Salary range for an AE pro

rightfrog said:
$440/day is only $55/hour for an 8 hour day...that's a pretty standard rate for an AE artist doing broadcast motion graphics work...not national commercials, but regional stuff...or DVD menus for larger houses...
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you will of course note that I am talking in uk pounds, i.e. I am speaking in terms of UK salaries. I am also talking about decent length projects of several months or more. For broadcast, short jobs rates would obviously be higher.
 
Is there certification or classes to take for after effects? Or is it all about buying the software and training yourself over time? Im 20 yrs old and my brain is in gear so Ive been considering looking into AE as a way to make a living.
 
Friggin West Virignia. Sheesh. I couldn't make that even if I threw in all the extra stuff I can do to boot.

WV sucks for pay.
 
TheJackyl said:
Is there certification or classes to take for after effects? Or is it all about buying the software and training yourself over time? Im 20 yrs old and my brain is in gear so Ive been considering looking into AE as a way to make a living.
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I sat down about 10 years ago with the software and the manual and figured it out. I had a strong Photoshop background which helped...I'm sure there are classes that you can take to get introduced to the software, but I don't think I've ever seen any kind of "master class" where you go into more intricate things like motion tracking, keying, digital matte paintings, etc...
 
People fresh out of school or without a really good reel are generally making about $200-250 a day out here. A good friend of mine does strictly motion graphics at first rate houses, and he's making closer to $1000/day, sometimes more.
 
So when you get assigned a project, are you given a certain idea and told how they want it, such as the camera to zoom thru buildings like in a city or do you make all that up yourself?
 
In my case, I've been involved at a few different point. Previs, where you're
generally working from storyboards to mock up a moving animatic to illustrate
timing, tecnical issues, bid out the work and as a template for the live action
shot needs. There is a lot of 'upfront' creativity in those cases. I believe thats
Rich's fulltime area at this point.

The bulk of my time and what I prefer to do, is compositing and 2D/3D integration.
If you can 'see' my work, then my work wasnt totally done :) I like seamless camera
and object tracking, optical matching, and the technical aspects of compositing. In
those cases, I'm generally part of a team.
 
TheJackyl said:
Hey, thanks for the answer, so you did work on the new star wars? it was in the 'showreel'
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I spent a few months at the tail end of Ep2 at Skywalker Ranch. A group of 12 of
us created the deleted/extended scenes while the final work was happening at ILM.
It was a heck of an interesting time :)
 
TheJackyl said:
So when you get assigned a project, are you given a certain idea and told how they want it, such as the camera to zoom thru buildings like in a city or do you make all that up yourself?
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The building animation was actually my idea...the client wanted something that said Seattle Minute so I made a bunch of buildings that looked like buildings in downtown Seattle along with the Space Needle and the monorail (icons of Seattle)...they were really happy with it.

The Kill Bill menu was actually something that three of us came up with at Technicolor and pitched it to Quentin. We came up with 3-4 looks and he picked that one.

Other times, clients will have a very clear idea of what they want and so you have to take their notes and do something very exact.
 
Damn thats cool guys!!! THANK YOU very much for taking the time to respond since you are obviously working professionals. And that is super crazy Gregg! Skywalker Ranch, does it get any cooler, I flew half the U.S. for SW Celebration II and III. So After Effects was the program of choice for Lucas? Just curious!
 
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The Ranch is ususally 100% off-the-shelf software. Shake, AE, FCP, Maya and Photoshop. The work done there is generally previs, art direction and conceptual
work.

Once you get to ILM, you start seeing the exact opposite. The core tools are either 100% in-house or highly augmented off-the-shelf packages.
 
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