Want to gain professional experience in a production studio? At Planet Nutshell we’re all about telling great stories and creating animation with impact. We offer seasonal internships for college students and recent college graduates to learn and assist with our production process, from concept and storyboarding to designs and animation.

Under the guidance of our team, you’ll have the opportunity to collaborate with other designers and animators while honing your artistic skill. At the beginning of each internship we work with you to determine your goals and throughout your time with Planet Nutshell you will go through each phase of production: Pitch, script, storyboard, style frames & design, mograph and character animation.

We will give you projects to help you develop and grow your skills in the area you choose via small assignments and working closely with your mentor staff member. (Please note that we are working remotely during the Coronavirus Pandemic.)

What you need:

• Positive attitude and willingness to learn
• A willingness to look at your own work with a critical eye, listen to feedback, and make changes accordingly
• Proficiency with After Effects and Adobe Illustrator.

What we offer:

• Guidance and mentorship to help you build your portfolio and professional work experience.
• A flexible schedule: Length of internship and daily hours are negotiable.
• Current students can earn credit, or if you’re just out of school you are eligible, as well.
• You will be paid for any client work you do.
• Fall Internship: September-November
• Winter Internship: January-March
• Summer Internship: May-July

Please note that internships are available based on our workload. We post our Call for Interns approximately one month prior to the start date. Please check this page at that time for a link to the application and any other necessary information. We ask that you please prepare your reel, behind the scenes materials such as sketches, and resume prior to applying.

Want to know more? Here is our handy Nutshellian Guide to Animation Internships: How to Get One & Get the Most Out of One!

In the first part of this series, our Art Director, Jen, shared some of the key attributes she looks for when hiring freelance artists. But what about when it comes to hiring for our core team?

Certainly, as with freelance, artistic talent is important. But it’s just one of many factors I consider when deciding whether to add someone to our little family of full-time employees. Because frankly, I’m proud of the culture we’ve created here, and I want to protect it fiercely by finding people who aren’t just the right fit artistically, but culturally.

When evaluating a candidate, I try to figure out if they are extrinsically or intrinsitically motivated. If someone is extrisically motivated, they find reward in things like money, status, rewards, or the notion of winning in a competitive environment. Intrinsically motivated people tend to find enjoyment, purpose, growth, curiosity and self-expression to be the bigger reward. And when I think about the kind of person I want to be around eight hours a day, that’s almost always an instrinsically motivated person because they tend to be more fun, more engaged and more creative. Plus (added bonus to me as a studio owner!) they tend to produce better work because they find deeper meaning in the work itself.

And that brings me to the second attribute I’m looking for: The desire to use one’s talents for good. If you look at the kind of work we tend to do here at Planet Nutshell, we primarily work with clients in education, nonprofits, and healthcare–fields dedicated to helping others. And I want my core team to buy into the idea that we are doing more than simply producing animations. We’re helping our clients further their mission to make a difference.

Someone with intrinsic motivation and an empathetic, interpersonally-minded worldview tends to come by my third desired attribute pretty naturally: emotional intelligence. When you are a student of human emotion and interdependence, I feel confident you will fit in with our existing full-time team of creative, sensitive and thoughtful people.

Okay, so by now, you’re probably wondering, “But what about the practical things?”

Yes, hard skills are important. Without proper training in animation, illustration, storyboarding, and storytelling, you probably won’t make it to the interview stage. But having those hard skills and knowing how to use them to solve problems is an entirely different matter.

Problem solving requires a special mix of hard and soft skills, someone who doesn’t view themselves or their abilities through too narrow of a lens. This is why we generally don’t hire specialists to come onto our core staff (though we do hire them as freelancers when needed). Instead, we aim for generalists–those talented and curious problem solvers who don’t care about their defined role. They just want to use their skills to contribute to a team that’s creating something much bigger than themselves.