Drawing the Industry of Animation to Life
Do you ever wonder who’s on the other side of the screen bringing your favourite cartoon characters to life? Henry T Fox takes a deep dive into the world of animation.
Rotten Tomatoes TV trailer for FOX’S Krapopolis
Animation is all about making the impossible real - crazy fight scenes, fantastical creatures, and brave new worlds, but the creative process behind it is surprisingly scientific. Gone are the days of scanning traditional hand-drawn cels. In the modern day, most animators now use high-tech software like Toon Boom for storyboarding, rigging, and animating every project. Futhermore, 2D animation now has a three-dimensional competitor.
Europe’s animation industry has been thriving in recent years, and animation has grown into a billion-pound industry.
Animators have had to become artists, programmers, and scientists all in one. I talked to animators Sinead, Ross, and Abigail about their experiences working in such a creative field.
Telling New Stories
Irish animator and illustrator Sinead Treacy has been working in the industry for two years. She has cut her teeth on shows like RTÉ’s Ray of Sunshine and productions for American giant Cartoon Network.
Creativity is truly an integral part of the job. Sinead says: “I just love being able to animate and I also love the people I work with. I think that I'm in a creative industry like animation that draws similar types to you”.
Horror, comedy, and adventure! Illustrations by Sinead Treacy
Her colleague, 2D animator Abigail Webster says: “Animation is very collaborative, so I think that's a lot of fun. It’s because you working together with other people to create a story, and I'm a person who finds that highly motivating. I love that animation is telling stories. My favourite thing about my job is that I'm a part of telling stories, you know?”
The animation industry is very tight-knit, so a great part of the work is running into familiar faces on different projects.
“My favourite thing about my job is that
I’m a part of telling stories.”
Junior animator Ross Stewart has been working for Boulder Media since January 2024. He says: “I think I really like when all my animation, you know, has a tangible result you can actually see visually, you can see where the work is going into. I really like putting the input in and having an actual output that reflects how well I felt I did”.
Sinead reaffirmed this thought, saying: “I go home every day feeling really accomplished which is great”.
Sinead and Ross’s most recent work has been on Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon’s Krapopolis. This work is a new foray into the world of adult animation, putting a twist on familiar comedy scenarios by being set in Ancient Greece at the dawn of civilisation.
Ross became interested in animation in his final years of secondary school. Ross says: “I've always liked art, it was just always about building up a skill. Kind of similar to how people would have enjoyed sculpting and woodwork”.
A diverse portfolio. Illustrations by Ross Stewart.
A challenger ahead
The job can be challenging, especially when it comes to time management. It’s a very time-consuming job. Tight deadlines and overtime are commonplace when projects are ramping up.
Abigail says: “You have to really learn how to manage your time very well so that you're not working all the time, you know, so I think that would be one thing. I had to learn when I came into the industry is is the time management aspect of being an animator and how demanding it is”.
Sinead agrees that time management is a big challenge on the job: “There's so many people in the pipeline in animation. I get stuff from the rigging and background department that they've worked on before I make it move and then it gets sent off to effects or compositing. It's like a fine tuned machine, but if something goes wrong at any stage, it's not just you that you're delaying. You're delaying everyone after you, so being quick is probably the biggest challenge in such a huge production”.
Animated productions can be challengingly vast in scope, but for many the art form is worth it.
“The standards have never been so high”
Sinead says: “There's been a huge uptick in the animation industry in Ireland”.
“It’s come in waves. It's gone up and down and up and down. And in the past 10 years, we've generally seen it up because a lot of stuff has been coming out of Ireland”, Sinead continued.
Ireland has been well-represented at the Oscars, with four nominations for Best Animated Feature and six nominations for Best Animated Short. Sinead affirms: “The standards have never been so high”.
Seeing the fruits of your labour is an amazing part of the work, however, there are still challenges with the industry, especially when it comes to finding work. Ross says: “I am not a recent graduate. I graduated in 2019, and it was actually very difficult to look for junior jobs.”
Ross continues: “I've heard stories of people in the past, people who were coming back to college to get their bachelor's, that for some of them it took three to four years after graduating to get their first animation job. So it definitely seems as hard as ever to get the foot in the door, but it seems that once you get the foot in they want you to stay in”.
Traditional and modern. Scroll right to see a gallery of illustrations by Abigail Webster.
Abigail recalls that most jobs in animation are contract-to-contract, meaning that you don’t have a guaranteed long-term job. She and Sinead initially got their jobs through the ScreenSkills traineeship scheme, which places new animation graduates in animation studios. With gaps between contracts being common in the industry, Abigail has had to learn how to be adaptable.
Abigail has gotten creative in her times between jobs. She illustrated a book between contracts, and spent six weeks between jobs learning a new skill.
“Once you get your foot in they want you to stay in”
A learning process
Abigail’s biggest takeaway from animation is that it’s a learning process. This impressed on her when she recently began working on FOX’s adult comedy show, Grimsburg.
Abigail says: “Grimsburg is an Adult Comedy so I'm learning a lot on that, but I love working on kids cartoons because I just think there's so many really sweet messages and joy in animating shows for kids”.
Learning new skills is all part of the job. Ross says: “Build up your skill in drawing on build up your skill on all the software”. Outside of work and college, he took a bootcamp course that helped him get a foothold in the industry.
“It improved my ability and improved my confidence in getting into the industry by so much”, Ross continues.
“There’s so many really sweet messages
and joy in animating shows for kids.”
Creative minds
With all the pressures, it’s still a very enjoyable job for the trio. They have plans to stay in the creative industry.
Abigail says: “At the moment, I'm very much just focusing on becoming a master of the field that I'm in. I'd love to learn more 3D animation because I've got the 2D ticked off but I actually don't know how to do 3D animation. That's definitely a goal of mine in the near future. I’d like to be a character animator as well as I can and then from there, you can progress to animation lead animation director”.
“For the interim, I think I'd like to be really strong at what I'm doing before I go into those roles”, Abigail continues.
Ross says: “I definitely have personal plans of wanting to just get back into doing illustration, drawing and sketching. That's what I enjoy the most on my downtime, but I definitely preferred the workflow of being in professional animation. For now, all I'm thinking about is just sticking to animation”.
Sinead says: “I was really impressed with my work on Ray of Sunshine, which is a cute little kids’ show. I feel like I learned so much in that time. I feel like I've improved my quality of work. It's the little things that you pick up”.
“I find that I get along really well with everyone I work with because everyone is so passionate and hard working and just loves what they do. And also just being able to do something creative and challenging every day is just so amazing”, Sinead continues.
“We’re all here to help each other. Just have confidence and don’t be afraid to talk to other people because you deserve to be here.”
Sinead says: “I'm going to keep working on lots of cool things and see where it takes me. I learned something new on every single project. I hope to eventually kind of work my way towards a lead animator position where I've got animators under me and I'm helping them do what I'm doing now, but that's for the future”.
For more content like this, you can check out Instagram for a visual deep dive into the greats of modern animation.
Henry T Fox is an Irish journalist based in Coventry, with a focus on arts, culture, and live gig reviews.
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