Illustrator/Animator
You invent the characters people remember, and you decide what happens to them. That invention was always the real job, and it stays yours.
Related: Filmmaker, Motion Designer, Content Creator
The day in the life
Bram animation · the plan
- 1.Bram, grumpy lighthouse keeper
- 2.A few seconds of him moving, on repeat
- 3.One small thing he does that is unmistakably him
- 4.What he does: ? (you decide this first)
who he is, before you make a single picture
A few seconds only holds one small thing Bram does. What does he do that makes anyone go, yeah, that's him?
Try a day as an illustrator/animator
A short, playful taste of the real work.
Two very different jobs here. Drawing still pictures barely grows and is the part machines are taking over fastest, while making drawings move for films and games, called animation, is safer and pays more.
Nobody stops you from drawing for a living, though most people who do it work for themselves rather than for a company. Companies that make animation do hire beginners.
What you’d do all day
The picture is drawing or animating your own art all day. The reality is working to someone else’s brief: client revisions, studio notes, deadlines, plus the freelance hustle of finding work and invoicing.
The tools can now generate the images and fill in the drawings between the key ones. So the part that stays yours is authorship: inventing characters, telling stories, and deciding how it all looks.
- Production (drawing/rendering/animating)55%
- Concept & design (character, story, look)10%
- Revisions & feedback15%
- Direction & coordination5%
- Business & client15%
Over half the day is drawing and animating, to somebody else’s idea.
There’s more than one way to draw for a living.
- Character designinventing what a person or creature looks like, so everyone else can draw it the same way.
- 2D animationdrawing picture after picture so it looks like it’s moving.
- Concept artpainting the world of a game or film before it’s ever built.
- Motion graphicsanimating text, logos, and shapes instead of characters.
A typical early-career day
- 9:30Develop the idea
Work out the story and the character: who they are, what happens. The authorship part, and the part that’s really yours.
- 11:00Reference & look
Gather references and lock the visual style, what the world feels like before you generate anything.
- 1:00Generate the art
Produce the panels, backgrounds, or characters. Fast, but it takes direction to get something that’s yours.
- 3:00Fix consistency
Make the character look like the same character across every panel, and match the look. This is the fiddly real work.
- 5:00Notes & revisions
Client or studio sends changes; you revise. And if you freelance, you’re also chasing the next gig.
This is the illustration side. Animation in a studio looks different, with more pipeline and technical work, but the split between deciding it and drawing it is the same.
The outlook
Where it’s going
These two paths are splitting. Illustration is flat and is the visual field most directly hit by AI: tools now generate commercial illustration straight from a prompt. Animation is steadier (film, games, and VR/AR), where those same tools speed up the busywork but haven’t replaced the creative direction, and across both, the rendering is being automated while the authorship (characters, story, art direction) is what holds its value.
Right now
Illustration is under real pressure right now: flat hiring, mostly freelance, and the commercial work (stock, covers, first-pass concepts) is exactly what now gets generated. Animation is healthier with steady studio demand, but both reward the same thing: a distinctive voice and real character-and-story judgment, not just clean rendering, which is the slice worth building.
Would you like it?
Worth a look if you can invent characters and stories people care about, the part no tool can do for you.
Tap any that sound like you.
In practice, people realize it’s their thing when…
…and it probably isn’t their thing when
How people get in
- 4
- Years it takes on average
- $48K
- Average cost
- 31,000
- Jobs in the whole country
Every way in
An art degree
About 6 in 10
Four years · About $48K at a state college, about $252K at CalArts
No degree, just the work
About 4 in 10
Two years · No school fees
Disney Animation takes people into its own apprenticeship with a degree or with equivalent experience, so the degree is one way to qualify and not the only one.
Those are the two. The military is a way in for a few people as well: the Marines have run a combat art program since 1942 and it takes civilian artists alongside Marines, though the Army deleted its own illustrator job in 2021.
How your first job gets decided
Nobody sits on a committee for this. Somebody at a studio watches a short video of your best work, called a reel, and decides from that.
What studios look at
- Your reel, and it should be short. Pixar asks for no more than three minutes.
