Career Profile: Character Animator

Meet Ryan Nickell, a character animator who has worked on projects such as Twilight: Eclipse and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Most of us have fond memories of waking up early to watch cartoons when we were kids, and Ryan Nickell is no exception. But for him those zany, fantastical misadventures became something more – a career as a character animator. 


Following his love of art and drawing, Nickell enrolled in Vancouver Film School, which offers programs in digital character animation, 3-D animation and visual effects as well as classical animation. Now, after seven years in the industry, Ryan has had the chance to work on a wide variety of projects, including Twilight: Eclipse, video games such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution as well as various Nickelodeon Saturday morning cartoons.


Nickell is currently employed by Bardel Entertainment, a company based in Vancouver that specializes in digital animation for various companies, including DreamWorks, Disney and Paramount. Youthink caught up with Nickell to find out more about his job, the industry and to get some tips for teens looking to become animators.


YT: What are your basic responsibilities as a character animator?

RN: My responsibilities are to make good, believable animation… [to] make the characters that we’re given move in fun, believable, cartoony ways that are appealing to an audience. And we have to animate roughly 26 seconds of animation per week. 


YT: What initially drew you to a job in animation? 

RN: I used to really enjoy drawing and just doing art and whatnot. As a career, my folks suggested trying out animation. I enrolled in the Vancouver Film School and luckily it paid off for me.


YT: What are some of your favourite projects that you have worked on?

RN: The production that I just finished up is called Planet Sheen. It’s a spinoff of Jimmy Neutron – very fun, very cartoony stuff.


YT: What personality traits and skills are crucial to 
being a good animator?

RN: Light-hearted. Sometimes you unfortunately have to get up and act things out and act like a bit of a goof in front of your colleagues. You need to not care about that. You definitely need to be a team player because you’re rarely in a studio environment on your own.


YT: What’s the best and hardest part about your job?

RN: The industry is very volatile as far as work goes because a lot of our work comes from the States. So if the States aren’t necessarily doing well, then they will be less inclined to send their work north to Canada. As far as the pros go, it’s pretty cool to see your name in the credits of television and video games and feature films.


YT: What career options are there for animators?

RN: You can work in film, and film of course is not only live action, but also stuff like Pixar and DreamWorks 3-D feature CG films. There’s of course cartoony stuff for television that I’m doing. But you can also do visual effects for shows such as Supernatural or Smallville, TV shows that are very special effects heavy. You can do video games, you can do commercials, you can do web advertisements, you can do flash animation for both television and web.


YT: What is the best way to break into this industry?

RN: Being good at what you do definitely. It’s talent-driven – there’s no doubt about that. It’s a bit of a pro and a con of the industry. But the old cliché of “it’s more about who you know” definitely comes into play. Networking is very important.


YT: How can teens prepare for a career in character animation?

RN: It wouldn’t hurt to get an early start with life drawing. Most film schools will ask for a portfolio that you need to submit before they’ll accept you. A lot of the time in a portfolio they want to see a strong fundamental life drawing, so if anybody can get around to that beforehand, that’s great. Another tip would be to pick up a good animation book. A really solid one is called The Animator’s Survival Kit and that is by Richard Williams and it could probably single-handedly teach almost anybody to animate, at least on a fundamental level.

Watch Ryan busy at work as an animator for Bardell Entertainment: