>>5966893currently in the animation industry in New York, AMA.
for your question, I would say that the pay is better for storyboards and character design, but the competition is much fiercer for those fields, and you usually need 2 years experience or to know a lot of people (or both) to get a job like that. My suggestion is dabble in everything in the animation field (layouts, bg design, character design, prop design, color theory, storyboards, animation, composition/editing, sound design) but specialize in one of those things really well.
best thing you can do is make a cartoon! try for 1 minute for starters, but bringing a short film to completion really teaches you a lot very quickly. even if it's shitty, its gonna be a great lesson, both on what you need to learn and what you like to do/are good at.
