My Story (Archive from 2017)

How I broke into the animation industry and interned at Cartoon Network as a psych major

Archive Note: This was originally a blog post from December 6, 2017. You can read the original here.

Disclaimer: I wrote this when I was a baby and brand-new to the animation industry, and since then my perspective on this topic has shifted. The landscape of film and TV has also vastly changed post-pandemic and the very internship program that helped me get my foot in the door no longer exists in the same capacity (to my knowledge). While many of my memories of the experience remain the same, I would probably write about it differently today. Despite that, I wanted to share this as a legacy post in case anyone finds it interesting or helpful!

After I posted my letter about starting a new job at Dreamworks I got a lot of messages and emails from people asking if I could talk about my journey more in detail and how I got here despite going to school in Pittsburgh for psychology and almost giving up on animation halfway through college. I know that I would have appreciated reading something like this a year and a half ago so I thought I’d share my story in the hopes that it might be able to help someone who is struggling. Plus: a detailed explanation of how social media has done so much for me as an artist.

Buckle in guys. Lots of text under the cut!

starting college

I’d known for a long time that I wanted to make a living doing art, but understandably my parents were concerned about my future ability to support myself. While they’ve always been supportive of my decision to want to do art, they insisted that I go to university to get a “regular” degree so that I’d have something to fall back on if art didn’t work out.

That’s how I ended up going to school studying to get an interdisciplinary degree in art and psychology. The majority of my classes were in the school of psychology, so most of my education consisted of statistics classes and writing research papers. While I did take art classes in college, they were very fine-arts oriented and not relevant to working in the animation industry. The way I’d describe the kind of art that the program favors would be like a pile of glass shards sitting on the floor of the MOMA. (Nothing against conceptual art- I enjoy looking at it and think it’s cool, but it’s just not what I’m interested in doing professionally.)

the realization

About two months into freshman year, I suddenly felt like I’d made a huge mistake. I realized there were no resources or classes here that would help me with what I wanted to learn, and I started to panic. I decided that it would just have to be up to me to teach myself if I couldn’t get it from school, so during my free time I would constantly be drawing and working on portfolio pieces with the hopes of getting good enough to land a summer internship. Despite being in university where part of the experience is supposed to be to make friends and engage in the community, I didn’t have a social life for a while because all of my time not doing homework was going towards teaching myself how to draw. I started applying to internships and summer jobs. And that’s when I had....

The Worst Time Ever

I applied to every internship and job I could find, and I got rejected from everything. It didn’t matter if it was a big studio internship like Disney or a tiny indie game studio that no one had ever heard of. I applied to everything that I could find because all that mattered to me was getting my foot in the door and having something I could put on my resume.

After 2 years of this, I started to give up hope and seriously doubt if I would ever be able to make it in the industry. I thought for sure that if only I had gone to Calarts or if only I lived in LA, then maybe my situation would be different because I’d have access to people working in the industry and an actual entertainment arts education. I was full of panic because I felt like my time was running out, and soon I would be thrust out into the real world as a disappointment to myself and my parents.

I was really depressed during this period of time, and just thinking about the future would make me cry, no matter what I was doing at the time or where I was. Everything seemed pointless, and I was in a lot of pain because I had attached my ability to draw to my own self-worth. I thought that if I wasn’t good enough to get hired, there was no point in even existing. (Of course, that’s not true at all and I know that now! But it was really hard to silence that voice in my head when I was going through this period of my life.)

and then finally...

My situation finally changed because of social media. I'd been posting my work on Tumblr for a really long time, and as I gradually got better at drawing I started getting more followers and attention on my blog.

My first major breakthrough came when the recruiter at Cartoon Network emailed me saying that someone who works at CN had stumbled across my blog and asked if I'd be interested in doing a background painting test for Steven Universe. I couldn’t believe it. I remember thinking it was some kind of elaborate prank at first and it took me 15 minutes of screaming and trying to validate the email by googling the email address before I finally believed that it was real.

