Advice from the industry

I emailed a digital artist, once I was referred to him through an old friend, showed him some pictures and asked for his advice. This was years ago, but what was said has always played around in my consciousness. It is sage advice for all students.

howdy Marcus.
I've been pretty lucky in my freelance in that most of my work has come from word of mouth and referrals from past employers or industry placements.
I do 3D animation, motiongraphics, flash programming & animation.
These skills go well together which means they all help each other in my projects, but it also means that I have a few different clients (some that support big jobs which require 3d and planning and others that require 2 hours of editing a flash banner).
This is useful because big jobs often clash in timeframe or have large gaps between them and smaller jobs can fill those spaces.

promotion.
Get yourself a website, business card and put links to your site where you can - start with your email signature.

Don't expect to walk into a good 3d job without a folio of good experience.
It probably took me 3 years to build up my clients and job base to a decent position so don't think it will happen over night - that being said, I put no effort into "finding" work and simply let it find me, so it could be done alot quicker.

Don't fret about charging too little, especially when just starting out and you have no other jobs to do anyway, but understand that if you're working for someone cheaply, they're likely not to hang around when you up your rates.
Instead, what yo'd need to do is start charging newer clients more and once you have confidence in that client base, raise the others - if they drop off, so be it.
But the point is, it's better to have low paying work than no work to start.

How do you seperate yourself?
let me comment on the image your attached.
Interesting image, but don't make the mistake of students who come out of uni saying - I want to do 3d animation, I don't want to do advertising.
Design IS advertising. Art isn't... but artists are poor.

from that image, i can't tell what your design skills are like, which is important, I can only say that you like the abstract and you like cyborgs (like so many other 3d students)
Show some real world advertising skills.
Doesn't need to be complicated scenes, just stuff which says - I can put together a coles add with some text and a logo transition at the end..

But that's if you want to do motiongraphics in general. If you want to do straight 3D - it's impolrtant your show a good sense of timing and motion - but I've never pushed that as a single skill, so I can't comment much.

Are you looking for fulltime work or freelance work.
I'm not sure at what point one describes himself as having "cracked" the animation industry.
Any one of my clients could stop emplying me tomorrow if they don't have the jobs for me or if they hire someone fulltime.

this emails been a bit freeform thought, hope that's okay