SHOULD YOU BECOME A GAME ANIMATOR, OR A MOVIE ANIMATOR?
Choose Your Path Based on Stats, Skills, and Studio Culture
By the Numbers:
Games offer 100x more studios than movies.
There are over 2,700 game studios in the U.S., compared to just about 20 major movie studios. If you’re looking at career opportunities alone, games win hands down.
Games Are the New Movies
Game animation has evolved into cinematic storytelling. Studios like Naughty Dog, Blizzard, and Riot Games produce cutscenes and cinematics that rival Hollywood in emotion and visual polish.
Modern game animators often work just like movie animators—but with the added challenge of real-time engines and interactive moments.
Gaming Studios Today
Skills Comparison:
Movie Animator:
Skills Needed:
Acting and emotional performance
Subtle timing and facial animation
Shot-based production workflow
Character-driven storytelling
Entry-Level Roles:
Junior Animator
Character Animator
Previs/Layout Artist
Demo Reel Needs:
Strong acting shots
Polished feature-level animation
Game Animator:
Skills Needed:
Snappy body mechanics
Looping actions for gameplay
Technical engine knowledge (Unreal/Unity)
Collaboration with game designers
Entry-Level Roles:
Gameplay Animator
Cinematic Animator
Junior Tech Animator
Demo Reel Needs:
Stylized combat, traversal, or idle loops
Show integration in a game engine
Other Considerations
Deadlines: Game production tends to be more agile and fast-paced. Films often allow more time for polish, but expect lots of revisions.
Job Stability: Games (especially live service titles) can offer longer-term roles. Film work is more project-based and contract-driven.
Creative Input: Game studios (especially indie) may allow more creativity
A movie animator will animate one scene for a week or even a month that is only a few seconds long. Your work fits into a sequence that is being worked on by many people. Most of the time, you are cast to work on a certain character or group of characters for an entire movie. For instance, if you are working on Zootopia, you may be cast to work only on the Buffalo character team. Based on the work you do, you may earn some equity with the studio to do other characters or help out on other teams, but usually it is on the next picture.
For games, an animator can either work on in-game animations or cinematics. They are usually done separately at different studios. Game animations would be things like attack moves and parkour for each character. These are done repeatedly in a very specific manner and tested by the game designers.
Game cinematics are the movie scenes you see in games, and these are getting more like real films all the time, except longer. You may have more than 2 hours of cinematics in a 20-hour game. Cinematic animators are using motion capture, Unreal Engine, or Unity, and sometimes key-frame classic animation, depending on the property. If you are working on Sonic, you would do keyframe animation, whereas if you are doing Call of Duty, the audience wants realism, and they would use motion capture animation collected from real actors’ body movement for this. New technology is making the implementation of mocap easier and easier. In fact, there are now apps on your phone that can create motion capture and convert it to be ready for use on your character.
“I’ve worked in Film, games, and television, and they all have their upsides and downsides,” says Gavin Dell, founder of the Hollywood Animation Academy in Kansas City. “If you are truly interested in working in animation, it is best to be a storyteller first! This gives you the freedom to be able to pivot from one industry to another based on what is hot and what is keeping you employed.There are awesome and exciting things happening in all of these parts of the business, and I would recommend not limiting yourself just because you haven’t learned a certain piece of software yet. You can learn that stuff in a week or two; it’s having the artist's eye and the knack for storytelling that makes you valuable.”
All parts of the animation industry are on track to grow an enormous amount in the coming decade. The bar keeps getting set higher, and all of the highest-grossing movies are the ones with animated characters and special fx. Audiences don’t want to go back; they want to be mesmerized!
Ready to Animate Your Future?
Hollywood Animation Academy has three introductory-level online classes to help you understand if a career in animation is right for you. If you know this is the career for you and you’re ready to go, HAA offers a 2-Year and Master Craft certificate programs that are considered the best in the industry for animation training.
Try an 8-week online Intro to Animation course this Fall and see where your talent takes you - games, movies, or both. Request the information you need to Register for Fall 2025 by October 2nd!
