Most animators who create a studio spend years inside someone else's first. Those years are foundational, and thus cannot be left entirely up to chance. This article covers what you can only learn inside someone else's building, how to make sure this time turns into valuable skill, how to recognise the moment you've stopped learning, and how to tell when your ideas have outgrown your job. One career runs through it as illustration. Don Bluth first joined Disney in 1955 as a young assistant on