Forum - View topicNEWS: Directors Dispute Reports of 'Poor' Animator Salaries
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Ranmah
 Posts: 294 Location: Stomp'n on Tokyo Tower |
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I also want to add that these are people's lives we are discussing. This not to be taken so lightly. I've lived in these small apartments and quite frankly I don't want to live like that again. I bet neither do any of the Japanese animators.
I hope something good comes out of this situation. If they do organize, it has been a long time coming. |
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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I really hope these animators can get paid better. Overworked and underpaid shouldn't go together.
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Ralifar
 Posts: 205 Location: League City, TX |
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This isn't really just an animator thing. This is a whole Japanese culture thing. As was mentioned earlier by several people the inbetweeners is just an "inbetween" job. It's really a young person's thing. In many fields in Japan(unless your family or close family friend owns the business) you're going to get paid crap regardless of how talented or skilled you are. You get paid by how old you are, and a lot of it is salary based. Unless you're happy with the pay and position you're in and want to stay that way for the rest of your life you're not leaving until the boss leaves either. Even if you have to sit there and do busy work for 5 hours. You're not going to be making decent money until after you're 30, and even then it's iffy.
Too many of you are thinking of this in a "Western" manner. I'm not saying it's fair or good, but thems the works. |
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Odd_shapeshifter
Posts: 15 |
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I have to disagree with this, English is one of the most easiest languages to learn, it's suppose to be the first global lingua franca (vehicular language) also known as world language (just like German and French) for communication between persons not sharing a mother tongue, if we're talking about difficult to learn Germanic languages there are for more difficult ones than English, like the North Germanic languages, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish or closer to England German and Dutch, although German might be an exception since it's also considered a world language and has a very strict structure and rule set which makes it a lot easier to learn. Back towards the topic, low-paid in-between-animators, is not just strictly a problem in the Japanese animation industry but over the entire animation industry and neighboring industries like the advertising and gaming industry. If you take a look at what the other industries are doing, it becomes quite evident where the biggest problems are, at the top the publishers, 2nd stupid old system like regions, the consumers and last but not least themselves. Let's look at the publishers first, everything revolves around making as much profit as possible, this is obvious, and because of what's around (possible products) they have choice and can pick anything they like and negotiate the best deals. The problem is those publisher companies are usually owned by big corporations that own various companies that produce various products, this makes producing products cheaper and behind those corporations are people with money who want more money and they don't care much about the products, if they don't like how it's going they close the tap and take their money elsewhere. The game industry that's relatively new compared to the animation and advertising industry has of course followed mostly the same route, a lot of game companies are owned by the same corporations that own other businesses but in recent years we've seen a lot more independent companies producing and publishing their own games, which was of course only possible because of the internet, there are also companies like Valve that cut out certain steps of distribution to drop costs and offer a somewhat cheaper way of distributing products, although online, but with some added options including limited advertising (showcased on their main page, advertisement space for special deals like the weekend-deals etc.) even the consoles have adapted these systems, and also recently digital distribution for the mobile phone which has a very attractive revenue where the biggest portion of income goes to the company that created the digital product and the smaller portion goes to company owning the distribution system, this makes it a lot easier and cheaper to go independent and more profitable for the company creating products. However there still is the problem of an old system like the region systems, which is only there to make more profit, you really have to go out of your way to code in and create hardware specifically to make sure some stuff can't be played or viewed on a different region system, that's why you can usually get rid of region restriction with obscure codes on your remote to get your DVD-player play other regions. Some distribution systems have already adopted a different strategy and some offer a package to distribute globally with as less hassle as possible with all those region crap but ultimately I really feel this system needs to be updated or even better removed to improve income for companies that make products. Then we have the consumers, their attitude has changed quite a lot in recent years including thinking it's okay, legal and completely normal to download pirated products, especially the upcoming young generation a lot find it completely normal and have no idea that they are doing something wrong (usually I think they are copying older generation, although the older generations know fully well what they are doing is wrong the younger generations see it differently). On top of that acquiring certain products is quite difficult in certain places, for example someone in region x wants to buy something from region y but since there is no license for it he or she can't buy it, although recently with buying online it has gotten a lot easier I still recall spending months to find a store that was willing to import a VHS tape with a couple of Anime episodes on it or 1 movie (and a short one at that) for an insanely price which also usually took many weeks until I had it, so unless a new system comes where the production company can get their product to consumers more directly without going through old fashioned publishing channels I doubt anything drastic will change mostly because certain stops along the track doesn't want it to change because that will cost them their profit. finally their own attitude, if you are willing to slave for not enough pay and work long hours it's really you who's doing that, you can choose to do something else, yeah it might not be what you really wanted to do but is it worth it? That's beside the fact that at those hot-spots for animators that there is an abundance of them so if you are not willing to do it for that amount of money they'll find someone else crazy enough to do it in your place. Or as they have done in recent years, outsource and export it to countries where the labor fee is even lower which is more cheaper for the production company. And making a name for yourself is not easy at all in a place where the norm is already so high and draining. I'm a former animator myself, I've worked in the animation industry for a while working on advertising, music video, infomercials and educational / instruction animation and I was not happy with the amount of work I was doing and the pay I was receiving, so I moved to something else, eventually doing something I enjoy a lot more. Was it all a waste? Not at all, I use knowledge gained from working in the animation industry to help me in my current position. I really hope to see some major changes eventually in the animation industry but at the current rate it's going and looking back on how things have gone I doubt anything major will change in the near future. The crisis is a start, hopefully more shit will implode or explode and the need to drastically change is forced upon industries that have been stuck in old fashioned systems for far too long now, just to improve the wallets of a select few people. |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Problems such as these are talked to death quite often, with physical importation being expensive and subject to region restrictions, and electronic distribution being bound by underlying geographical licensing rights. To answer these issues in an optimistic manner, it appears Japanese companies are capable in theory of improving this situation with global simultaneous releases, as is the case with Sunrise and their plans for Gundam Unicorn. I can't imagine business models like this will become commonplace very soon however- consumer markets around the world would need to be notably healthy for that to happen. |
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yoshitoshi
 Posts: 11 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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I think his response actually shows they are underpaid. And they only work a 10hr workday if they are leaving early since nearly everyone over there works 10+hr workdays anyways.
I work in advertising, a completely useless industry, and I make more than an Animation Director 
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Dude, ever heard of Latin? It was the lingua franca used by Western Europe for hundreds of years, and the Roman Catholic Church used it for ages. The Vatican itself still uses it today, at least officially. |
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Ranmah
Posts: 294 Location: Stomp'n on Tokyo Tower |
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I was also an animator (at least trying to be one). That seems like similar stories I have been hearing from other friends who were animators. I think for some people the process of doing in-betweeening work can be very draining and I wouldn't be surprised by this years end a few more animators will quit this job and do something else. |
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Ktimene's Lover
Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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It's not just animators that are overworked but underpaid because there are other careers that this happens to also.
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rikiki
Posts: 11 |
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You are right. This is actually the Asian mindset. My brother who just get out of university last time have a chance to go to US(he just ask for fun because Intel interview him and at that time he was currently working for Altera and Altera's paid was higher and he doesn't like Intel's work environment that much, so if he can go US he'll go work in Intel and Intel actually agreed to) So he went to US, and found out that people are picked based on talent, even if you're young but you're really good, you get promoted really easy. It is not based on how long you worked and you slowly get higher salary. |
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