Your Education Is Right Around The Bend
Posted by | Posted in Internet Marketing | Posted on 28-08-2010
As most people know, producing an animated cartoon—whether movie, TV series or video game—involves an assembly line process with lots of different personnel. One of the most important positions in this process is the layout and background artists and their online master.
By definition, layout artists plan the action of scenes under the supervision of the supervising or episode director. They draw both the background and how the character elements fit within a shot. To do this, they take information from the storyboard and translate it into a format and size that can be utilized by the animation and camera departments. Experienced layout artists will even plot camera moves.
A good example of their craft is in an animated fight scene. In the foreground are usually the principle characters slugging away. In the middle will be other characters and props as the situation calls for. In the background could be anything from a warehouse to a street scene on to the inside of a home. If layout chooses the street over the home, it completely changes the context of the fight.
As for dictating the action, where a layout sets a table will often change how the rumble happens. If he sets a table the middle of the two combatants, it will set up how they move around each other. After all, you can’t have one character just run through the character, unless he happens to be a phantom. Otherwise, it must go over, around or even under the table.
While there are a number of ways to become a layout artist, the one thing all have in common is a love or drawing and painting, particularly settings and landscapes. One should also be comfortable in using a variety of tools, ranging from pen to paint on to computer. To top it, a layout artist must be familiar with the jobs his partners do, if only to make their jobs easier.
In regards to higher education, a layout artist can get employed with a solid computer science degree online. It would be a good idea to find a physical campus or online college that also offers animation courses, so one can refine one’s understanding of the process. After that, most layout artists usually get a job as an assistant at a studio, refining their craft under a master, sometimes called a “rough,” layout artist.
Like everything else in the animation field, salary and employment in general is on a for-hire basis. A layout assistant usually earns about $25,000 a year. The average salary is double, at $50,000, for experienced artists. If you make it to the top studios, such as Dreamworks, one can easily earn over $100,000 a year.
It’s not impossible for a layout artist to eventually end up a director, too with the proper Online Internet & Website Development Degrees. One of the greatest of all times was Maurice Noble, who did the backgrounds and layouts of the Roadrunner cartoons for Chuck Jones. He became an award-winning director himself. Also, layout artists can move on to painting and other forms of art, even getting gallery exhibitions on their own.
