Joseph Gilland.

Whether you are relatively new to the animation industry, or if you've been at it a long time, the rigors of animation production can be brutal on an artist. Bear with me as I first take a look at the phenomenon of overwork in the animation studio, and then we'll take a look at some of the ways to make an intolerable situation survivable.

I see it happen over and over, especially with the fresh new animation talent, newly graduated out of one of the countless animation puppy mills offering an "animation education" these days, working late into the night at his or her first real job, trying so hard to make the grade. And then you see them dragging themselves in the next day, dark circles under their eyes, hair frazzled, clothes crumpled, chugging coffee or some kind of "energy" drink, desperately trying to please the new employer, but running on inadequate sleep and nutrition. Their social life suffers, of course, and if they have a husband, wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, or even children or pets at home, that relationship is soon feeling the strain, as the overextended artist so rarely even makes an appearance at home, and then only to fall comatose into their beds and die a dramatic animation death. The same thing happens to artists with decades of experience; when the schedule is unrealistic, the hours become unrealistic. And when that happens, if we're not careful, everybody loses.

animation is a work-intensive medium. When I remember back to the old-school hand-drawn days of enormous crews working around the clock, drawing and drawing and drawing, it is hard to believe we ever made animation that way, so impractical, so labor-intensive, so insane! Surely we will evolve, surely we are smart enough to "improve" the process, aren't we?

Now that our tools have changed completely, for the most part, and we are engaged primarily in a digital medium, so much has helped us supposedly streamline the process that we can now crank out animation a helluva lot faster than we ever did drawing on paper. But has this made the art of animation any less labor-intensive? Well, the producers and managers I have worked for in the last few years certainly seem to think so. Schedules have become so incredibly compressed, looking at the expectations going into most projects, it is really scary. Having based my animation time estimates on the hand-drawn process for so many years, I look at a modern-day schedule, and... holy crap, do they really think we can do it in that short a time? Be it feature films, games, or a TV series, the expectation of how long it takes to produce a foot, or a second, or a show, or a series of animation, has gotten insanely short, small and compressed. As the tools help us streamline the process, and things speed up, the schedules speed up too. Not proportionately, however. I think we may have streamlined the process up to 50% or so, but the schedules have speeded up more like 100%. It is out of whack, to be sure. Expectations are high, and the pressure is on, to produce animation fast!

And so it goes. The business can be brutally demanding of an artist's time and energy, and I am frequently witnessing fresh young talent, and seasoned old talent, burning out, practically killing themselves trying to make deadlines and please their employers. But what kind of support are they getting? What kind of guidance? What kind of game plan going into the industry, to protect themselves against the inevitable burnout that comes from working too many hours, and not taking care of one's mental and physical health as well as one should?

Put deadline and schedules in perspective. Productivity drops with sustained work for too many hours straight.

I spent some years in the animation education biz, and I did my best to prepare each and every student for the onslaught. Where I was teaching animation, we intentionally made the course brutally demanding, with the logic being that if they can survive this course, they might have a shot at surviving the industry. But a lot of schools don't prepare young artists adequately, and once the poor things are actually in the industry, I am not seeing much empathy towards them from the studios that hire them, with 60 hours a week or more routinely expected, regardless of whether proper overtime pay is available. The work is expected, the pressure is applied, and predictably, quite a few young artists suffer, as they try to rise to the occasion. Some of them become bitter and resentful, the art form they love so much is beating them up, and all the fun is drained from the process of making cartoons. They see that much of the way they were taught how to make cartoons is being stripped down and disrespected in the modern-day studio setting. Proper planning is being pushed aside; "we'll fix it in post!" is the fast-food-animation battle cry. Proper storyboard, layout and scene planning are being largely forgotten in many studios, as the compressed schedules allot very little time for the time-tested classical stages of preproduction planning. So, not only are our fresh new animation artists being asked to work ridiculously long hours, they are also being asked to fix everything as they go, "Make it work, because we sure as hell haven't done the proper planning beforehand!" Thus an animator, or a background artist, effects artist, or compositor, is spending a great deal of his/her time fixing the array of problems that arise in the continuity of an animated film. This adds a level of stress to a job that is already hard enough, and demanding enough.

So, here are some ways that I can think of to survive the madness of silly deadlines. Some are obvious, some not so obvious.

First and foremost, do your best not to take the schedule personally. You didn't create it, you are just a hired gun. The mental stress that comes with taking on the responsibility of the deadline can wipe us out. To stay mentally sharp, continually remind yourself that you can only do your best within reasonable human limitations. Ultimately, when deadlines are missed, it's not necessarily the artist's fault, it is usually fallout from the extremely unreasonable expectations on the part of the folks who set up the project schedule in the first place. Do your absolute best, of course, and give it your all, but don't take it personally!