Sherm Cohen's advice for an aspiring animator/storyboard artist

Grubby Grouper

Grubby Grouper

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A few days ago someone on twitter asked Sherm for some advice for a future in animation. Since I also am interested in becoming a cartoonist, I asked him to send a copy to me.
Based on my own personal experience in getting into this field, and based on my experience as someone who makes hiring decisions within the animation studio system, my biggest recommendation is that you make sure that you get your work out there where everybody can see it. It used to mean spending a lot of money to self publish your work, but now it’s easy to post all of your artwork online to ensure that artwork with literally millions of people through places like Facebook and Tumblr and deviantArt and Twitter.

Get to know as many like-minded cartoonists as you can — there’s plenty of us online that like to chat with other cartoonists. I’ve seen plenty of talented people get work because of their online portfolios, and because they were willing to reach out and be friendly with other cartoonists in person and online.

Now, everything that’s said in the previous paragraph assumes that your work is already of a professional caliber. If you’re not quite there yet, get there. Study animation, storyboarding and film techniques. There’s no secret to getting better at drawing; just keep drawing every day and keep getting better every day. Find other artists so you can encourage and challenge and critique each other. Stay focused on what you want to do as a cartoonist, but broaden your range of influences to include many styles of cartoon art, different art styles in general, film and other storytelling arts, and anything else that’s going to fuel your creativity. Find the artwork that inspires you and emulate it; take it apart and put back together again.

Post your work on deviantART.com and Facebook and Tumblr. Create your own blog and keep posting your artwork and make sure to ask for feedback. When your artwork starts to look like the best of the artwork you see on other peoples’ blogs and portfolios, start looking for a job.

Create your own portfolio and send it to all the publishers and studios for whom you’d like to work. Create story reels or slide shows and post them on YouTube. In short, create LOTS of high-quality work and show it to as many people as possible. Get feedback from others and then take that advice and continue to improve your work. Continue posting and printing and sharing and learning. Continue sending out your work and repeat all these steps until you reach your goal.

Here are a couple articles I wrote that will give you some more guidance and motivation:
http://cartoonsnap.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-i-got-started-as-professional.html
http://storyboardsecrets.com/blog/can-an-18-year-old-get-a-job-at-disney/
http://storyboardsecrets.com/blog/ask-sherm-on-storyboard-revisionist-portfolios/#comments
http://www.animationinsider.com/2013/04/sherm-cohen/

I hope that helps -- keep moving forward! -- Sherm
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