Month: December 2025

With the decreasing influence of traditional media spheres, a lot of work these days is solely found online. The same goes for animation – some people have found more career success on social media and YouTube than they have with other work.

You can hardly count on online fame as a surefire path to success. It’s a volatile and ruthless space where only a lucky few rise to the top. But it’s increasingly important to have a social media presence as an artist, at the very least as something to fall back on. It can serve as a dynamic portfolio that one continuously updates throughout their career. After all, you never know who is watching.

I keep “meaning to” create an Instagram account to showcase my art, but it never feels like I have enough of a consistent output to justify it, especially with my university workload. There’s something quite daunting about trying to solidify my ‘brand’ as an artist. At the same time, I’m sure it’s better to get started sooner than later, and I want to have something to show before graduation.

In my experience, fan-art is the fastest way to grow your online platform. I’ve had some limited experience with selling commissions online and it’s been fairly exclusive to the fan spaces I occasionally take part in. But the issue with gaining a following based on someone else’s media property, is that they won’t necessarily take interest in your original work.

It’s impressive to me when someone proves the exception!

A Hawaiian storyboard animator for Disney’s TV Animation division named Kiana Khansmith caught my interest, not due to the anime and cartoon fan-art she’s typically known for, but for an original series she’s been writing and storyboarding entirely on her own.

“Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl” is an original pilot animatic released on YouTube by Khansmith which has, at the time of writing, around 4.3 million views. The 11 minute pilot is a pastiche of magical girl anime, but according to the author, it’s also based on her own experience working at Disney, and losing some of her passion for creating art. Similarly, “The Owl House” creator Dana Terrace has recently helped co-create an independent series called “Knights of Guinevere“.

Of course, Kiana Khansmith has been working in the industry for a good few years, and these connections helped her find the voice and music talent to develop her series. At the same time, she’s only 28 years old, and she’s been encouraging others to simply put their story out there, even without a budget. I find it interesting how some industry professionals have been willing to shift their focus to the independent scene.

Maybe the future of animation really is online? I suppose I should be prepared for the eventuality. When it comes to gaining an online following, consistency is key. I need to release consistent work of a consistent quality, and eventually, who knows?

One of the most exciting prospects of this two-year course has been the chance to work on my very own independent short films! But with my graduate project just around the corner, it feels like my window of opportunity is a bit… fleeting.

I have so many ideas I want to regurgitate into the world. So is aiming for a career in independent filmmaking a reasonable goal? Even if it’s not, it seems wise to see what I’m up against.

First, the immediate pros and cons of this strategy. In terms of pros, independent animation certainly excites me more than anything in the industry right now. As TV animation takes a sharp nosedive into a metaphorical tar pit, most studios are relying on advertising or preschool-age cartoons to survive. Not only would I find those options a bit creatively stifling, but I don’t think the world of motion graphics and puppet-rigging would match my interests or skillset.

Film festivals, however, represent everything that makes animation exciting to me. They would give me the chance to express myself, take risks, and make films about mature and culturally impactful topics. They could also flesh out my portfolio before I find my footing in the industry.

In terms of cons… it’s money. I won’t be making money, but if I could get a film grant, I could justify this to my family as an investment into my future, while I try to make ends meet.

This is the BFI National Lottery Short Form Animation fund. Since 2019, it’s provided support for UK-based animation teams, working on higher-budget animated shorts films. While applications are currently closed, based on its past success and the National Lottery’s reported plan for 2026-2029, it’s likely that this will remain in place for the foreseeable future.

The challenge with this grant is that the requirements are extensive, taking into account geographic spread, economic background, and any representation related to disability, gender, race, etc. As a disabled person from the Global South, I would certainly want to tackle these themes in my writing. But with only five projects supported each round, I would need to assemble a pretty diverse team to be able to compete.

The other major roadblock is this requirement, of the director having been screened at a major film festival. This only includes the main programme, which is to say, the LIAF trailer that I’ve done wouldn’t apply. This solely depends on the outcome of my graduate film, so I can’t say for sure if I even have a chance.

Given the long list of demands, how competitive I’d expect this grant to be, and how unstable my career seems at the moment, I wouldn’t exactly bet on being given this grant straight out of university.

But I am a notorious pessimist, and given the need to form a team, I could at least suggest this to my classmates following graduation. I’d settle for less than a directorial role!

When it comes to choosing a role in the animation industry, I still feel unsure of myself, to say the least. Since I failed to properly develop my art skills during secondary school or my undergraduate degree, it feels like I began from scratch only last year.

As much as I’ve realised my love for animation, I’m still learning through failure, again and again. For each major project, I make several massive blunders that set me back considerably. One step forwards and two steps back.

At the risk of venting in an online journal, it’s hard to consider myself employable in these circumstances. But time only moves forward! If I can’t think of anything I can do right now, it’s best to think of what I want to do and work backwards from there.

I’ve received some compliments for my storyboards in the past, so that’s where my mind goes first. I began by looking for available storyboard jobs in the UK, and referencing my skills against the required qualifications. Below is an application for a storyboard role at Fudge Animation Studios in London:

There’s nothing I can do about the first bullet point, but the others seem a bit more helpful. I do think I’ve developed a much better understanding of composition and pacing over the last year. I’ve never heard of Storyboard Pro, but I think it will do me good to at least download a free trial and try and learn how it works.

I find it difficult to objectively judge my own drawing skills, but when it comes to becoming a storyboard artist, I expect that my slow drawing speed may hold me back. As I learned in the workshop with Ariadna Fatjo-Vilas, storyboarders have a high turnaround date and especially strict deadlines.

At the moment, my drawings happen to be a bit too messy. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing- storyboard artists are one of the few roles that can focus on readability over cleanliness. But when bringing my pictures over to an animatic, I find that they look rather bad when seen close-up. I’ll make sure to keep this in mind when boarding for my graduate film.

Although I may enjoy drawing poses and expressions above all else, I plainly need more practice and life drawing experience to be able to draw faster. That is not something that will come quickly, and, realistically, I need to catch up by working on this every day. To make the most out of the situation, unemployment means I’ll have a lot of free time!