Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
This is the sorta shit that makes my blood boil. 
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Nitrogen Studios (Sausage Party) made animators work unpaid OT, blacklisted others
- Thread starter Branduil
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The first step towards proper treatment is not unionization. That will only screw us over in the long run.
What needs to happen is proper recognition of the work animators do. Animators need to be meritted the way actors are as their jobs aren't very different. The work needed to put forth a convincing performance is arguably harder and more grueling than what regular actors do, yet you never hear of any well known animators.
If animators were recognized for the quality of their work by the public, production companies would choose studios based on that instead of how cheap their bids are.
What needs to happen is proper recognition of the work animators do. Animators need to be meritted the way actors are as their jobs aren't very different. The work needed to put forth a convincing performance is arguably harder and more grueling than what regular actors do, yet you never hear of any well known animators.
If animators were recognized for the quality of their work by the public, production companies would choose studios based on that instead of how cheap their bids are.
Beer Monkey
Member
Union-buster Walt Disney would be really, really proud.
meltingparappa
Member
I've only worked almost exclusively on tv shows, but I've never once had a job that was paid truly 'hourly' despite what was written on a contract.
You come in, get your scene assignments for the week -- which have been specifically picked out for you by the animation director to represent a week’s worth of work -- and then hell or high water, you’re expected to get it done before the deadline. In the better studios, there’s a competitive pride to never slack off and do the best job you can with the amount you’re given, and if you can't quite make it, a producer has to reassign your remaining scenes and the shame drives you to stay on top of time management.
You can see however that this tacit agreement is ripe for exploitation. The easiest way this system fails is if the animation director is forced to assign more than what a person can reasonably do in a week. Worse yet however, is when there are good intentions all around, but the production workflow is shoddy and in addition to your sceneload, you get behind fixing mistakes that should never have happened in the first place. Or you get your back broken from the whims of a *ahem* certain type of live action comedy creator wanting massive changes late into the production, who assumes its easier just because it's in animation, and your show director either doesn't know or doesn't have the courage to pushback to tell them that certain requests are unfeasible in the scope of production.
Out of the four major places I’ve worked at, one place was terrible but deserves clemency because they were new and didn’t know what they were doing, two of them respected their artists and gets prime results out of them, and then one of them offered a salary based on the expectation that you’d have a normal 40-45 hour week but then suddenly demanded at least 50-60 hours. One person was offered extra side work on the weekend, but then told on Monday that the work still fell under their initial salary contract, and so they wouldn't be paid extra for it. They managed even the smallest complaints with outright threats of blacklisting, a female animator was openly called a "bitch" in front of everyone without repercussion by HR, and the place was basically Wolf of Wallstreet. It was horrible, and yet that place still continues getting work, and producing shows that occasionally air on prime time. And as terrible all that is, I have friends and co-workers who have much worse stories at previously places they've worked.
If you dig around cartoon brew, you'll see plenty of examples awful and blatantly illegal business practices. The arts field is notorious for even the biggest companies spontaneously deciding they don't want to pay their artists. Rock the boat with an assured confidential complaint to HR, and you run a good chance of getting blacklisted.
That's the whole point in having an animation union, but then conversely, that's the whole point of animation studios moving out of states with a union.
Based on thread creations, some of GAF’s most beloved shows are made with these practices in place, and as they accrue more seasons, nothing is changed, and more animators are torn apart up in the meat grinder.
This all isn't necessarily the norm, but it's not at all uncommon.
That's just how the showbiz sausage is made, unfortunately. If "Sausage Party" was budgeted to cost as twice as much in order to pay everyone fairly, it may not have even been greenlit, and the scarce miserable work wouldn't even have existed as a means of employment. The one solace is that the games industry seemingly has it much, much worse.
The only way to protect yourself as an animator is to get over the hump of naivety that a company will somehow change their attitude towards artists, and just swallow the misery on a production until it ends so you can put in on your demo reel, and keep gaining contacts and following leads until you're at a company that actually respects what you do.
