Why I Left DreamWorks Animation

now here's what everything takes a turn I'll never know whether or not I would have gotten accepted as an animator on the How to Train Your Dragon 3 so today is my final day Traverse animation last time I park here [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm dick these hands I'm a tiger now I'm a supervising animator here at DreamWorks busy so busy so this is it I'm on my way to return my key my badge after the day I'll be a mere mortal becoming real it's hard to leave a place like this now I'm going to meet my first friend that I met here at DreamWorks we both started on the same day and we've been friends ever since then over two years now [Music] [Music] okay so I just got locked out of my account which means that my my time here is over I was trying to do emails and stuff and my account went away I have the system well not at all hat so I'm gonna have to come back and I don't work you anymore I'm all frantic and frazzled I'm supposed to do a like they're going away party and I'm already late to it people are already there I'm here so I gotta go I got hired at DreamWorks Animation on January 4th 2016 as I started as a technical trainer and educator in the training and education department my job was to teach software to whoever needed it in the studio sometimes people would just want to take Photoshop classes during lunch other times I'd be teaching the animation software or teaching surfacing software lighting modeling really anything just depending on who needs it to fulfill whatever parts of their job being in that role in that department was one of the greatest opportunities that I've ever had the pleasure of having I learned so much I met so many amazing people I can't say enough good things about my time at dreamers I was there for two years and everyone treated me incredibly I've never been around so many talented creative amazing kind generous genuine people ever in one spot but DreamWorks is just full of amazing incredible people this is not a video to throw any kind of shaded rumours to say anything negative it didn't fire me I didn't leave on angry terms like nothing like that only love for that studio because the people and the executives everyone there is phenomenal and I only have gratitude appreciation for my time there and for all the people there who made it so wonderful now my career still pretty much just getting started I was only a dreamer for two years but in that two years I made the most amazing friends I learned way more than I ever thought would be possible to cram into that short of a time frame and I had so many opportunities open up to me unbelievable things that I had never thought I was gonna get to do I got to do and if you've been watching the series so far on how to become an animator as I document my journey to becoming an artist become an animator professionally here's the next chapter in that series now in case you're new to the channel and don't know yet my goal is to be an animator and if you've been watching the series so far I'm basically journaling and documenting my process of how I'm getting there so other and learn from my experiences as some of you may have seen online DreamWorks has actually been looking to hire some new animators for How to Train Your Dragon 3 in fact I think a couple people have actually started on the film already several months ago we knew that they were gonna be hiring animators we just did know exactly when that was going to come to fruition I actually sent to my reel to apply for the position my reel went through reviews actually got a phone call on my work phone and was just from someone and one of the other buildings who called me back with the feedback from my real review I got some great feedback on my reel and some things to add before the final decisions were gonna be made now from my understanding I had kind two impressions for that one was that they weren't quite ready to make any final decisions on people since it was so early in the process and also that my reel may not have been quite ready for them to just say a solid yes considering there would be other applicants to consider who may surpass me at least that was my understanding and either way a lot of hope and we really exciting now if you've seen my whole story up until now you know that in 2014 I made a short film that went to the Cannes Film Festival at that festival DreamWorks Animation had also presented How to Train Your Dragon 2 I'm a red carpet premiere the whole thing the world premiere of the film I was in the theater with the cast and crew not too far from the director and everybody else and totally changed my life it was because of How to Train Your Dragon 2 that I wanted to go be an animator after seeing that film and meeting a few of the cast members just you know in the street afterwards by chance I went back to my hotel called my parents I ended up leaving school where I was pursuing computer science to go all in on animation after signing up for animation mentor I did the whole 18-month program and worked obsessively towards my goal because I knew how to train your dragon too was part of a trilogy and I wanted to be a part of the third movie I don't know if I truly believed that I was going to get to DreamWorks Animation for that third movie but I never told myself I wasn't going to I just hoped that I would and here I was only two years into my career in the animation industry only three and a half years after these deciding to pursue animation I was presented with an opportunity to apply to How to Train Your Dragon 3 as an animator I got some feedback on the first application was told we're going to be hiring pretty soon get your stuff ready now here's where everything takes a turn and not in a bad way just hang in there I'll never know whether or not I would have gotten that job at DreamWorks I'll never know whether I would have gotten accepted as an animator on the How to Train Your Dragon 3 film I think that if I continued working on my reel kept pushing kept doing shots and applied to that position I think I would have had a strong chance I