What do you think of when I mention the word “FAILURE”? Do you wince? Do you cringe at an old failure from your past? Do you feel physically bad? Is there anything nice that comes up when you think of failure?
I think failure gets a bad rap, despite all the trouble it brings. We always want things to be perfect, organized, and smooth. But most of the time, life is chaotic, imperfect, and messy. Failure can be our greatest teacher in life—that is, if we let it. Failures can help us learn lessons to get to do better in the future. This is especially true for professional creatives. Failure is—in a way—a potent education system that everyone gets to experience if they are paying attention. Creatives should not fear failure.
Pivoting from failure can be scary yet exciting. It can force you to look at something with different eyes, to see something that you did not see before. With all that said, let me give you an example of some of my own professional shortcomings and how failure forced me to pivot in order to keep moving forward.
Rejection Always Stings
I had already been working as a professional animator for a couple of years in television before I decided to make the leap into feature animation. The big leagues of animation: Disney, Pixar, Sony, Dreamworks, etc. My young 24-year-old self was very bold to leave my TV job before I had secured a feature film job. I was confident enough to take that leap and foolishly think I could land a job quickly. We all know this is a textbook rookie mistake, but here we go.
I sent my demo reel to most of the major studios. I applied to any entry-level position that was open. One by one, these studios came back and gave me that defeating rejection email: “Thanks, but no thanks. You’re welcome to apply again later.”
Finally, I got to the last studio on my list. The white whale itself, Pixar. I had held off applying to them because frankly I was intimidated. Their story quality is great, they had incredibly high standards and I grew up on their movies—but was I ready? At this point, it felt like a hail Mary, and I needed a job. With all the rejections coming through from the other studios, I felt like I had nothing to lose with this last application.
Unsurprisingly, Pixar did send a rejection email back. And I thought that was that. I had gone through all the studios on my feature film list, and a feature film career just didn’t seem to be in the cards for me for the time being. I just wasn’t ready. However, three weeks later, I got an email back from Pixar saying, “your work might be better suited for a position that has opened up for a project we are ramping up for.” Holy Toledo Batman!
Out of the thousands of applications that Pixar gets annually, Pixar replied back to me, despite rejecting me earlier. They wanted to interview me for a junior animator position for The Good Dinosaur. I was strutting a little more confidently that day. A little more pep in my step. But this is a blog post about failure and pivoting.
Long story short, I went through two phone interviews. They had a lot of nice things to say about my work, but in the end after all of that...I still got another rejection email pretty much saying the same as before: “Thanks, but no thanks. We’re going in a different direction with someone else.” Oh boy. What a dance!
I was rejected, then I wasn’t rejected, then interviewed, then rejected again. Whewwww. However, I knew part of the problem of them passing on me was that I wasn’t a great interviewee. I was so new to it, despite having been hired for TV previously.
Failure Teaches Us How to Do Better Next Time
Pixar was so big and gigantic, I got really nervous from just thinking about them. I stumbled over my words through the interviews. I repeated things. My palms were really sweaty over the phone. Nervous laughter probably occurred. There were awkward silences. Oh, it was bad. I was aware that interviewing badly hurt my chances of being hired. But it did teach me to improve and prepare better for the next time I had a big interview that could change the course of my career.
I paid attention to the details I messed up on previously. I listened to the tone of my voice. Do I sound bored? Am I clear? Do I sound like a joyful person? Am I enthusiastic about their studio? Do I know more than just surface-level details? Do I know anything about the recruiter?
Be excited and stop overthinking. I can’t stress this enough, this is so important for this next part: Please, RELAX.
I interviewed over the phone 3 years later with a commercial studio. I applied every lesson I learned from my Pixar fumble. It was one of the smoothest interviews I had ever gone through in my entire career. My past bumbles were a blueprint for what to do right next time.
No Feature Film Career, What Now?
A month after my Pixar rejection, I was still not working. Not on television, not on film, nothing. I was regretting having jumped out of my TV job too early. I was still applying for everything. Eventually, I got an email back to help on a LEGO commercial that needed to get done. A couple of weeks' worth of work.
Of course, I said yes, I needed the work. But this was for remote freelance. All my experience with TV had been exclusively in-house in an animation studio where EVERYTHING was provided to me. With remote freelance, I had to provide my OWN equipment to get the job done. I absolutely was not ready for this immense responsibility.
Use What You Have
I needed to buy my own software. Software is and was expensive, but I had to buy it. This was before you could just rent it for a month through a subscription. My computer was a joke. I didn’t have the immediate money to buy a new computer. I had to just deal with what I had and pray it was enough.