Instead of name-dropping bad studios, an example of a positive one is Titmouse Animation (Motorcity, Venture Brothers, Superjail, Son of Zorn), who for the past five years, will give a full paid day to all 300 employees across three cities for them to each make a self-directed short film, and then they screen them all in a theater in each city. That’s a MASSIVE amount of “lost” money, but the effect on morale for the entire company is priceless. CN/Nick/DisneyTV/DreamworksTV also realizes this, and that's partly why they've had a renaissance in quality and sustain the industry. It's not that hard to figure out.
You come in, get your scene assignments for the week -- which have been specifically picked out for you by the animation director to represent a week’s worth of work -- and then hell or high water, you’re expected to get it done before the deadline. In the better studios, there’s a competitive pride to never slack off and do the best job you can with the amount you’re given, and if you can't quite make it, a producer has to reassign your remaining scenes and the shame drives you to stay on top of time management.
You can see however that this tacit agreement is ripe for exploitation. The easiest way this system fails is if the animation director is forced to assign more than what a person can reasonably do in a week. Worse yet however, is when there are good intentions all around, but the production workflow is shoddy and in addition to your sceneload, you get behind fixing mistakes that should never have happened in the first place. Or you get your back broken from the whims of a *ahem* certain type of live action comedy creator wanting massive changes late into the production, who assumes its easier just because it's in animation, and your show director either doesn't know or doesn't have the courage to pushback to tell them that certain requests are unfeasible in the scope of production.
Out of the four major places I’ve worked at, one place was terrible but deserves clemency because they were new and didn’t know what they were doing, two of them respected their artists and gets prime results out of them, and then one of them offered a salary based on the expectation that you’d have a normal 40-45 hour week but then suddenly demanded at least 50-60 hours. One person was offered extra side work on the weekend, but then told on Monday that the work still fell under their initial salary contract, and so they wouldn't be paid extra for it. They managed even the smallest complaints with outright threats of blacklisting, a female animator was openly called a "bitch" in front of everyone without repercussion by HR, and the place was basically Wolf of Wallstreet. It was horrible, and yet that place still continues getting work, and producing shows that occasionally air on prime time. And as terrible all that is, I have friends and co-workers who have much worse stories at previously places they've worked.
If you dig around cartoon brew, you'll see plenty of examples awful and blatantly illegal business practices. The arts field is notorious for even the biggest companies spontaneously deciding they don't want to pay their artists. Rock the boat with an assured confidential complaint to HR, and you run a good chance of getting blacklisted.
That's the whole point in having an animation union, but then conversely, that's the whole point of animation studios moving out of states with a union.
Based on thread creations, some of GAF’s most beloved shows are made with these practices in place, and as they accrue more seasons, nothing is changed, and more animators are torn apart up in the meat grinder.
This all isn't necessarily the norm, but it's not at all uncommon.
That's just how the showbiz sausage is made, unfortunately. If "Sausage Party" was budgeted to cost as twice as much in order to pay everyone fairly, it may not have even been greenlit, and the scarce miserable work wouldn't even have existed as a means of employment. The one solace is that the games industry seemingly has it much, much worse.
The only way to protect yourself as an animator is to get over the hump of naivety that a company will somehow change their attitude towards artists, and just swallow the misery on a production until it ends so you can put in on your demo reel, and keep gaining contacts and following leads until you're at a company that actually respects what you do.
Instead of name-dropping bad studios, an example of a positive one is Titmouse Animation (Motorcity, Venture Brothers, Superjail, Son of Zorn), who for the past five years, will give a full paid day to all 300 employees across three cities for them to each make a self-directed short film, and then they screen them all in a theater in each city. That’s a MASSIVE amount of “lost” money, but the effect on morale for the entire company is priceless. CN/Nick/DisneyTV/DreamworksTV also realizes this, and that's partly why they've had a renaissance in quality and sustain the industry. It's not that hard to figure out.
badcrumble
Member
go on
You decry unions and then literally ask for the exact rules about recognition that SAG-AFTRA fights very hard for.
gutter_trash
Banned
common sense overtime laws need to apply for all work, and it include contract and part-time work too
many skirt by hiring on "contract"
work is work, and it should be paid
many skirt by hiring on "contract"
work is work, and it should be paid
WhateverItTakes
Banned
You can try that but it won't work. No one will care. Even in voice acting only a very select few gain widespread recognition. You're never gonna be able to make the public actually care about the people who are only visible in the film by their names in the credits with a label of what they did.