I was so thrilled because it felt like someone had finally recognized me. Even though I didn't end up getting the job, that little bit of encouragement helped to reignite my passion and gave me hope that I could make it. If someone had noticed me, then I just had to keep drawing and more people would notice too, right? I started posting on social media even more and making more ambitious projects and portfolio pieces.

When spring rolled around, I applied to everything I possibly could again, except this time I finally heard back from Cartoon Network instead of getting rejected. I mentioned in my cover letter that I had done a background test and while I don't know if that's the main reason I heard back, I think it must've been at least a little helpful to get my application to stand out from the pile. Getting to intern there was amazing and eye-opening for me, and it gave me my first taste of what it would be like to work in the animation industry. My coworkers and fellow interns were so incredibly kind and talented, and it made me more resolved than ever to work hard so that someday I’d be able to come back.

After completing my summer internship, I got discovered again on social media- this time through Twitter, and that's what ended up getting me freelance at Dreamworks TV, and eventually a full-time offer. I noticed the showrunner had followed me after noticing my GIRL GANG post, which had gained a lot of attention on social media. I’ve been a huge fan of his work for a while and I was really nervous about reaching out, but my boyfriend encouraged me to say hi so I messaged him through Twitter DM to say thank you and express how I admired his work. We had a short conversation and he mentioned that he was looking for new talent for his show, and that's how I ended up here. I’m graduating from school with my good ol psychology degree in two weeks, and I’m going to be moving out to LA to start working at Dreamworks TV as an artist!

Advice

Social media was a huge part of my success and I truly don't think I would've been able to break in as an industry outsider if I hadn't been posting all of my work to the internet for so long. While I was at Cartoon Network, I also talked to the talent hiring staff and they told me that they actually keep tabs on all of the online artists they find. There's a huge spreadsheet where they keep the names and contact information of all these online artists, and they try to track down who's working and who's available so they know when to reach out when they're looking for new employees. This was totally mindblowing to me because it really goes to show how social media and the internet has changed the face of the game. Having prior connections helps a TON of course, but social media was what personally gave me my big break.

You don’t need to go to the right school, or have the right major, or even go to school at all. So many people I met at CN and on the internet have been able to break into the industry with a lot of hard work and a little bit of good fortune. Everyone’s situation is different, and I can only speak for myself and my own experience. But for me, drawing a lot and sharing it online was what helped me despite knowing absolutely no one in the industry and living on the East Coast thousands of miles away from LA.

tldr;

I’m about to graduate from a university in Pittsburgh with a degree in psychology. After years of rejection I almost gave up on my dream of being an artist, but teaching myself how to draw and getting noticed on social media helped open up opportunities for me in the animation industry.

Whew! That was a lot of text, but I hope someone somewhere found that helpful. My final words of advice:

1. Don’t be shy!! Reach out to artists you admire and say hi!

2. Post your work online! Don’t wait until you make your life’s masterpiece to start posting because it’s never gonna happen. Keep sharing what you make and you’ll find that your following will grow as you get better!

3. Don’t be afraid of rejection. Speaking from experience, you can make it even if you get rejected a thousand times. A lot of times, getting rejected doesn’t mean that you’re “bad,” it just means you aren’t the strongest candidate at the time. Keep trying and growing and with a little bit of luck, your situation will flip around.

4. Support your artist friends! Grow with each other and pull each other up.

5. If you are determined and you have the time, you can teach yourself how to do anything.

Thank you everyone for reading and sticking around to the end! If you have any more questions, feel free to send me an ask here, on CuriousCat, or shoot me an email (chuwenjie96@gmail.com). I want to thank everyone again for supporting me along my journey! My story is only just beginning and I am so excited to grow as an artist and find out what the future holds for me. To anyone reading this who is in a bad place right now, I feel your pain and I hope you never give up on your dream. You can do it!

Best,

Kat