- The two halves of this job want different things on paper. For drawing, the commonest answer is some college and no degree. For animation, it is a four year degree.
- One door asks nothing about school at all. The recruiting program that runs alongside the big animation expo wants a portfolio or a reel, a resume and a cover letter, and says outright that it has no education requirement.
The first job is a small piece of somebody else’s film or game, and the reel is what gets it rather than the degree.
- People who draw earn $55,490 in the middle. People who animate earn $102,030. It is nearly double, for what looks from outside like the same work.
- An animation degree earns about $43,300 four years after you finish, which is under half what animating pays in the middle. The money in this job arrives years after the degree does.
When to apply
Two things on this list have dates, and neither of them is a school application.
- August to MayArt schools send admissions people to more than 40 portfolio days across the year, and they read your work in front of you and tell you what is missing. It is free to go.
- November 19 to 22The big animation expo runs in Burbank, and studio recruiters take appointments there to look at portfolios. A three day student badge is $79 against $179 for everyone else.
- Before you put the work outYou can register ten unpublished drawings at once with the Copyright Office for a single fee, as long as one person made them all. Once they are out in public that option is gone and each one costs its own filing.
How long it takes
This is two jobs sharing one name, and they answer the school question differently. People who animate mostly go to college for four years first, people who draw mostly do not, and the drawing side takes about two years of work before anyone pays for it.
The short video of your best work decides everything, and it only works if every second in it earns its place. Deciding which drawings stay in is the judgment the job runs on, and you can try that now.
Try choosing the drawings that make it moveAnimate a 15-Second Short
Plan a 15 to 30 second cartoon by drawing one rough picture for each thing that happens, have AI make them move, then throw away every second that is not good enough. Deciding what stays and what goes is the real skill here, and it is the part no tool hands you (if you would rather work in still pictures, the comic strip project tests the same thing).
Or try one of these
Where these numbers come from
Written by the Sidequest team, from the sources below.
- Pay: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Fine Artists incl. Illustrators (SOC 27-1013), Special Effects Artists & Animators (27-1014), May 2024; Glassdoor / Research.com bands.
- The outlook: BLS OOH (SOC 27-1013, ~0% growth; 27-1014, +2% growth; May 2024); Glassdoor; Research.com (freelance dominance, AI workflow shifts, VR/AR premium). Dated June 2026.
- Getting in: How many people take each route is our own estimate, rounded. O*NET OnLine 27-1013.00 (Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators), Job Zone Three, SVP 6.0 to under 7.0, whose commonest education answer is some college and no degree; and 27-1014.00 (Special Effects Artists and Animators), Job Zone Four, SVP 7.0 to under 8.0, whose commonest answer is a bachelor degree; both site updated August 25 2026, read September 2026, for the two years, the four years and the split between the halves. This version of O*NET publishes the education answers in rank order with no percentages, so none are stated. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for the $55,490 middle wage and 11,220 jobs under SOC 27-1013, and the $102,030 middle wage and 19,970 jobs under SOC 27-1014, which together make the 31,000. U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, field of study data, CIP 10.03 Graphic Communications at bachelor level, read September 2026, for the $43,300 median four years out; the family is broader than animation alone. College Board, Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025, public four year in state tuition and fees of $11,950 a year, for the $48K four year total; CalArts tuition for 2026-2027 of $62,954 a year, for the $252K across four years. Walt Disney Animation Studios apprenticeships page, read September 2026, for the degree or equivalent experience wording. Pixar careers page, read September 2026, for the one to three minute reel. CTN Animation Expo 2026 and the CTN Foundation Raise the Bar Recruiting page, read September 2026, for the November 19 to 22 dates, the $79 student badge and the entry rules. National Portfolio Day Association, read September 2026, for the free events between August 29 2026 and May 8 2027. U.S. Copyright Office Circular 34, Multiple Works, read September 2026, for the ten unpublished works on one filing. National Museum of the Marine Corps, Combat Art Program, read September 2026, for the 1942 start and the civilian artists. Army MILPER Message 24-415, for the deletion of the multimedia illustrator job. Dated September 2026.