Start: Sam Baker

Studio: Mr. X

College: Ex'pression College for Digital Arts

My name is Sam Baker, an animator from California, and I'm currently working in Toronto on the remake of RoboCop.  Getting here was certainly not easy, and it took a good 5 years (after art school) of trying, failing, hustling, and pumping out as much animation as possible.

As a kid I was raised on Star Wars, Harryhausen movies, Wallace and Gromit, and of course everything Disney.  My mom was/is an art teacher, but I could never draw too well.  Making movies intrigued me though, so I started out with stop motion.  South Park had just come out, so I began with paper cutouts and moved up to claymation, pressing start-stop on a VHS-C camcorder with no frame grabbers or animation lunchboxes to be had.  This continued throughout high school, and at the time I wasn't sure what to focus on in college: film making or animation?  I decided community college was the way to go, and studied all kinds of art.  Film history, art history, video production, actual 16mm filmmaking.  When most of my classmates were sketching storyboards, I was roughing out stop-motion animatics of what I wanted to do, and someone said "maybe that's what you should be doing."

As it turned out, my college had a stop-motion class!  Immediately I knew this was a path I wanted to pursue, but the teacher (a legend! a hero! my idol!) basically said that it was a dying art.  He suggested trying computer animation, which I hated at the time, and I decided to give that a shot.  After opening Maya and playing around for a few months, that was it.  I was ready to focus on that, and the best option at the time was going to a specialized art school with industry connections.  My goal was to get a job doing this stuff, not just do it for fun.  So Ex'pression College in Emeryville, CA was the answer.  A little over 2 years later, I had a demo reel, decent knowledge of animation, and enough skill to get noticed.  It still took 6 months after I graduated to find an industry job (expect that!) but I couldn't have hoped for a better first job.

My career as a professional animator started at a game company called Factor 5.  I received an email from a recruiter at my school who saw the posting and relayed my info to her contact there, and viola!  I got really lucky.  Four contractors were hired, and I was chosen to stay on full-time.  Although this was an amazing experience and I learned a lot, it still wasn't film.  After Factor 5 shut its doors, I was unemployed more often than employed.  What they don't tell you in school is how unstable it is out there.  Most jobs are 3-6 month contracts (even shorter for commercials) and if you're lucky enough to find a staff position, who knows how long the company will last?  It was about a year before my big break came, and it was all due to connections.  As they say, "luck is when preparation meets opportunity."  I was fortunate enough to work on some creature stuff, and when my girlfriend at the time was hired by an Australian company, my reel was just barely good enough that I was able to go too.  Rising Sun Pictures, about 2 years of awesome film experience to follow!

It's easy to uproot your entire life when you're chasing a girl and have nothing tying you down, but being ready to move to the other side of the world for work is not a simple task.  It's quite expensive and stressful, but very exciting.  Being ok with becoming a traveling artist nomad will open so many more doors and create contacts who can help you get to even higher places in your career.  Would I suggest it if given the chance?  Absolutely.  It's not an easy life, but it's the one I chose because I really don't want to do anything other than animate. 

My advice to current animation students is to pump out as much as you can as often as you can.  The faster you work, the sooner you'll get good, and the more valuable you'll be in the workplace.  After a few months you'll have an epic reel and you'll be ready when luck come your way.  Cheers!
For Sam's reel, click: HERE