Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1203639
30 KEYFRAME F E AT U R E WHAT WAS IT LIKE TRYING TO GET INTO THE ANIMATION INDUSTRY? PAULA SPENCE: I got my first job on SpongeBob SquarePants, the first season. I had a degree in illustration from Cal State Long Beach and a friend of mine was on the show. He was looking for somebody to hire for a background design position and I did a test that was two or three backgrounds. Since then, I've done other tests mostly in that first five years of my career. Most of them did not pan out and I tested three times for Camp Lazlo before I got on that one. KIMBERLY KNOLL: I took a test for my first job for Venture Bros in New York and it was for BG paint. It was two backgrounds. Then for my second job, I did multiple time of days for another BG paint test. That was for Sanjay and Craig at Nickelodeon. I've done tests for almost every job except for this one I'm on now. PETE MICHELS: I took some feature tests and got nowhere, but then realized I was not a feature animator. I took a test on The Simpsons when they were first hiring and that's how I got my first job. It was a character layout test and it was two scenes. I took it twice and I never passed the character part of it, but the second time they liked my background so I got hired as the background layout artist. But I remember how harrowing an experience that was and I had no idea what I was doing. ELIZABETH ITO: I did test for my first industry job. I was a story trainee for DreamWorks feature. I don't know if I tested for every single thing after that but the next test that I really remembered taking was for Adventure Time where I took a storyboarding test. BEN JUWONO: My first job, I did have to test for it. It was for Ultimate Spiderman. That test was about a page of action stuff and I did not get hired based off that test but they did offer me a two page freelance [assignment], which later I found out was kind of a second test. When I was revisionist on Spiderman, I did take a test for Legend of Korra, which was awful. That test was three pages long, two pages of conversation and one separate page of just full chase sequence action. I had to take a whole week off to finish it. On the night before [it] had to be submitted, my computer had a meltdown and I lost all [of it]. I redid the test the morning of, submitted really crappy stuff a day late and, of course, I didn't get the job. But after that I was just like, "That was unreasonable." Thankfully, I had never had to test again after that. HOW DO YOU THINK TESTING BECAME A COMMON PRACTICE? PS: I think that a lot of stuff happens out of habit and laziness in the industry. Everybody here got their first jobs with testing, so you just automatically assume that's how it works, everybody takes a test to get a job. Now, we're looking back at it and going, "Wait a minute. Do we need to do that?" KK: I took my first test in 2011. I think it was very normalized at that point. So, I never questioned it up until now when we start talking about it at the Guild meetings. PM: It was there when I started in [the] early '90s and it had been going on before that. But I've seen tests on different productions get more complicated and harder. I've heard of people taking vacation days to take tests and that's just wrong. If you can't do it on a weekend, then a test is too long. I've seen tests where they call for 75 panels or more. I can tell in the first three pages if you're right for the show. EI: You shouldn't have to feel like you're actually doing the job yet. It's just supposed to give you a quick taste of whether somebody has skills that you're looking for. I agree that the ones that are epic, that's based off of total laziness, where people didn't really think about why they're even doing it. BJ: Now that we have a boom of content, there are a lot of young creators. They pitch a show, they get the show picked up and now they are in a position where they're basically in charge of everything. So, it makes sense that some of these people in charge of making decisions get a bit timid. So, they cast a wide net and they test everyone. [The] thing about this industry is that it's scary enough being down here as a board artist or as a revisionist because you're never sure what your next job is or if you're going to get to survive. It's a lot scarier when you're up there because now you're in charge of everything and if you make the wrong call, not only [do] you lose points with the studio, not only [does] your reputation get ruined, but you also lose respect from the people that work [below] you. I would be very scared being in that position [and] making the wrong call to a point where I would not dare to take risks anymore. The higher up you go, the more scared you get. WHAT CHANGES CAN WE MAKE TO THE CULTURE OF TESTING? PS: I've talked to other art directors at Cartoon Network and I've had a couple of Elizabeth Ito