What You Need to Know to Be an Animator in Virginia Beach, Virginia

The city of Virginia Beach, Virginia features well over 40,000 commercial businesses and many resident artists.  With a heavily high tech economy, Virginia Beach supports a broad variety of opportunities for local artists seeking jobs as professional animators.

Virginia Beach Schools and Training Programs for Animation

Various Virginia Beach colleges, Universities and art schools feature courses and professional training in animated design.  Some aspiring Virginia Beach animators attend local design colleges like Regent University or ECPI.  Typically, they major in visual arts, photography or communications design.

Other Virginia Beach artists select virtual training and degree programs.  Popular accredited online animation schools include the Academy of Art University, Full Sail University, Stratford Career Institute, DeVry, Strayer University, ITT Tech and University of Phoenix.  Many internet art colleges also feature local campuses and resource facilities.  The Art Institute, University of Phoenix and Strayer University all have campuses in Virginia Beach.

Working as an Animator in Virginia Beach, Virginia

Numerous Virginia Beach businesses hire professional animation designers.  These include educational media producers, medical imaging labs, software development firms and advertising agencies, among many others.  Some Virginia Beach visual arts professionals work for local animation studios like MT Creative in Arlington, CCL Productions in Stephens City, Aloe Design Studios in Leesburg or the Virginia Animation Society in Lynchburg.  Other local animators team up with motion picture studios that feature their own animated segments.  Valued Virginia Beach film makers include Henry Media Group, Media East, Positiveimagepro.com, Take-1 Entertainment and Von Art Productions, to name a few.  Some resident animators are employed by local IT corporations.  Virginia Beach info tech firms include ADP, Eternal Works, Inex Web Design, Pilot Direct and Skycasters, for instance.

A full time animator employed by a U.S. company in the city of Virginia Beach, Virginia earns about $58,000 per year, with a mean hourly wage of around $29.00, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  However, this data does not reflect the unreported incomes of freelance professionals. 

Skills of a Professional Animator

Animators are skilled visual artists, adept at drawing and coloring in a variety of styles and techniques.  They are also innovative digital artists, fully proficient with animation-related software such as Toon Boom, 3D Studio Max and many Adobe products.  The best professional animation artists are masterful storytellers with exceptional communication skills and extreme self-motivation.  Other technical qualifications include photography, sculpting and set design, as well as non-visual technical skills like web page construction, programming languages and interactive media development.