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NEWS: Directors Dispute Reports of 'Poor' Animator Salaries


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The Unknown 24



Joined: 07 Jan 2007
Posts: 112
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 9:55 pm Reply with quote
I read and saw a video on cnn news site(about 2 months ago) ,
telling about an in-between animator who was only making $800 (US) a month. They guy was living in a one bedromm apartment with no air condition and no bathroom, one sink in the hallway was shared by all the people who lived in the building. And he worked almost 7 days a week, 10 to 12 hour days.

link to the article and video


http://edition.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/07/30/japan.animation.recession/index.html

Which I thought was ridiculous for all the work he had to do!!!


Twisted Evil Twisted Evil Twisted Evil
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KanjiiZ



Joined: 28 Jun 2009
Posts: 661
Location: Central Coast
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 10:06 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
the writer can work on three or more different titles a month or earn royalties on a hit series, he or she can earn in the range of 10 million yen a year (US$110,000).


This now makes me understand why moe garbage like Saki and Akikan are released. They are trying to make a "hit" series, and if they do they get paid their fair share. This is one of those reasons that stuff like 20th Century Boys is going to take a while before it gets made. Stuff like K-On takes little, if any effort to make.
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4410
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2009 10:19 pm Reply with quote
If anything, I think this is another case of some exceptions to some data, which is almost always the case. It's entirely possible that the survey is accurate and that we have a couple of people pointing out exceptions from personal experience.
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Shadowrun20XX



Joined: 26 Nov 2007
Posts: 1935
Location: Vegas
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 12:27 am Reply with quote
Mohawk52 wrote:
Hmm, I wonder what could be the cause of all this? Maybe the studios and executive producers are being tight and mean with all those big profits they have made. Looks like those animators should withdraw their talant until they are justifiably paid for all their effort and time sacrificed. Wink
I have no reason to say this to you, but IMO I say it's due to oversaturation.

Nearly everyone who has the language down (Hiragana, Katakana) has some sort of artistic ability. Not everyone mind you, but a majority. I believe it's the way they must illustrate their language, when we only have a simple 26 letter alphabet to learn.

It's difficult to explain. Confused In short, they are easily replaceable.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:17 am Reply with quote
Shadowrun20XX wrote:
I believe it's the way they must illustrate their language, when we only have a simple 26 letter alphabet to learn.


English is often thought of as one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn non-natively, mainly because its habit of borrowing from other languages makes it rather inconsistent.

Shadowrun20XX wrote:
It's difficult to explain. Confused In short, they are easily replaceable.


Yes, that is part of the problem. Too much supply means if a sub-contractor wants more money for its in-betweeners, the main studio will just find one willing to work for a pittance.

Another problematic issue is that of the awful business model Anime has gotten itself into. Contrary to what PetrifiedJello will have you believe, television stations usually get paid to air Anime, not the other way around. So what happens is that DVD sales must make up the cost of producing the Anime plus the television fee, then there's marketing and whatnot, and then anything else (IF there's anything else) goes to profit. Which means the DVDs have to be very expensive, and there needs to be a lot of them to garner the required amount of cash.

However, by making Anime so expensive to own they discourage a lot of people from getting into the medium, and I would think that blind-buying would be rather less common among Japanese Anime fans than among Western Anime fans. Also, high prices - unreasonably high when compared to DVD boxsets of live-action shows for instance - drive more people to watching fansubs. Some people will watch fansubs no matter what, but many people are willing to pay provided the cost is reasonable. I can buy thousands of dollars worth of Anime DVDs in New Zealand even though I think they're expensive (and they are); there is no bloody way I would buy Anime DVDs if I was Japanese. Absolutely not. Twice the cost for half the episodes; yeah right like I would buy them.

Of course this is just unsustainable for so many shows, hence the merchandise aspect. Which means the lowest-common-denominator shows are more likely to get made because they will be able to sell Ecchi figurines and the like, which means the amount of good Anime is proportionately rather low. This lowers the chance that both non-fans will get into it and that people will buy the DVDs, which of course just leads to a self-perpetuating spiral.

But anyway, back to the animators. I think it is shocking that they are paid so little, but then with the notoriously stagnant Japanese economy I really shouldn't be surprised. Too many people unable to find decent jobs so they have to sell out their health and their social lives just to draw frames that most people won't even notice. Ultimately, I think it is sad that the Anime industry has never really taken off in Japan, especially when compared to Manga.

If only the business model could be fixed, it would solve a lot of things. Overall profitability would increase or remain steady while prices drop, this lifts creativity which raises quality, and so demand would then pick up, which means more work and therefore a better bargaining position for the staffers. That's how you make the world better; remove the leeches and parasites.

This post was brought to you by dtm42, fighting for better-paid workers since 1992.


