Internships & JOB SHADOWS

We consider it a huge privilege to be able to do work that we love, and think it would be wrong to simply keep it to ourselves. That’s why we enjoy hosting interns and job shadowers - doing our bit in inspiring and up-skilling the next generation of illustrators and animators. If you’re interested in joining us, drop us a mail with your current portfolio, and we’ll be in touch. Space is limited, so don’t delay.

FAQs

Are your internships paid?

• No. We don’t put our interns on client work because it’s too risky and stressful for everyone involved, and we don’t make interns pour us tea or run errands because we don’t think that’s why anyone wants to be an intern. So… because we don’t get work out of your internship, we don’t pay you… instead we gear our internships towards serving you by offering you a creative and safe space to develop your skills and build your portfolio. With any luck you’ll finish with 1 or 2 strong pieces that you can add to your showreel and use to put you in a better position to find a job in this industry. However, we don’t want to let money come in the way of any internship, so if you require travel or food allowance, chat to us, we can make a plan!

How long are your job shadows / internships?

• Local interns usually come for 2 weeks or a month, depending on their needs and our availability. We tend to encourage international interns to stay for 3 to 6 months to make the trip worthwhile.

• If you’re in high school and want to job shadow, we encourage only coming for a morning or afternoon. Animation can be quite slow, and if you don’t yet know much about the software we use, you’re likely to get very bored if you come for 3 days.

What will I do?

• We tend to tailor make small personal projects for interns to tackle that will develop the skills they’re keen to improve on. We’ll then run the project like a normal studio job where our creative directors and staff will give you feedback at each stage of the project.

• If you’re a job shadower, a small project will most likely be too much, so our job shadowers tend to shadow our staff as they work and ask questions. The more questions you ask, the better.

What creative diciplines do you accept?

• First prize are interns who have foundations in both 2D vector-based illustration and animation. If you only have one of those disciplines, we might not accept you during busy intern seasons because we’ll always priorotise the people who are already set to get the most out of the experience. (We think internships are great places to develop skills, not learn skills from scratch.)

• If you’re a game designer, you’re welcome to apply, but we’re far more selective who we bring into that department because we’re still very new at it.

• We do not accept internships for 3D animators, sound designers, voice over artists, script writers, concept artists, marketers and producers. We still love you, but we just don’t have enough to offer you at this stage.

Can I intern remotely?

• Sure thing. You can definitely apply to do a remote internship, but we have found that our interns who come into the office get far more out of the experience, as it’s easier to get lost in the hustle and bustle of the day if you’re just online.

But what about the crime?

• We get this question a lot from our international interns who are nervous of South Africa’s reputation in this regard. While we can never guarentee your personal safety, we can assure you that Cape Town is mostly very safe, and the suburb our studio is in is not known for a particulary high crime rate. We frequently walk to the beach and shops, we have staff members who cycle home every day, and others who routinely run and surf in their lunch breaks, without any interuptions from ill meaning individuals. We understand your concern, but we’re confident if you’re street smart, you’ll most likely be fine.

APPLICATION TIPS

Our studio space is limited, and our job shadow & internship requests are high, so if you want to stand a better chance of being selected, you might want to follow these tips:

• Put together a portfolio you think we'll like.
  If you browse our website, you'll see that we mainly do 2D vector-based illustration and animation, and our style is very bright, quirky and fun. The more work we see that's like that, the more likely we are to think you'd be a good fit.

• We are not a design studio or 3D animation studio.
  As mentioned in the FAQs, 3D animation is not our focus. We'd recommend applying elsewhere if those are the specific skills you're looking to develop.

• Let us know why you're really (really) keen to join us.
  We get a lot of emails, and they're usually cut and pasted from application templates, which makes it hard for us to tell who actually wants to intern here, and who is just trying to tick an internship off their list - don't worry, we've all been there. If you genuinely want to join us, it'll help knowing a bit more about you and why you're keen for our particular studio. Even just addressing us by name will go a long way!

• Do you know your stuff?
  For job shadowers, we look for high-schoolers who have a passion for 2D animation - we don't really need you to know much else, although you certainly will get more out of the experience if you've done tutorials in the programmes we use. For interns, the bar is higher because we look for students who have passion AND actual experience in both Adobe Illustrator and Adobe After Effects. These days there are plenty of online tutorials for those programmes, so it's easier to grow that skill and practice, even if it's not officially part of your current course.

• The earlier you contact us, the more likely you'll be able to book a slot.
  In June/July we get very full, very quickly, so if you are interested in popping in, don't leave it too late to get in touch.

NEXT STEPS?

For internships, please fill in the form below and make sure to include your resume, portfolio and/or reel link. International enquiries are welcome. No phone calls please.

For job shadowers, please send us an email including the date of the morning / afternoon you’d like to visit the studio. No phone calls please.

For questions please email: richard@studiobolland.com CC: simon@studiobolland.com

Apply for an internship at Studio Bolland:

Studio Bolland Alumni