Making their way to the industry is a way that every animator will face. For future use, I will try to make a detailed list about potential series that continue providing new position for students. Since I am planning working back in China after graduate, this list will only include animation companies in China.
For practical reasons, I will also includes details about the companies such as:
- The operating condition of the company, e.g How many production lines they have, is the series have been renewed / is the company have been invest / or not
- Interested position and salary
- City / working location, Work from distant? or not
Now lets start!
Beijing & Tianjin
Deeeeer. Lab (茶山有鹿）
Basic information: Deeeer. Lab is a director centered animation studio based in Beijing. Company has made several commercial shorts and animation for music video for clients from all over the world from 2015. They are good at making high contract color and impactive animation. Currently hiring position: Concept artist, 2D animtor.
Compare to TV series market ( which is gradually shrinking in China these years) and online series, commercial shorts have less labor needed and good funding return. Focus on small studios which has stable orders from large compant might be a good choice for students.
Overall, Deeeer. Lab is a studio that highly stylized. Small team but have professional work flow and developed works. Applying to these kind of studio might need certain art style; I will include another similiar studio from Shanghai later.
Hiring position: Concept Artist, 2D animator
Nice Boat Animation (好传动画）
Tianjin Nice Boat Culture Communication was founded in 2012, now has growing to a studio that have multi production line (including TV series, original cinema animation, Stop-motion film, etc).
Nice Boat Animation is based in Tianjin, compare to Beijing, From personal experenice, Tianjin has lower cost for living; for the studio, they can have tax waive and provides employee better working space. so we can notice that there are more studios are moving out from Beijing. Which might be a good point to think when locating job opportunities.
Training process for junior animator is another aspect to think when seeking job. Nice boat animation have been working with a in-site animation training program called Goblin for years. Its a good sign showing they might have professional training for new employees.
Hiring position: Concept Artist, 2D animator, 3D animator, 3D rigging artist, 3D animator (Maya), Stop motion animator
Guangzhou
Sharefun Studio (小疯映画）
Sharefun Studio is a 2D animation studio based in Guangzhou. Studio has just renewed their original 2D series Scissor Seven season 5 with Netflix.
Scissor Seven as their main product, have growing to a series full of potential. Four seasons of development means studio have a consitent production line and gorwing need for new positions.
We can easyly find sereval aniamtion studio is based on one or very limited IP during this research. For example Luo Xiaohei from Han Mu Chun Hua studio (寒木春华）(invest by Bilibili), Fei Ren Zai from Fenzihuyu (分子互娱）（Invest by Tencent entreatment).
Follow famous IP / series social media/ page/ then research about the artist team might be another way to find opptunities.