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Dariush has been farting around LA for a few years now. After getting a masters in animation at USC fim school, he began by working at places like Sony Hi Def, South Park, and Rhythm & Hues to keep the USC student loan man happy. He is currently working as a staff animator in Maya for In Sight Pix in Venice during the days, and teaches 3d Studio Max, Maya, and After Effects at The Art Institute of LA, Gnomon, and UCLA Extension. He is bald and likes talking to small furry animals.

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Starting out as a freelance animator is damned tough. It’s a rocky start, but once you’re established with post and animation houses around town (whatever town that may be), it can truly be a nice ride. To get there, though, requires a hell of a lot of patience and no less than vigorous tenacity on your part (and a lot of antacids).

I have found, in my short amount of freelancing here, but long professional life all over, that the most important aspect of getting work is building a good rapport with whatever companies with whom you have already worked or are currently freelancing.

It is as important to show them your capabilities in the mad skills required for the job, as it is to show them a good professional fortitude and personality. The reason for this is quite simple; if the company likes you, they may call you back for more work, or may even refer you to others.

The freelance market in animation rides strongly on word of mouth.

Quite frequently post houses will call each other to ask for referrals. If you stick out in the mind of the producer who picks up that call, your name and phone number will pass on with a friendly word, and you may get a phone call about a job.

Producers also live on short term memory. Keep yourself fresh in their minds with updated demo reels (you should have a new demo reel at least every 6 months, in my opinion) and resumes and friendly emails. Contact is much easier done in with emails. Phone calls get way too bothersome for producers to return. Just don’t get carried away. Camping out in a producer’s SUV back seat is a big no-no.

Making a good impression on your peers is as important as making a good impression on your superiors.

Your fellow animators and compositors are a huge asset to your freelance career. I quite often give out my colleagues’ phone numbers to employers who call me about freelance jobs. But I only refer people I know who could do the job, who are nice people, and can make a good impression on the employer. So, get to know people and be nice to them, which should be a basic rule to live by anyway.

Get a friggin’ rolodex already.

To help you keep track of everyone, I highly recommend an old fashioned rolodex. As a matter of fact, I command it! Do it now!

The palm pilots and such are great, but I still recommend having a real, tactile rolodex on your desk that you can thumb through easily and see the names of the people to whom you should send an email.

I also recommend having a small notebook dedicated to jobs and names of employers. Keep a running log of what studios you have already called, the ones you have not called, the studios to whom you’ve sent reels as well as to whom you haven’t, the ones with whom you’ve interviewed and so on.

Also, put up a wall calendar to keep track of interviews, appointments, dates to send reels and so on., so you can see at a glance what your life is, depressing as it may be.

Employers smell when someone is busy.

They really like it when the people they are interested in are indeed busy, so keep yourself busy (just not too busy to work for them!). When I was looking for work when I was first starting out, I dedicated about 6 hours of my day to finding freelance jobs (and another 6 hours to playing Starcraft and eating frozen pizzas). It’s a difficult mindset to maintain, but it helps in getting you the contacts you need for the jobs you want.

Stay with it.

Now, there’s a very good chance that this advice will do you no good, cause a lot rides on karma and you may have been Stalin in a previous life, so just remember that the important thing is to stay vigilant and keep trying.

Always update your demo reel, make good impressions on the job, and keep in touch with people for whom and with whom you’ve worked.

Just don’t stalk anyone. They don’t like that. ;P