XT Vengeance
Member
And this is a definite reason to not go see that movie. What terrible management. That shit has to be illegal.
meltingparappa
Member
The conundrum is that if it bombs, nobody would ever blame it on a loose boycott over employment practices, and it's failure would just prevent more animated features from being greenlit in the future.
Production suffers either way. It's a really awful catch 22 for the industry.
I'd imagine a boycott + social media outrage would send the message.
You still need to be organized for outrage to have any real positive effect, animators have little pull with not only the studios but the media as well. Without a union the worker has pretty much zero leverage, these guys even tried to write a petition which hopefully starts something
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
OMG
Cyclopsrock explained it already on the last page
Maybe you are right, I am happy and open to the idea of unions if someone can come up with a realistic way of implementing them without having production shipped off to Asia.
TheQueen'sOwn
insert blank space here
Unpaid overtime is such bullshit.
*works unpaid overtime for Government of Canada*
*works unpaid overtime for Government of Canada*
Canadian here. Just because something's illegal, doesn't mean it will dissuade employers in the slightest.
I'm still owed about $4000 from my previous employer, from 2014. I went about all the normal channels to get something done but in the end he just said 'lol no not paying' and I'm screwed.
My only experience with unions has been them preventing me from getting jobs, so there's that. I'm sure it's nice if you're in one though.
Sibersk Esto
Banned
Awkward thread to see when I'm about to enter the theater for sausage party
Shin Johnpv
Member
This is such bullshit.
The editor of the movie is now on Cartoon Brew's twitter claiming the animators didn't deserve credit because they left.
https://twitter.com/cartoonbrew/status/765082683110195200
The editor of the movie is now on Cartoon Brew's twitter claiming the animators didn't deserve credit because they left.
https://twitter.com/cartoonbrew/status/765082683110195200
This is such bullshit.
The editor of the movie is now on Cartoon Brew's twitter claiming the animators didn't deserve credit because they left.
https://twitter.com/cartoonbrew/status/765082683110195200
I hope this raises enough stink so that studio does not get any more contracts
What a total asshole
ultracal31
You don't get to bring friends.
All Sony cares about is a movie delivers on time and on budget with good returns so while I do see this hurting Nitrogen in the short term I don't see it hurting future contracts.
Sure didn't hurt other studios such as MPC, nerdcorp and so forth
This is such bullshit.
The editor of the movie is now on Cartoon Brew's twitter claiming the animators didn't deserve credit because they left.
https://twitter.com/cartoonbrew/status/765082683110195200
This makes my blood boil. People leaving so they can get a living wage is not "leaving people to dry". This dude didn't even work on the movie when I was there. He was downstairs working on a ios app on a mac that never got finished and he was useless. His wife is the production manager of Nitrogen btw.
I like how they are now trying to spin this as "they left and left us to dry!" sob story. People left because they got treated like shit, didn't get paid for their work and had way better offers from other studios.
NYCmetsfan
Banned
The best time is today. It never gets easier as more and more work goes overseas.
As far as I'm aware most of the best work is still done in the US.
If they were to organize and potentially strike it could cost millions with delays and they're not going to outsource the entire VFX to other countries were labor strife could come as well
The top list of animation/vfx studios are predominately in developed countries
http://www.gamedesigning.org/animation-companies/
http://www.filmbudget.com/blog/top-10-vfx-visual-effects-companies-in-feature-film/
a strike could net them big gains and they work, if they were to organize and do it industry wide
ultracal31
You don't get to bring friends.
They were still working on that kodi app during that time?
Here I was thinking they would cut their losses with that but guess not
Absurd. I was going to see this movie, but now I don't think I will.
