In preproduction, most of my duties revolve around managing concept artists: finding them, negotiating with them, art-directing them, paying them. Over time, I’ve picked up some tricks that I thought I’d share with other animators looking to develop shorts of their own.<\/p>\n
Once you have your script finalized (and you really do want to wait until you’re done revising the script before you start on the concept work, otherwise you’re just throwing money away) you’ll need every word of it interpreted in visual form. Every character, every location, every vehicle, prop and piece of furniture needs a design.<\/p>\n
Finding character artists isn’t too hard, as many concept artists enjoy doing characters. Environment artists are tougher to find, as environment painting isn’t as glamorous, and tends to be a lot more labor-intensive. But you will need both. (Few artists specialize in vehicles or props; generally your character or environment artists will handle these.)<\/p>\n
You’ll eventually need storyboard artists too, but we’ll save them for a later entry.<\/p>\n
The most effective method for finding concept artists I’ve found so far has been to post help wanted ads on relevant forums. I’ve been able to find most of the people I need using the freelance forum on ConceptArt.org<\/a>, but there are a number of other job forums out there, depending on the style and genre you’re after:<\/p>\n Once you’ve registered and read the forum rules for posting job listings, you’ll post something like:<\/p>\n The director of Cat Pirates<\/em> is looking for a character concept artist to design the main and supporting characters for a 5-minute animated short, about cats who plunder the high seas. The style is 3D with a strong claymation influence, especially Aardman Animation.<\/p>\n Please send an e-mail to: catpirates@gmail.com with your rates and availability, and a link to your portfolio.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Within hours, your inbox will start filling up with applicants!<\/p>\n\n
Making the call<\/h4>\n