Into animation? Here's a #toptip from the studio via our editor Maeve Garvan - this one is on editing.

Maeve Garvan: Here in the studio, we editors mainly use Final Cut Pro 7, Photoshop and Compressor.

My advice to aspiring editors is it is worth being familiar and keeping up-to-date with the main editing softwares that are used professionally, including Avid Media Composer, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro X, as you may have to jump between them from one job to another.

It's also good to be familiar with image manipulation tools such as Photoshop or GIMP, and motion graphics tools like After Effects. Knowing codecs and being familiar with encoding tools such as Compressor and MPEG Streamclip is also a help.

Editors generally need to be technically and creatively minded, with a strong understanding of storytelling. They should also be intuitive, with a strong ability to communicate, in order to understand and visualize the creative goals of a director.

As well as the above, it's a good idea for editors to label and organise projects very clearly, establishing a consistency throughout!