What you do: Draw a series of images that can be played in a sequence to look like one moving image that flows naturally. Collaborate with other colorists and animators working on different parts of the project to make sure everything fits together, then combine your work to create the visual component of an animated movie or TV show.
Education: None required, but a degree in fine art or animation is highly preferred.
Useful skills: Attention to detail, artistic ability, and patience.
How to get in: Put together a short reel made up of your best work. If you're really talented, you might be able to find a first job as a junior or assistant animator, where you'll help animate background objects in a scene. If you can't find an entry-level animating job right off the bat, try to find work in a movie production art department.
Career path: After getting enough experience as a junior/assistant animator, you'll graduate to being a full-on animator, working on various objects and characters. That leads to specializing in one aspect of animation, like working on characters or special effects. After a few years, you can become a key animator, working on important parts of the animation as well as managing the other animators. Later, you might become an animation director, developing ideas about how the project should look, communicating this to the animators, and making sure the process runs smoothly.
Payback: Median annual salary: $65,370.
Downsides: Animation is incredibly slow and painstaking. If you're an impatient person, this probably isn't the job for you.
Future of Job: Traditional (hand-drawn) animation jobs are becoming harder to find as computer animation takes over. While computer animators are in high demand, there aren't many job openings here in the US because more companies are turning to lower cost animators overseas.
Networking: Animatedbuzz is a networking site for animators that offers galleries where you can share your work, with blogs about animation jobs, and discussion forums: http://www.animatedbuzz.com/
The Animation Guild also offers information and education opportunities:
http://animationguild.org/

Video produced by students at LAHSA (Los Angeles High School of the Arts), working with Gigniks' careers media program. -- Ali Sanford (Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies,11th grade)

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