Last edited by dtm42 on Fri Sep 11, 2009 8:35 am; edited 2 times in total
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 7:02 am Reply with quote
dtm42 wrote:
Contrary to what PetrifiedJello will have you believe, television stations usually get paid to air Anime, not the other way around.

I see this as a crucial issue. I take it the sponsors named before each episode exist to alleviate some of the financial burden this funding method causes, but still it must significantly limit the budget of the studios, such that low pay becomes the norm.

Would this system imply that that any people who legally watch and record the TV broadcasts without shelling out on merchandise or DVDs are doing nothing to benefit the animation studio directly? Popularity may bring the TV station to warm to the studio's content, but still, high viewing popularity alone would supposedly be insufficient to render televised anime profitable.
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PetrifiedJello



Joined: 11 Mar 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 7:42 am Reply with quote
dtm42 wrote:
Contrary to what PetrifiedJello will have you believe, television stations usually get paid to air Anime, not the other way around.

No way and I know this is absolutely incorrect. If a television station gets paid to air anime, show me.

Stations are also distributors which must retain licensing to air a program. That's why there are ads. Based on your reply, there wouldn't be a need for ads.

In addition, I'd bet any station would love to pick up programming to which they'd get paid. If what you say is true, every station would be playing anime.

Sorry, but with experience in this arena, stations don't get paid unless they bundle channels through a subscription service that's billed through cable or satellite (usually to help pay those very licensing fees).

And yes, the irony the ads are in these bundled stations doesn't escape me, but this is a growing trend not related to just television.

Just a little educational FYI: You should really take the time to learn just how a TV show gets added to a particular channel.

Studios like NBC don't own the shows they air. To emphasize this, when NBC cancelled Scrubs, ABC picked it up.

Just like TBS pays for the licensing to redistribute Seinfeld, once aired by NBC.

However, there are exceptions to this and applies to stations owned by the same company. GE owns NBC and its affiliates, including the SyFy network, so it's common that a series would be on both stations. It saves costs on their end to "fill the void" for programming.
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pparker



Joined: 13 Oct 2007
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 7:51 am Reply with quote
Just don't fail to notice that the TV stations or companies are often a participant in the production of the anime, so the money is going from one pocket to another... or whatever. (cross-posted with PetrifiedJello there... I think the economic model in Japan is still significantly different than U.S. TV, or at least for anime).

Producing any commercial film requires navigating a labyrinth of players and contracts. The U.S. entertainment industry operates the same way, but apparently the Japanese have us easily beat in terms of complexity. That would account for why even people in the business don't understand the economics and why R1 companies often complain about the difficulty of negotiating licenses.

That would also partially explain the slow rate of change in the business model. Unraveling that complexity, or altering it, would take a lot of time and effort. They don't have an independent production culture or apparatus in place, so there is little threat to the large established companies. And if the equity participants are still earning profits from the way it's done now, there's little real incentive to change.

The only way the situation will change much is if the market demands it, meaning the profits shrink unacceptably or disappear. The first reaction to shrinking profits is nearly always to reduce cost--pay less, pay fewer. It's only after that fails that innovation starts to force it's way into the process.
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yuna49



Joined: 27 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 8:01 am Reply with quote
The economics and practices of the anime industry are not the same as American television. I, too, was surprised when I first heard that production committees buy the time on the networks to show anime. While some shows include advertising, not all do. In many cases the production committees are expecting to profit from paraphernalia and music sales along with DVDs and overseas licensing revenues when available. As dtm42 observes, the need to garner revenue from things like figurine sales tends to encourage the production of ecchi and moe~ shows over ones without obvious paraphernalia tie-ins.

Along with those billboard advertisers like Sony Music that often appear at the beginning of shows, you'll also see the occasional within-show product placement. Hataraki Man's Hiroko drank a particular vitamin water; billboards for this water also appeared in places like subway stations. Nike invested in Basquatch! since it's a show about basketball-playing mecha. Perhaps the most surprising recent billboard was Coca-Cola's appearance at the beginning of Genji Monogatari Sennenki. Despite the fact that Genji is a famous thousand-year-old novel, I don't think Coke would advertise on a US program where the characters spend so much time without their kimonos, if such shows were even broadcast here.
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bayoab



Joined: 06 Oct 2004
Posts: 831
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 8:41 am Reply with quote
PetrifiedJello wrote:
dtm42 wrote:
Contrary to what PetrifiedJello will have you believe, television stations usually get paid to air Anime, not the other way around.

No way and I know this is absolutely incorrect. If a television station gets paid to air anime, show me.

Stations are also distributors which must retain licensing to air a program. That's why there are ads. Based on your reply, there wouldn't be a need for ads.
We are talking about Japan, not the US. Almost any show that airs at late night in Japan is airing in a paid informercial block and all ads are owned by the production committee (i.e. There are no ads). When you get to morning and prime-time, it gets harder to generalize as sometimes TV stations will hop on the production committee and thus the block is "free". If there is not a TV station on the production committee or all of the ads are within the committee, then odds are they paid for the block.

