Discover a Career: Animator/Graphic Designer

Have you ever witnessed a specific graphic bringing a message to life? From the creative girl-next-door book cover to the sharp website layout that says all about the nature of the site – every animation comes from designers who put ideas into artistic graphics.

Yet, the best part about this job is that you don’t need to be good with pen and paper sketching. With the advanced technological era getting a hold on everything, you only need a creative mind to portray messages with your graphics, and that’s it. So, with that desire and passion, you can easily bring any graphics or animations to life to have a fulfilling career and earn a good income.

Sounds like the ideal future profession for you, right? Well then, let’s explore more about this creative profession in detail.

Who is an Animator/Graphic Designer?

Both graphic designers and animators work in a creative field, where each one’s role is to create artistic designs using their computer. Yet, the only difference between these two professions is the demand and industry of the designs they create. Graphic designers are more focused on creating designs involved in business advertising and branding for a client which could be from a wide variety of industries. However, an animator may create more creative doodles or characters for the need of entertaining people.

While businesses commonly hire a graphic designer for sales and marketing tasks, an animator works in the entertainment industry and creates characters for short clips or movies for different platforms. Yet, both skills can be termed similar to each other. From creating characters to shapes, patterns, doodles, and special effects – all these factors are involved in graphic design and animation. Additionally, the industry that requires professional and highly creative graphic designers and animators include:

• Games industry
• Movies industry
• Social media platforms
• Marketing platforms
• Business websites
• Streaming platforms
• Software and application designing platforms

Skills and Education Required:

Before you consider opting for a graphic designer careers, it’s crucial to explore the different skills you need to become more professional in this field and to understand what do graphic designers do. After all, being a graphic designer or animator demands consistent creativity and the ability to use ideas creatively.

To be able to do this efficiently in your animations career, it’s better to achieve the following skills:

• Computer Knowledge:

Understanding how to create graphics and animations on the computer is crucial for an animator or graphic designer. Besides, even if you have a clear idea of the graphic or animations you want to create, a lack of general computer knowledge can keep you from turning it into real graphics and selling it.

• Software Knowledge:

These platforms will bring your designs to life. From Adobe Animation to Photoshop, Illustrators, Krita animator and even Canva, these popular platforms can offer versatility in improving and perfecting your skills. So, practicing your design on them and understanding how such software works can be highly beneficial for your future career.

• Creativity and Originality:

What sells in any industry today is creativity and originality. With that being said, we are sure you know the importance and need for adding creativity and originality to your designs, right? Therefore, it’s crucial that even when you seek inspiration from other ideas, you don’t copy them in any way. You can achieve this by consistently putting the new ideas into graphics and practicing your skills.

• Style and Perfection:

With creativity, perfection and style are also essential in this profession. Besides, a perfect character always looks better than a blurry and improper one. Moreover, adding a touch of your style to your animations will make your work unique and more desirable.

• Communication/Story Telling Skill:

Another skill you may need to perfect in your job as a graphic designer/animator is your communication skill. This involves communication through words and graphical images. When you are confident and aware of your abilities to create an idea, the next step is usually to turn it into a graphic that has life others can see and feel. You need excellent communication skills to be able to pass across the message of your design clearly to your audience.

• Educational Requirements:

Apart from these major and beneficial skills that can help shape your graphic designing and animation skills, you may also need a specific degree to score a good job. Most entry-level jobs jobs for animators demand a minimum of a bachelor’s degree from any reputable university, college, or a design school. Bachelor’s degree in fields like Computer Science, Design Layout, Photo Editing, Digital Illustration, and different kinds of Media Graphics are available in universities. Yet, if you aim to achieve a higher position or job offer, it’s better to advance to a master’s degree in a similar field.

Salary Comparison

Choosing an occupation that fulfills your desire and that you can have fun doing leads to a happy life. However, that happiness can be short lived if the job doesn’t pay you well enough. But hey, not to worry, graphic designing and animations jobs are highly demanded jobs in today’s digital world. Yet, the salary of this highly demanded profession may vary in different countries. This includes:

Future Growth Expectation:

According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, the demand for animations and graphics designers is expected to grow in the future. The growth rate of this profession from 2019 to 2029 will be 4% which is pretty high. The primary reason for this rapid growth will be increasing demand for advanced and innovative graphics and animations for video games, movies, and television shows. Also, owing to the capitalist wave in Nigeria with a lot of businesses springing up and going digital, graphic designing jobs will be on the rise to meet the branding and marketing needs for these businesses.

With all that being said, it’s certain that you can score a good job with your professional and creative graphic designing/animation skills and expect a decent growth in this profession.

Famous People to Follow:

When it comes to motivation and ideas to boost up your skills, nothing works better than following popular and inspirational personalities in the same industry. Hence, to help you look up to your future graphic designing profession with more confidence, let’s explore some successful animators and graphic designers in today’s world.

• Neil Secretario:

Neil is the ideal person to follow in this professional field if you’re looking for some major inspiration in graphic designing. This left-handed lettering artist and graphic designer has created graphics for clients globally. His popular work to date includes creating logos and customer letters for popular business names like Intercom, Sony Pictures, YouTube Red, and much more.

• Jessica Bellamy:

Speaking of girl power, you can never have enough of it when you start exploring how women have flourished in every profession today. Similarly, the list of popular and successful female graphic designers is huge. One such name we can talk about here is Jessica Ballamy. She doesn’t just use her skills to earn a living but makes it a cause that can help others. Being a Design Justice Advocate, Jessica works by combining visual storytelling and personal narratives for helping nonprofits and communists adapt to social change. Jessica’s work has been more words than just graphics. You can see more of that on her popular Instagram posts.

• Kolawole Olanrewaju:

Kolawole Olanrewaju is the founder and CEO of Komotion Studios. He is a seasoned and versatile Producer, Arts director, Writer, 3D artist, Motion graphic artist, Animator, Visual effects artist, Marketing communications professional and Media content provider, with 15yrs professional and industry experience.

Komotion studios is a world class creator of a variety of media content ranging from TV commercials, Animations, Documentaries, Virtual Reality, and other forms of new media. They had their first animated short film in 2017 which garnered a lot of local and international recognition, and it’s on its way to become African first Indigenous Animated movie using Performance capture.

So Where Can You Start?

Are you planning to start your graphic designing and animation journey? With this professional industry offering a fun and creative exposure to art and being a much-demanded skill, it’s certainly nothing less than a dream job for every artist out there. Yet, when it comes to being the best and achieving your dream as a professional animator or graphic designer, you must start your improving your skill today. You can kick start your journey by joining this Drawing and Animation Course at 1010 Coding.

After all, when it comes to working on your future profession, there’s no such thing as tomorrow. So why waste TODAY when you can start learning and polishing your skills for a better future by taking baby steps today? Happy Designing!