might have even gotten it I don't know because here's what happened it was the beginning of 2018 I had just made my video two years at DreamWorks Animation and I was pretty much just considering my third year in the industry my career being a DreamWorks all these amazing things and I just spent a lot of time thinking about what was it that I wanted to be doing this year I boiled down all the things I like to do the most and found the three things I'm the most passionate about I like to create I like to learn and I like to teach which really worked out as a trainer where I was teaching and learning and creating curriculums and classes and you know materials to teach with and whatever it was a great opportunity obviously they fit right into that and I thought about moving all that into the animation department and like what that was gonna look like for me and it was super exciting however the one thing that I couldn't get out of my head was that I got to DreamWorks so quickly I got there way sooner in life that I ever thought was gonna be possible I never thought I'd be there so soon in my career and I'm not complaining I am so grateful for all of that I thought about what would happen if I had been offered the job and animation obviously I would have said yes and taking it immediately and I would have stayed there for as long as possible because I am sure I would have loved it at a minimum I would have been there for several years period if possible of course but I just got married I had just started really getting into making stuff on this channel and creating stuff on YouTube and I had a few opportunities to travel and go to some really cool places because of those things I realized something my wife and I talked about the fact that if I were to get the animation position and Dreamworks we're gonna be there for a long time and probably after a couple of years of being there we would maybe have kids like who knows like you know life happens and when that happens we want to make sure that we're as stable and secure and like financially like you we just want to make sure we're good so that we can give our kids the best life when that time comes because we want that to happen there's also a whole lot of stuff we want to do that's really high risk and totally insane and crazy and unstable and not secure there's a bunch of stuff we want to try that would just be irresponsible if we were starting a family if we had kids if we had too many big obligations a house anything like that so we decided to leave my wife is already a full-time youtuber she does fashion style travel a bunch of really cool stuff and she wanted to do more of that I also want to get more into this I love the idea of creating independently making my own stuff and just sharing it with an audience to help you guys but three things I like doing create learn and teach I get to do all of that for YouTube and it really helps a lot of you guys out and I really enjoy that so we decided to take at least one year pack everything up cut all of our bills try to get all of our responsibilities down to a minimum to have at least one year of risk to go all-in on YouTube freelance and travel the three things that we wanted to try that would be a little bit irresponsible to just kind of pick up and well it's just see what happens if we were starting a family anything like that but right now why not so nothing's changing in terms of animation I'm still animating I still want to be an animator I still want to work in feature film but right now my focus is just being on a full-time YouTube creator and freelancer slash travel vlogger videographer or whatever you want to call it I don't know what this is we're just doing it I mean all the new DreamWorks movies come into theaters you can bet that I'll be the first ticket sale the first person sitting in those seats because I am so excited for the film's they're coming out with I'm really torn but I'm not a part of them because they're so amazing all the new movies coming out I can't obviously say anything about them but they're great and have nothing but love and support all the people at DreamWorks one day I hope to be back but right now the focus is on traveling creating learning teaching and connecting with as many of you guys and as many other creators as I can in this year of risk to say that it was a difficult decision would be a severe understatement so let's just get that out of the way this was hard to do it's super scary it's like completely terrifying but I know it's the right decision I'm excited for us to come I hope you are too because I have a lot of stuff planned for you guys a lot of cool things in store I'm not gonna share it just yet but I'm really excited and I hope you are as well anyways thank you guys all so much for watching this and my other videos I really appreciate it if you're interested in seeing more videos what is to come all the other stuff I have in store for you don't forget to subscribe and if you really don't to miss that YouTube doesn't tell everybody who's subscribed when a video happens so if you actually don't wanna miss the stuff hit the notification button I don't spam you with stuff so don't worry about that that way you'll actually get the notifications on when stuff actually comes out and if I can ask one more thing of you apparently the thumbs up actually makes a difference so if you wouldn't mind hitting that if you enjoyed the video I really appreciate it but thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Sir Wade Neistadt

Views: 100,619

Keywords: why i left, why i left dreamworks, why i left disney, why i left buzzfeed, why i left nick, animation mentor, how to train your dragon 3, supervising animator, animation workflows, animation workflow, dreamworks jobs, dreamworks interview, animator vlog, animation vlog, artist vlog, work at dreamworks, quitting dreamworks, animation ik fk, dreamworks behind the scenes, pixar behind the scenes, disney behind the scenes, 3d animation, character animation, xp-pen, cintiq, wacom

Id: VFw_7sC5pzY

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 24 2018