It's been 16 years since the first appearance of Wallace and Gromit, the animated characters who started life as Nick Park’s graduation project, and much has changed since then. Where animators previously worked on 2-D cartoons or 3-D model-making, computer-generated animation is a growth area, leading to work in the computer games industry as well as in film and television.

Animators may work as full-time employees but are more likely to be freelance. Aardman Animations (producers of the Wallace and Gromit films, Chicken Run, Rex the Runt and numerous commercials), who snapped up Nick Park before he had even left college, has a staff of 130 but hires freelances for large projects — 250 were employed on The Curse of the Were-rabbit.

Heather Wright, an executive producer and head of commercials at Aardman, says: “Animators must understand acting; be able to look at a storyboard and work out from drawn frames how to translate the characters into action. They also need to know how puppets are built — understand the tension of the joints and so on — and they must appreciate how a film is made and edited. Very important is willingness to accept direction. If their work is criticised they must be able to take this and begin again.” What else? “Anyone with a two-dimensional background can usually do drawn animation,” Wright says, “and sculpting experience is useful for Plasticine work. For computer animation you should have skills in packages like Maya and SoftImage.”

You will also need patience, the ability to work alone and to be able to meet deadlines. A postgraduate qualification in animation may enhance your employability.

“It’s said that animators are shy actors who express their wish to perform through their characters” says John Lee, a character animator with EA Games. “I’m actually a part-time actor and I’m working on an action game. I act out my roles on video. Then I play it back 200 to 300 times and observe closely. You need patience. It takes 30 frames to make one second of animation.”

Experienced animators could earn more than £40,000 a year, or £600-a-week-plus on projects.

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