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How to Hire an Animator

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Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

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1 min read

Does your growing business need an animator? An animator designs digital images to help tell stories for film, video games, cartoons or graphic advertisements, bringing stories to life.

Understanding the steps behind hiring an animator, including data about candidates in Canada looking for animator jobs, salaries, and key terms to include in your job description, can help you stand out from the competition to reach, attract, and hire quality candidates.

Hire your next Animator today.

Post a Job

Hire your next Animator today.

Post a Job
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Our mission

Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.

Read our editorial guidelines

Animator: What is the cost of hiring?

2025-10-0129000.0089183.47182000.00YEARLY

Why hire an animator?

An animator will draw, design, and digitize characters, backgrounds or scenes for entertainment purposes. They work on movies, TV shows or digital marketing companies using their creativity and artistic ability to bring stories and characters to life.

Contributions of a great animator:

  • Help create characters, scenes, or backgrounds for animated video
  • Develop storyboards, timing, and pacing of the animation
  • Collaborate with other creative professionals and story editors to complete projects

Deciding between a full-time vs freelance animator

Animators tend to work for animation studios, production companies or digital marketing companies to create animated videos. For animators who work in these areas, the jobs tend to be full-time permanent positions where they will work on many projects at once.

Some animators choose to work independently, working as freelance artists who you can hire for one project at a time. This type of work would allow the animator to work on various types of animation projects and have the freedom to work on their own.

What are the different types of animators?

Animators create images and videos for the entertainment industry, video game industry or advertising companies. Some focus on their artistic skills, while others focus on computer-generated images. For example, animators who focus on the artistic side of animation will be concentrated more on creating characters or backgrounds for animated videos or images and might start the process by sketching their work. Animators who focus on computer-generated images will focus only on the technology side of animation, working on projects that allow made-up images to look real. The following is a list of the different types of animators you might be interested in working with:

  • 2D/ 3D animator: Work primarily in 2D or 3D animation.
  • Background artist: Work on the background animation of a video or image.
  • Character artist: Work on the characters being animated for an image or video.
  • Computer-generated animation: Work on computer-generated images or videos.

Where to find an animator

To find the right animator for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

  • Freelance networking sites: A freelance networking site is a great place to find freelance animators if you are looking for someone to do a one-off job. You can post the type of project you are working on, and animators will bid to work with you, meaning you can choose based on previous work.
  • Professional associations: There are a lot of internet-based animation associations that you can join when looking to hire an animator. This way, you can find talent from anywhere, and you know you will get a candidate with experience.
  • Animation schools: Colleges or universities that offer animation programs will often let you post jobs on their websites so that you can hire students or new graduates. This is a great way to make sure that you get talented individuals who know all the latest technology.

Post your job online: Try posting your animator job on Indeed to find and attract quality animator candidates.

Skills to look for in a great animator

A great animator candidate will have the following skills and attributes as well as work experience that reflects:

  • Highly creative and original
  • Expert graphic design skills
  • Proficient in design and animation software
  • Great attention to detail
  • Ability to work in large teams

Writing an animator job description

A thoughtful description is important for finding qualified animator candidates. An animator job description includes a compelling summary of the role, a detailed list of duties and responsibilities, and the required and preferred skills for the position.

When writing your animator job description, consider including some or all of the following keywords to improve the visibility of your job posting. These are the most popular search terms leading to clicks on animator jobs, according to Indeed data:

  • animator
  • animation
  • 3d animation

Interviewing animator candidates

Strong candidates for animator positions will be confident answering questions regarding:

  • Experience working as part of a team
  • Experience conceptualizing a character, scene or background of an animation
  • Ability to work out timing and pacing of motion based on audio requirements
  • Experience working with computer graphic tools
  • Proven record of delivering projects on time

Need help coming up with interview questions? See our list of interview questions for examples (with sample answers).

A group of five people in a modern office setting, two of them appear to be giving a presentation while the other two are seated at a wooden conference table with laptops and a coffee cup in front of them. They all seem engaged in a discussion. The room has a bright atmosphere with natural light streaming in from the side window.

Hire your next Animator today.

Post a Job

FAQs about how to hire an animator

Indeed’s Employer Resource Library helps businesses grow and manage their workforce. With over 15,000 articles in 6 languages, we offer tactical advice, how-tos and best practices to help businesses hire and retain great employees.