Also, FYI: Cartoon Network was being paid to air anime. This is another part of the reason that anime died on it. A certain unnamed company paid to get a series on there and everyone else was paying too after that.
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PetrifiedJello



Joined: 11 Mar 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 11:35 am Reply with quote
bayoab wrote:
We are talking about Japan, not the US.
...
If there is not a TV station on the production committee or all of the ads are within the committee, then odds are they paid for the block.

Ah, this helps with the confusion. Sorry about that.

Interestingly, I do see where you're coming from because I see quite a bit of anime produced by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System) and TVTokyo (not sure if it's the same).

Thus, it would make sense to see how monies are treated.

Quote:
Also, FYI: Cartoon Network was being paid to air anime.

I've never heard of this, ever. Especially given CN is owned by TBS (Turner Broadcasting) which is notorious for blocking out ad time. Anime failed on CN because fans rejected the edited versions.

Toonami was CN's largest revenue stream ever and it was also the block of time (4pm-7pm) in which CN not only charged more for ad time, but increased ad running time by an additional 2 minutes! Something most certainly had to give with these changes.

CN has done quite a bit of self damage in the past few years, alienating many animation studios (most local).

If CN did get paid to run anime, I can't imagine it was for every series it showed. I don't want to discredit you, but take no offense if I don't put stock in this.

Especially because CN admitted it dropped Toonami due to lower viewership.

If CN did get paid to air it, something went terribly, terribly wrong.

Personal note: Sad, too, because I really enjoyed Samurai Jack.
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omoikane



Joined: 03 Oct 2005
Posts: 494
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:32 pm Reply with quote
Several of you keep on making the comment that DVDs pay for the bulk of the originally anticipated income, lack of a better word, for the typical committee-produced TV anime. Is there a link to that note somewhere? I know it's a big source of income in some cases, but doesn't that totally depends on the agreement between the consortium entities? Typically I would presume that royalties from merchandising (basically everything that a fan could buy except DVD/BD sales) would be the bulk of the income, but maybe the publisher (which is presumably the entity in the committee that gets all the money from publishing CD/DVD/BD) really does pay the bulk of it?

Anyways, I presume you guys have read this somewhere, got a link?
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Sven Viking



Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 1032
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:10 am Reply with quote
Article 1: Many animators underpaid!
Article 2: Things aren't so bad. We series directors are paid pretty well! Stop moaning.

ah... yeah.

Quote:
An in-between animator earns about 250 yen (US$2.65) per drawing. (Each television episode uses 4,000 to 5,000 drawings, although the task is split across dozens of people.)
  • 5000 drawings (optimistic estimate) times $2.65 equals US$13,250 to split between "dozens of people".
  • 24 being the lowest possible number that could qualify as "dozens", that would mean a maximum average of US$552 per episode (for 208 drawings each). With less optimistic estimates, it could be much less.
  • Probably the reason they use "dozens" of in-betweeners is that a lower number could not complete the work on time. For this reason, I doubt an in-betweener would usually be able to complete work on many episodes per month. If so, you'd think they'd just use fewer workers per series(?)
Though the poll results may have been "skewed because the higher paid people didn't respond much", only the general average would be affected. The fact that a large number of people are working for unreasonably low salaries remains unchanged.

I'm guessing it's just a matter of supply and demand (though in this case the subject is work rather than consumables). Lots of people want to work in animation, and will do in-betweening for next to nothing in exchange for the chance to move up to being "real" jobs with real pay (e.g. keyframing... I hope). A few succeed, and the rest provide the industry with valuable slave labour before burning out or otherwise being forced into finding other work.


Other things to learn from this article: Be a sound director.
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Ranmah



Joined: 27 Jan 2003
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Location: Stomp'n on Tokyo Tower
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:25 am Reply with quote
Unfortunately it is a sad fact that a lot of talented animators are getting burned out so easily. When I was in Tokyo I heard a lot of horror stories from fellow animators and artists. There are a few animators who branched out and did things on their own. It might not pay a lot, but at least they are getting exposure if they do it on the web. If they do it on the web, then expect a potential global fan base (maybe).

If they can speak English, that is an added bonus. When I was in the US, I met a few Japanese who spoke English and they are very happy to be here. They said it was hard, but it was much more satisfying to do their own stuff.

In the US there are many organizations, guilds and unions, that help struggling artists. Some organizations include: ASIFA, the Animation Guild, and Graphic Artists Guild. In Japan I heard, it's everyone one for themselves.

It will be a long time before the artists finally get fed up and go on strike or organize. Heck, it worked for the NOVA teachers.
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Tofusensei



Joined: 15 Feb 2008
Posts: 365
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:31 am Reply with quote
Ranmah wrote:
Heck, it worked for the NOVA teachers.


Yeah, that NOVA gig worked out great for them.
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