Purple Cheeto
Member
Animation industry is as awful as the games industry
Wrong. You're thinking of the wrong kind of union.
The issue for animators/programmers in media is that they're new entrants to an industry based on intermittent gigs, where they work on a project then move on to the next.
Writers, Directors, Actors, etc, they all have unions in the form of the WGA/DGA/SAG which provide protections to them. That's the sort of setup needed for workers in this field.
petran79
Banned
Animators and programmers can also be scattered around the world for a production, being freelance.
Can you explain how that would work for animators? I'm genuinely curious and open to it.
GKSilKamina
Member
I have a few friends that are professional artists/animators/ex-animators, so reading stuff like this makes me pretty sad. I wasn't too interested in Sausage Party, but I sure ain't seeing it now.
drunkendonuts
Member
this is true, within the past two years, i've moved from LA to Vancouver and then to Montreal for VFX work. not that i don't like travel, but it gets pretty grating when i can't be somewhere for more than a few months at a time
ajfoucault
Member
That's heinous
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
There's someone named Laura Brousseau trying to defend what happened as never happening. She is listed as working there for 8 years and as "Head of Lighting" so you know, not impartial at all.
A friend of a friend of mine apparently worked in Vis Dev and also just denied it saying "I dunno, they just must've been bad workers."
ultracal31
You don't get to bring friends.
Ah her, my former Supervisor was never a huge fan of her during his time there
In the case for me, I had nothing but positive experiences with working at most of the studios in Vancouver (my favourite places to work were BRON and Slap Happy, though I also had a solid time at Atomic, as I have been paid fairly and had an awesome crew to work with.) The only exception is DHX Media, as their HR Department is run by a bunch of airheads that wouldn't know the difference between North & South, let alone bothering to care if there was a difference. (Seriously, I never have a bad thing to say about anyone, but speak to those who have worked there and they'll have a similar tone for the HR Department at DHX. They're the dictionary definition of useless.)
The difference, however, is that most of my jobs are related to Storyboarding, BG Layout/Clean-Up/Colour, & Character/Prop Design. I never had to deal with anything related to unpaid overtime, let alone dealing with a lead department director that will mentally abuse you if you are given unhealthy expectations for deadlines.
But hearing stories how most of my friends who are animators (or have roles as Animation Revisionists, Leads, or Directors) that get trampled on, and it makes me angry that something isn't being done to combat this. But I don't know how it can be done.
Animation industry is as awful as the games industry
I'd argue that any industry or work environment can have it's share of good and bad. As someone who had to work in a lot of labour-related jobs, the shit they pull to get deadlines completed is a nightmare of catastrophic proportions for human ethics, something in which I personally glad that I never want to deal with ever again.
After reading this and your comment, I am thinking of boycotting this movie and the studio making it?
Do you think thats the way to go or not?
meltingparappa
Member
There's very much a macho pirate ship mentality in terrible studios where you're either 100% with the company or your complaints are marginalized as crybabies who just can't cut it
which sometimes is true, but that's probably me being guilty of the mentality I'm criticizing
Regardless, even if an animator sleeps with the boss's daughter or whatever, they are still ethically obligated to receive a credit on the work they've done. To have proof of your work erased just because you were unhappy with your employment is one of the slimiest, most petty practices I've heard of.
Admiral Woofington
Member
it's a tough position because unless this catches on fire in social media, which might if someone like Seth Rogen makes a comment of it.
Without people directly associating the boycott with the lack of success, then it'll just simply mean that the animators who stuck around are likely to lose their job. Because you can bet your ass the fat cats up top wont.
Good. I really hope word about this gets out. The more exposure stuff like this gets, lower-profile studios might be more forced to make changes. Not likely, but it's nice to dream...
Cartoon Brew just posted contact information for several reporters who are gathering anonymous tips.
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-...-animated-film-142425.html#comment-2839362584 (might need to wait a second or two after the page loads.)
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-...-animated-film-142425.html#comment-2839362584 (might need to wait a second or two after the page loads.)
Gentleman Jack
Member
You should be a source for the A.V. Club writer picking up the story.
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