Multimedia Designer / Animator
Career Area: Information Technology
Occupation Group: Front-End Application Design
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Multimedia Designer / Animator earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $64,610
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $63,578
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Develops designs for projects and uses media such as video, sound, graphics and animation to produce projects for clients. May specialize in creating animation or visual effects for shows, games or movies, and work with a team of animators and artists. Uses computer software to create work or to incorporate hand drawn designs.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Location | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 279 | +6.7% |
| Nationwide | 8400 | +4.2% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Multimedia Designer / Animator is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Creativity: Mental characteristic that allows a person to think outside of the box, which results in innovative or different approaches to a particular task.
- Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Editing: Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information.
- Organizational Skills: Experience with a systematic process of structuring, integrating, co-ordinating task goals, and activities to resources in order to attain objectives.
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Adobe Photoshop: Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems for macOS and Windows.
- Animation: Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and the illusion of change by means of the rapid succession of sequential images that minimally differ from each other.
- Adobe Aftereffects: Adobe After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics, and compositing application developed by Adobe Systems and used in the post-production process of film making and television production.
- Adobe Illustrator: Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems.
- Adobe Acrobat: Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and Web services developed by Adobe Systems to view, create, manipulate, print and manage files in Portable Document Format (PDF).
Distinguishing Skills
Any Multimedia Designer / Animator that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- User Interface (UI) Design: User interface design (UI) or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience.
- Adobe Premiere: Working experience of Adobe Premiere, which is a timeline-based video editing app developed by Adobe Systems and published as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud licensing program.
- Video Production: Video production is the process of creating video by capturing moving images (videography), and creating combinations and reductions of parts of this video in live production and post-production (video editing).
- Web Site Design: The term web design is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end design of a website including writing mark up. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development.
- Art Direction: Art Direction is the direction in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film and television, the Internet, and video games.
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 33% |
| 3 to 5 years | 55% |
| 6 to 8 years | 9% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Digital Content Producer
- Motion Graphic Designer
- Interaction Designer
- Interactive Designer
- Animator
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