Motion Giraffx is always looking for the best and brightest in 2D and 3D animation for remote animation jobs. If you think you’ve got what it takes to come and work for one of the most innovative animation agencies, then we’d love to talk to you.
Motion Giraffx is a distributed company, meaning, our employees work from home 100% of the time. This takes a little more self-discipline, but the rewards can be enormous.
Motion Giraffx isn’t new to remote work. This isn’t something that we learned from the pandemic—we’ve been fully remote since 2014, and we’ve had tremendous success with our entire remote animation process. We don’t need all the heads of all the departments to be in the same room, far from it. We’ve found that finding the very best people, be they in Tampa, Florida or Seattle, Washington, is the key to having a successful animation studio. So if you’re the best at what you do, it doesn’t matter where you live—we want you on our team.
Over the years we have learned some of the most important tips for remote work, and we’d like to share some of our hard earned wisdom we’ve gained over the last 8 years with you. If you want to work for us, this is important.
If you join our team, here are some of the things that we have learned will help you be a success in a work-from-home atmosphere.
#1. Have a Dedicated Space
Animation requires tons of hardware and can take up a lot of real estate on your desk. Ideally, you will have a dedicated office or room that is solely for your remote work—animation jobs. But don’t think that you need to work in a cave. We find that having a space you can stretch out in is best. Working in a buzzing animation studio can get overwhelming (we’ve been there) and we know that being cramped in a tight little office between the washing machine and the furnace isn’t an ideal environment for creativity.
Also, be aware that you’re going to be spending a LOT of time on remote video calls, both with clients and with coworkers, so you need your workspace to look professional.
#2. High Speed Internet is a Must
This may seem like a no-brainer, but accessing the shared network drive for your animation projects requires a strong internet connection and computer read/write speed. The faster your internet, the faster your renders will be available across the network, the faster your files will open locally, the faster you will be able to work and access your important content. So, you need an internet plan with great download AND upload speeds.
#3. Know Yourself Well
Before you accept a remote animation job, think about the way you work and what your work style is. Are you easily distracted by pets, children, and household to-dos? Working from home is a privilege that we’re happy to offer, but you have to be responsible for getting your remote work done on time outside of a traditional animation studio.
But know that we’re aware you need boundaries. When you take a remote job from Motion Giraffx, we understand that this is not a license for us to work you 24/7. Family time, relaxation, and time away from work is crucial to mental and emotional health, and we support you in your time away from work as much as we’ll support you during your 8-5.
#4. Collaborate With Your Director Often
Learning how to collaborate when you are working remotely is essential to being successful as a member of our animation studio. Your animation director is going to be your main point of contact, and you’ll want to communicate continually. And if you’re not sure if you’re on the right track, just ask! After eight years of remote work we consider ourselves to be pretty good at communication.
As with any job, it’s your responsibility to understand your direction, not your boss’s responsibility to make sure that you understand. We have weekly team meetings to discuss upcoming projects and we have a call at the end of every workday to discuss how things are going, what you accomplished, and if you have any questions about tomorrow.
#5 Utilize Great Software for Remote Working
Here are some software programs we use that we have found make animation jobs run much smoother and with better communication.
- Google File Stream: This allows the whole company to share remote work in real time. With your high speed internet you can always work directly off the drive so that your files can be accessible by teammates if needed.
- Slack: We use Slack constantly throughout the workday to communicate with the team
- Toggl: This is a time tracking and project management software
- Frame.io: A game changing software for receiving and providing feedback internally and externally on animation projects.
- Milanote: A collaborative software for developing mood boards among remote teams for things like graphic design, character animation, visual effects, and much more
- Zoom: We use Zoom daily for video calls. And yes, the webcams are on.
- Bambee: An HR platform for small remote businesses that allows us to administer and receive employee reviews, distribute policies and notices, and keep employee records safe
- Adobe Creative Cloud
#6 The Pleasure of Working from Home
Not everything about working from home is “do this” and “do that”. Working from home offers you many opportunities that you get that won’t be available to someone who’s working in the office. If you need to go to the school to pick up your kids, that’s easy to fit into a flexible work-from-home plan. If you need to get up and walk around for twenty minutes to make a sandwich and clear your head, then you’ve got that going for you, too. Plus, there’s few things better than never having to commute–and gaining all of that time you would have spent commuting doing things you’d rather be doing: sleeping in, spending time with family, playing video games, and on and on. At Motion Giraffx, we care about high quality animation done on time; we’re accountable for ourselves and for each other. Essentially, we do what we say we’re going to do, when we say we’re going to do it – from home!
