lead you. It’s crazy that like, there are new niche jobs and industries created every day, and you might end up working in a job that didn’t exist ten years ago, and it’s perfect for you.
And finally just remember that, it’s ok to change your mind. There’s nothing in the rules that says you have to stick to the same dream you’ve had for ten years. Mix it up, do whatever you want. Like, I’m 28 years old right now, and I’m a BABY in the grand scheme of things. My life will go in a hundred different directions and I have no idea what’s in store for me. In twenty years, I might decide that art isn’t for me, and I want to grow strawberries in France. Who knows!
Your dreams will change and evolve just like you as a person do. And isn’t that exciting?