3.5 gb of RAM on a little laptop to handle the LEGO load for the commercial. To put that in perspective, visual effects studios carry at least 120 GB of RAM for workstations to handle heavy animation loads. Thankfully, the job got done—BARELY.
My computer was constantly crashing. Files would corrupt frequently. But frame by frame, I got the job done. My computer eventually died a couple of days after I finished the project. I made enough money from the commercial to buy a new computer to continue getting more work from the studio and I started reinvesting it back into my equipment.
I did not plan for this. I did not want to be doing freelance this early in my career, I was just a kid. I did not want to be alone so early in my career forced to deal with my own technical problems. But I refused to be stuck. I had to keep moving forward, I had to keep learning. I was learning to take responsibility for myself and my situation early in my career.
What Else Can I Do?
Now I was a year deep into my freshly minted freelance career. But it was a very bumpy year. My freelance work from the LEGO studio was very inconsistent. I was longing for the days when I received an income every two weeks from the TV studio I had worked for earlier. I never made much from TV, but at least it was consistent.
I knew I had to start diversifying my income in some way. But doing more freelance animation for another studio seemed taxing to me. I wanted something to balance with my animation work. Perhaps something to do with drawing? Perhaps something in person? On weekends? I scrolled through Craigslist to see if there were any local drawing gigs. Turns out there was an open call for caricature artists for one of the local Six Flags Theme Parks.
I applied, interviewed (smoothly), and got the gig. Now I was working as a freelance animator during the week and a caricature artist on the weekends.
Pivoting Yields Gold
I did not know what to expect coming to work as a caricature artist. I had to wear a uniform, draw fast, work in the hot sun for 8 hours, and get over my stage fright of drawing in front of people. At first, all I was looking for was a way to supplement my income, but to my great surprise, I learned about new tools of the trade, new ways to draw, and I learned to endure stage fright.
I learned to push myself even though most of the time I was extremely uncomfortable doing it. Caricature artists with 10-15 more years of experience took me under their wing to teach me their ways. I gained a sense of camaraderie from the whole experience, something I never had when I was working on TV. The learning got me fired up for my own education.
I was so impressed with what I was learning that I was eager to add more education into the mix. I certainly had the means to do so now that my schedule was less rigorous than a studio’s 9-5. Who knew caricaturing would be such an enlightening experience! That’s when I decided to look for in-person workshops from people I could learn from. And out of the internet chaos, I found out that master animator Don Bluth was hosting one class for one week for anyone that was interested and could get over to Arizona.
Don Bluth, master animator. The director of animated classics such as The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time. THAT Don Bluth. What a find! I never flipped my credit card out so fast in my life. 7 weeks later I was on a plane to Arizona.
I Didn’t Get to Where I Wanted to, But This Is Still Great
The correspondence and mentorship with Don Bluth over that one week were absolutely amazing.
What started off as a one-off class eventually turned into a 3 1/2 years learning correspondence with Mr. Bluth. He offered more in-person classes after that initial class. I was all too happy to continue booking trips to Arizona to attend and learn from the Master. The flexibility afforded by my freelance schedule continued to allow me to make big moves like this. And he eventually offered a year-round class online. None of this existed before I met him. The one class I had attended was supposed to be the only one he did, but he too found he wanted to do more. I never knew I would get so much time with him both in-person and online.
And I thought learning from the masters of my industry was set aside for the folks that got into the big boy studios. Here I was carving my own path to better myself.
Had I just let my rejection from the feature film world defeat me and keep me stuck:
I never would have figured out how to sustain myself through my own through freelance
I never would have thought outside the box to diversify my income
I never would have experienced the learning I gained from doing caricatures
I never would have realized how important it was to continue educating myself
I never would have found master veteran Don Bluth to learn from
I never would have realized how a flexible schedule allowed me to go more places and try new things
I didn’t get the Pixar job all those years ago. I still haven’t worked in a feature film after all these years. I have enjoyed a career sustaining myself through freelance, a world I never dreamed I would be a part of when I was starting out. However, I gained so much after I was backed into a corner. And when it was time to pivot, I learned more than I ever knew I could as I pushed forward.
Make It Fun
Shortcomings, rejection, failure. They’re uncomfortable to get through at the moment. But they’re all just lessons for us to find better solutions. Don’t let it be the end of your story.
Failure is just the beginning of a new chapter.
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Note From Tongal: "When You Fail, Pivot" is part of a series of Tongal Community-written blog posts that were originally sourced in the Tongal Blog Open Call Project. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Tongal. Read more Tongal Community-written posts here and then Pitch us a topic you'd like to write about for the Tongal Blog!
