Everybody has their own way into a career in making games. Even though in 2024, there are more college and university courses for game design than at any other point in history, the amount of people at Redhill for whom the road into the workplace was a simple as “I decided I wanted to do it as a kid, got a degree and got straight into the field” is decidedly minimal compared to everybody else that at one point or another opted to take a left turn into a radically new venture.
Then again, some left turns are sharper than others. In the case of Tatiana Eremich, her career as an animator was preceded by a regular 9-5 type office job which, according to Tatiana was ‘not her thing’.
After deciding to follow her passion and completely switching careers Tatiana attempted to get into a university program for 3D animation in 2015. However, she could not pass the yearly entrance exam, consecutively failing the annual exam 4 times, and only succeeding in 2020. Thus, her path into the new career, led through a two-year games and animation college degree, which she had completed in the meantime.
Reflecting on this journey, she says: “I was extremely lucky to meet a lot of great animators along the way who were critiquing my work, who were mentoring me, helping me get through like emotional ups and downs of this tricky journey, sharing their experiences, people lift each other and that is an amazing part about the game industry and about animation industry”.
Learning On and Off the Job
Even though Tatiana’s educational experiences allowed her to get a foot in the door as far as working in animation, she describes it as a lifelong process of learning outside of school that builds someone’s skillset. According to her experience: “Animation is a fundamental discipline you have to learn all your life, and this is what is amazing about it and challenging about it. You have to be very observant of life, you have to [understand] body mechanics and acting and the more references you can collect, you could have a huge visual library of games and shows and animation that you like.”
Even though Tatiana’s words on animation portray a picture of someone that is passionate about the craft to a fault, but she has some words of caution for anyone attempting to get into it the way she had: “It’s really tough. It is really challenging, and I don’t want to give any kind of rosy picture about it. It’s not an easy path to walk, but it is also an amazing path. And of course, none of this would be possible without the support from my husband and my children”.
The amount of effort required to break into the field of animation seems downright colossal, but for Tatiana the motivation to do so had been there from early childhood:
“I was growing up as a kid during golden era of Disney and I was also watching a lot of […] studio Ghibli. I was always fascinated by animation growing up. I’m pretty lucky that I get a chance to do it now professionally”.
Institutions Help You
When asked about specific circumstances that allowed Tatiana to become an animator, she credits Finland’s institutions for helping her get this far: “The great thing about Finland is that here, the institutions they help you. Me and my husband are here as a nuclear family. We have two kids together and without the help we got from the daycare and from the other institutions, it would not be possible to have a career change because here I could get a study leave. I could get the funding that helped us get through this career change together. That’s like one of the best parts of Finland.”
Finally, when asked about the role of Redhill Games in her journey, Tatiana stated the following:
“What I love about Redhill Games, somehow, right now, there is a huge concentration of people who are passionate, people who are driven by their craft, people who are talented and people who are helping each other and people who are also easy going that you just enjoy being around them. So, it creates a really great blend of talents and personalities and its just amazing to be at work and be inspired by those people”.
So if, like Tatiana you would like to experience this kind of atmosphere of positivity and passion, feel free to check out what roles Redhill has open right now!
Below is a video of Tatiana talking us through her journey:
