Forum - View topicINTEREST: In-Between Animators Share Stories of Low Wages, Poor Conditions With 'Dōgaman Hell' Hasht
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Banjo
Posts: 779 |
|
|||||
|
lol at get better comment.. this guy thinks the anime staff will get more money if they were drawing better..
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
configspace
Posts: 3717 |
|
|||||
|
there will probably be a move to automate the tweening process since this is the more time consuming and labor intensive parts. The animation directors and staff animators still have to review the submissions and make corrections even on outsourced in-betweens so that costs time and money that eats away at their own staff's budget. And if they don't do it in time for the TV eps, they'll go back and do so for the BD version.
There is already R&D done on this area, but given the highly available cheap labor there hasn't been much incentive. I've seen some impressive work by a Singaporean animation company CACANI that some major anime studios actually use and the really impressive but very sophisticated in-house Disney Meander software used in Paperman, a hybrid of 2D line animation layered on top of 3D models: http://www.disneyanimation.com/technology/innovations/meander http://movingimagearts.com/motion-vector-inbetweening/ https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/the-inside-story-behind-disneys-paperman/ - see: https://youtu.be/TZJLtujW6FY?t=143 And now Blender is advancing in a similar direction with Freestyle and particularly Grease Pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5HzSa6WdeI So much so that Hideki Anno's Studio Khara has switched from 3DS Max to Blender and is now supporting Blender's development. None of that work in those demo reels required the tons of manual animation labor of traditional in-between work. Corrections, revisions, edits, experimentation is all either cheap or "free". The only inertia to adoption has been the higher specialized training and skill on top of the 2D skills required but translated this mean that more can be made with less people on the same budget. There won't be a paid-per-cut freelancer who ends up on unlivable pay. I think it's a mistake to assume that some exec is getting the majority of profit for each license when the opposite is true. So much is spread around through layers of bureaucracy and tons of management and among the various production commitee members that very little makes it way down to the animation studio. Think about song licensing and how record labels are usually one of the members e.g. Lantis, King Records as just one large part of the revenue pie that does NOT involve the studio. So this technology approach at least tackles the issue at the studio level--given a fixed budget that cannot be increased, what can you do with it if you also want to avoid lots of really, really cheap labor? |
||||||
|
||||||
|
reanimator
|
|
|||||
Actually I wasn't really seeking answers, but to raise questions to start the discussion... Anyway there is no doubt that inbetweening is skilled labor (I've done one myself as art student learning animation). You know that livable wage is impossible with current pay system of 200-400 Yen per sheet, in which could take from 20 minutes to hours to produce, and it is inaccurate and unfair to measure the pay. Small business standpoint from majority of anime production studios, hourly wage is impossible due to over-budget. However livable salary system with 2-3 year contract would be better choice because employers don't have to worry too much about idle hands during down time and as for entry-level, he "lives or dies" by his meritocracy with given contract. The way things are going on right now, even unskilled labor have to justify pay rate as clients are always looking for best bang for buck.
Speaking of middlemen, ad agencies and TV are the worst culprit to me. Their marketing and promotion is limited despite the percentage they take from the fund. In my point of view, JP ad agencies are wasting money on Akihabara (I've been there twice) and Nipponbashi billboards and ineffective TV commercials which only reaches certain area of Japan. I think local TV station in Japan are not that great due their broadcast limit and they take a large chunk from overall funds as infomercial money. I don't know how much influence the local TV stations with their residents, but they seems to be effective pushing anime to non-fans who happens to surf the channel. I wish local stations broaden their air time beyond late night. I strongly believe that structural problem needs to be reformed in favor of small production studios. Despite the level of quality work they produce, you know that small studios don't stand a chance financially when shows flop and I think they need local prefectural government to establish business outside of Tokyo as long as they can retain talents. Even if animators are paid okay, Tokyo is not the right place to run labor intensive craftsmanship service. Hiring practice need to be reformed because industry always has been getting mediocre people and disappoint them with low pay. This is why anime industry get poor reputation, I'm all for meritocracy and studios should attract talented people with decent pay, Unionization happened during 60's and 70's at Toei, but it just died out because it's not industry-wide like in the U.S. Plus unionzation seems to be heavily frown upon on older established JP animators and they need to figure out how unionization can help foster new generation of animators and help balancing the outsourcing versus domestic labor. The fear of complete outsourcing is real to them and I wonder if Japanese has to train Chinese who might turn into rival in the future. Without inbetweener, there won't be future key animator. Without key animator, there won't be future animation supervisor (AD).
Why won't you just say the name of the American show that disgusted you? It's not like people here gonna hate you for saying it. I've seen what you have described when I watched Saturday Morning cartoons in 80's and 90's. That's not the reason for me to stop watching them. First TV stations stopped airing them and by the time I got older, they just became "dumb" cartoons as I lost interest in favor of sitcom and pulpy action shows. Even some Japanese shows can't credit all the outsourced animation staffers. They're not bad as Americans, but once in a while they only mentions subcontract studio only. I think it was Squid Girl or was it High School Fleet? Anyway, squeezing in too many names in 90 second Ending credit is not easy, i guess. Japanese case is labor shortage than simple cost cutting. Average Japanese will not accept 10-hour plus work for measly 200 Yen and inflation of Bubble Era made working in animation unattractive. If Japanese are more about cost cutting, they could bill their sponsors a lot money and farm out production completely to Korea or China without any regard to quality. So studios need to find cheap labor outside of Japan quickly to meet quota. Studios want to keep their business afloat and pay permanent staff right, but they get ridiculously low budget from their sponsors. Shoestring budget cannot accommodate growing complexity of drawings (starting from the 80's) by highly motivated young animators and directors. Note that people like Hayazaki and Takahata started to raise the quality of Japanese TV animation by introducing layout system in Heidi of Alps. I think subcontract/coproduction works with US animation studios subtly influenced JP production as well. In 60's-70's TV anime, lines and frame rate is super rough, but by the 80's the drawings have gotten cleaner and smoother. On side note, I am guessing that Japanese started to use American animation term, "Cleanup" to describe clean, finalized inbetween drawings without sketchy lines and notes. (I need to do more research on this..) To make matters worse, I think advent of young "fan-turned-pro" animators and designers made long working hours and low wage as the norm to me. Why would I say that? People like Hayao Miyazaki is already workaholic, but I think they made it worse. Because their obsession with details and their disregard to time management convinced small studio owners to take these young peoples obsession as granted. Obviously quality of animation has gone up, but no attempt to make labor situation better by animators themselves. In early 90's, Japanese voice actors tried to strike and enlist help from animators, but animators refused to participate with pretext of being busy. Fast forward 30 years, JP voice actors are pretty much in idol status now and veteran animators are aging fast and young animators need more training. I have to wonder what would be like now if animators unionized then... |
||||||
|
Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11354 |
|
|||||
|
I knew wages were terrible, but they don't even pay for their supplies? I somehow how found that more shocking than skimping on labor, which is worse but has become so normalized over the last 30 years of robber-baron capitalism that that's not surprising anymore.
|
||||||
|
||||||
|
reanimator
|
|
|||||
|
@configspace
I agree with you that technology is already here to automate and ease inbetween animation process. Still I think it only solves half the labor problem as artists have tendency to do more with given technology's capabilities thus requiring more time for that desired perfection. My prediction is that key animators (1st key and 2nd key) will likely to take over the role of inbetweener to cleanup AI generated inbetweens in the future. The Industry already views inbetweening and cleanup as one-trick pony labor and animators have to take more responsibilities and acquire more skills to justify their deserved pay rate. Basically evolution from factory worker to craftsman.
That's interesting question because hiring standard in Anime studios are all over the place. Some places maintain high standard while others have low standard. With technology, studios have to reform their hiring and training standard along with production process. Studios need to use technology fullest to make process super efficient so that they only require small amount of animators, not 100+ animators working on one TV episode.
A-List Japanese animators earn a lot of money than your average inbetweeners. Pareto Principle is at work: Top animator do majority of most important and difficult scenes while the rest gets the scraps. Master animators like Toshiyuki Inoue (Akira, Ghost in the Shell) or veteran AD like Atsuko Nakajima (Studio Deen shows) probably make good middle class salary than average key animators. These top animators make more money than Director. Of course they're not going say anything negative about anime industry because their meritocracy earned their place. |
||||||
Covnam
 Posts: 3650 |
|
|||||
Ah, contract/free-lance work. Hadn't thought of that. Thanks. |
||||||
|
||||||
|
Ensaru64
Posts: 52 |
|
|||||
Flawed thinking. Every company should be paying an employee enough that they can afford basic needs and then some. If your minimum wage doesn't reach anywhere near this, then it's not a sustainable job. It wouldn't motivate you to climb the company ladder because you're too busy never making ends meet while trying not to die from overwork. Also, the choice of promotion is one's own decision. For some people, a certain amount of wages are sustainable enough to be comfortable. If someone doesn't want to become a shift manager, then it's highly likely that he doesn't consider the work-to-salary ratio to be any beneficial than it might be for him in his current position. |
||||||
|
||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group