[willjp]

Enjoy your studies! Sheridan is a good place. As a third option, you'll find many opportunities in the industry as a hybrid artist/coder "TD" jobs if that area holds any appeal. Larger salaries are possible if you are dedicated and are willing/able to travel to where the high profile work is being done.

My only advice would be to research the available jobs, and if you can, visit a studio or two so that you are going into this with realistic expectations of the industry you are about to enter into. Keep sketching and good luck with your portfolio!

[boppo1]

Can you expand on TD roles and where how to break in? I sort of fit the bill.

[willjp]

Sure! It’s an acronym for “technical director”. I don’t think it is standardized across the industry at all, besides it employing people that can code that are also familiar with art production in some capacity. Don’t let the “director” in the title scare you, it is primarily writing tools to serve production.

You might be working on tools to help set scenes, versioning assets, managing asset pipelines, tracking, CI/CD, rigging, managing levels of detail so that scenes are performant for animators, tools to help with animation etc.

I think you’ll mostly find this role in larger, more established animation and vfx companies. I think that applying for one of these positions would be the easiest way in. Apparently it is a difficult position to fill. My way was slower, I taught myself to code and started writing tools on my own time to help solve issues I encountered as a generalist at a smaller company with tight deadlines. I don’t recommend this way, besides as a stepping stone to something more formal.