Let's discuss the career life of 3D animators in Malaysia. Just wondering anyone of you here are working as 3D animators now? I'm not saying 3D artist who works on modeling nor lighting VFX, but specialized in 3D character animation, like how you animate them in 3D animation. Mind to share how's your career life and what do you think about this career? Does it have future in Malaysia? Does animator get decent pay in Malaysia? How many years have you been in animation industry? Let me be the first to start....

Job title: Senior 3D Animator
Years of experience: 8 years
Salary: RM5XXX
Comment: I personally think as a senior animator who works in Malaysia, there are a lot of projects such as TV series and film to work with, many investors are looking at Malaysia artists primarily due to low cost of artists, and salary increment is not really big for 3D animators in Malaysia, one year maybe RM200 only. If you are staying with family with low commitment, animator might be good enough for you to work as living, if you are looking for money, who lives outside renting a house with lots of commitment like car and house, animator job might not suit you.



In case you didn't know, you can always review your animation company at GLASSDOOR website or apps. There are plenty of reviews there discussing the pros and cons of animation companies in Malaysia. This is bringing transparency to 3D artists community in Malaysia so that there is no artists are being bullied by company or underpaid. Let's build a better 3D artists community in Malaysia and a better future.

Personally I believe being animator is one of the toughest jobs and should be paid accordingly. God knows how much effort they are putting into animating every detail for that low salary.

At the same time, I can agree with you that investors are looking at Malaysian artists for the low cost, not the quality. I think currently Malaysia lack artistic awareness which makes them hard to appreciate the work done.

Keyframe animation is hard. 3D animation keyframing is even harder.

Yup, I was pretty sure of it, back in 2008. (spoke about it too at The Star Education Fair)

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2008...-animation-hub/

Managed to get some small jobs here and there (including some for 3D) but I would say my best period for price of the work done compared to the hour was the early years of Flash.

I definitely sold it, and invested in a staff, but it was hard to find enough to do (especially not full 3D stuff...even simple things would take a long time to render in After Effects). It was good that the government sponsored some of us to go to Korea, to attend a trade fair. Then well, seeing it over the years was quite disheartening. Looking at how that Malaysian studio that animated Life of Pi went under...

So well, over the years, I've semi ventured into production (at least myself), but not as much as I would want to, simply because of time - been 3D modelling on and off since I was 20, but only recently 3D modelled my own head. Btw, do you do freelance / would you be able to take a look at some of my work?

Which brings me to conclude. For Malaysia to compete on an international standard (or individual freelance artists to have a chance), I only have one conclusion after realizing that Ant Man was rendered on Octane:
https://twitter.com/otoy/status/1029161996250505217?lang=en

We need a national cloud render facility, if not we are going to face a reality where we go broke rendering things for other countries as they drag payment. Open source is less an option than we think it is, especially if what they give in free feature set, you lose in workflow (I would never recommend Blender to a beginner, I've given up on it - the item selection gestures are way too counter intuitive, and this is from someone raised on Macromedia, Adobe, Corel, Lathe, etc).

We have to at least move at the same equivalent speed as other countries - and this means that the banking system must recognize a GPU as a business expense. It also means, that the Malaysian government should really look into recognizing 3D design and game design under the National Skills Standards. Will PM you on this...part of this is key to getting the funding and media attention needed. There are less people who can do 3D character animation than those that can do full stack application or web development. If PHP / React / JS / etc is your thing and you know the market...you can easily command RM6-8K even just after a few years of work. I would know, have hired some staff that came in at RM2K, and well, since he did work on putting together a local advertising portal that was really popular at the time (my idea at the time, came up with framework and UI on my side), he was asking for RM8K after barely 5 months.

For now though I would say - keep posting work. You know the usual spots. But well, consider also making some stock models that are entirely unique to a Malaysian market. From a career perspective though, I am divided if you should consider charging for them, or give them out with an attribution to author & country license.Have you played the Sanhok map in PUBG, by any chance? You will notice that the island locations include a "Kampong" and a "Lakawi"....