26 Mar 2021, 23:41

@Michael-Angelo-Go I started out studying visual arts and was disappointed by the program. It was very free spirited, with an emphasis on expression. They weren't actually teaching us anything, you'd just show up to class and they'd be like "today, you guys do a painting". About the same time I was getting fed up with this, I heard about the traditional animation program form a school downtown. It had a reputation for being really hard and technical, so I decided to sign up based on that alone.

I joined because I wanted to draw, so I was pretty shocked when I started to realized the "film animation" program is really about "film". I remember a few weeks into the program, they set us free in the city with cameras to capture some footage for learning to edit later. I picked a pretty spot, set up the tripod, camera, adjusted the lenses, hit record and only then realized... nothing in the shot was actually moving. I had been thinking of art only as still images up until that point. Although it wasn't what I expected, I was learning a lot. So I decided to stay and immerse myself in this new world. I learned about cinema, types of shots, acting, heck we even had a seminar about correct blinking triggers. I kid you not!

I was never the best animator - I was very slow, so I really struggled to keep up in animation class. Maybe I was always going to end up in illustration in the end. But I'm still glad I did it: I learned about perspective, background design, character design, storyboarding, storytelling, posing. All these things are very useful to me as an illustrator. Thumbnailing a book is a lot like storyboarding. I no longer struggle with backgrounds or dynamic character poses as I used to. Still, that is an incredibly circuitous and difficult route to take just for illustration. I don't recommend it unless someone actually wants to animate.

Being a showrunner is obviously an extremely competitive and difficult position to reach. Only the top of the top will ever reach that. If I were you I'd look into what these showrunners' education and career paths are to give you an idea of what's required to be one. Just be aware this is a path 100000x more difficult than being a children's book illustrator. You have to be sure, and if you want to pursue this you'll have for sure to focus 100% on it and go full-ahead if you want a snowball's chance, so it would mean putting aside children's books, commissions, architecture, anything you're currently doing to devote yourself completely to this goal. It's as difficult as becoming an astronaut, it's not something you can half-ass.