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The Politics of Animating

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The Politics of Animating

I was surprised to recently hear that in certain cities animators who have worked for both feature animation and video games are having problems getting hired by feature houses because of video game experience, and vice versa! And anyone who worked on Sat AM TV , is simply beyond the pale- no matter what the demo reel looks like!

Is this really the state of things? Don't people look at demo reels? if this is the case, what is the logic behind this? Do we need to advise students to have separate demo reels and CVs for each area?

I get the impression that a sizeable number of studio recruiters are not looking for talent, as much as they are tasks.
I say "tasks" in the sense of just a specific job with specific duties that needs to be filled. There's either someone qualified for that, or there isn't--any extra "talent" or experience is excess baggage and is "unqualified".

Does that suck?
You betcha.

Is it stupid?
Oh, let me count the ways....

Is it short-sighted?
Well....yeah..........but I suppose it a product of the talent pool as is stood for the past, oh, 15 years.
There's more and more applicants applying for these jobs, coming from all these art colleges/animation schools and the recruiters probably see 10 times more job-seekers than they used to.
The natural response to the inundation is that they start categorizing talent-segregating them.
Never mind that someone has genuine talent, sufficient talent for the job at hand, the recruiter just look for that specific TASK in the applicants CV.
I think that is a big leap backwards because its surely not going to help generate multi-faceted talent. Its going to create disposable niche -talents that one can hire for a specific task and then let go.
There's no nurturing, no developing talent.....no passing on of the trade-craft, of the studio philosophies....just the institution of peons vetted in a don't-give-a-shit system.
And what THAT means is the future thinkers and imaginators ( my term) are going to be fewer and further between and much harder to come across.
THAT means that properties are going to become staid and stagnant, because there's going to be less free-thinking being promoted and more create-by-numbers.

That's idiotic.
Fostering niche-talents kills careers and it kills the craft. Multi-talented craftsmen make for a stronger industry, makes for more resilient talent pool and ultimately saves money because problem-solving savvy comes from a greater experience group.
It offers more choices for the product, therefore more options for profit and greater exposure of a brand--because better talent can generate more appealing work. It also means the more versatile and experience talents can create works with deeper emotional resonance with audiences, allowing those properties to build even further.

But if the studios are not thinking this way, they are pooching themselves, and are only undermining the very crafts they are trying to build.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

Hmmm... Well, what I take from your post, with all due respect, is the same thing I would have expected a Luddite to have posted had the internet existed 200 years ago. Basically you are railing against specialization. The first thing I thought about was the medical industry. Sure, there are still GPs, but most doctors these days have a specialty and never touch a patient outside of it.

Would I rather hire a jack of all trades or a specialist?

Do you just take you car to any mechanic if you have a transmission problem?

Do you go to any chef when you want a wedding cake?

Do you go to any teacher if you need math tutoring?

The list is endless...

If I understood your point, that studios are pigeonholing people into small categories of perceived ability, that sounds like nothing new to me. Perhaps in animation, but I remember seeing a documentary on Disney and he had countless people working for him that seemed locked into their positions.

Personally, I'd never want to work for one of those machines. I'm glad I'm on the fringes. Just like any art, you either go it alone and risk starving, but staying true to yourself, or you sell out and take the safer path.

IMO, with the plethora of animation schools I see advertised, it seems a lot more like being an "animator" is comparable to cutting hair. To some it's still art and there is the top tier that get the glamor gigs, others work for Super Cuts for a year and then quit when they realize that the glitzy dreams they had are difficult to attain.

I say to the young animators of tomorrow, if you have talent and moxie, open a You Tube channel and start creating and posting with the aim to improve the product with each subsequent upload. Studio work is fine, but it shouldn't be the primary target in the 21st century.
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This all coming from a non classically trained, self-taught hack animator that has made several 100K view vids, many where I wore all the hats. Writing, voicing, drawing, animating and editing.

Regards, Joseph Morabito.
RightArmProductions
bowlingballout

If I understood your point, that studios are pigeonholing people into small categories of perceived ability, that sounds like nothing new to me. Perhaps in animation, but I remember seeing a documentary on Disney and he had countless people working for him that seemed locked into their positions.

Personally, I'd never want to work for one of those machines. I'm glad I'm on the fringes. Just like any art, you either go it alone and risk starving, but staying true to yourself, or you sell out and take the safer path.

Two things:
Disney never locked people into their positions. There's many stories of him looking over the shoulder of an artist doing a doodle and realizing that the guy would be better off designing for the theme parks than in animating. Likewise he'd also promote someone in a menial job to a creative job, if they showed the thinking capacity/ability for it. Disney was notorious for using and stretching the talent around him in a multitude of ways.....not just locking them in.

Second: I don't see my own career as selling out and taking a safer path. I've worked for the studios all my career, as a freelancer, and I do it because its my livelihood. My philosophy: fuck starving, I want to eat. I want to provide for my family, have a nice home.....pursue other hobbies and interests. THAT, for me, is staying true to myself.
I can contemplate my navel any time I want, really, but the work-a-day world says to me that bills gotta be paid and some money saved for tomorrow is probably a wise thing.
Hey, I can do the SAME artistic thing either path. My commercial work allows me to express some of my own ideas, and in my own way....just as if I were doing my own thing. True, there's some constraints.......but when the audience reacts to it, its still MY work they are reacting to--regardless of its genesis.

The thing about broad-based talent is that it opens up career options.
I can do ( and HAVE DONE) animation, illustration, product/packaging design, toy design, caricatures, character design, prop design, background design, comics, text book illustration, comic strips, editorial cartoons, storyboarding for live-action, 2d/3D/gaming animation, art direction, posters, internet cartoons......and each and everyone of these are currently considered "specialties". ( add to it, I've done supervisory roles in many of these skills, taught them in art colleges, co-founded, co-owned and ran an animation studio and career counselled on the animation biz.)
If the developing talent takes a similar focus and path, they have the same options to them...and it means they have multiple employment opportunities all the time.

Yes, the biz likes to pigeon-hole people into niche-talents....and that is wrong. The only way to beat that is to offer multiple skills in different aspects.
I just don't buy the specialization argument at all--and never have.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

About Disney, as I stated, I only saw one documentary that was unauthorized. Hard to get much about such a complicated man from a single source.
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I agree, starving is for the birds, but from an outsiders POV, working as one of the many names in the credits, in any video/movie/animation production sounds like a great job/career... if that is the kind of thing you want to do all day... but it doesn't sound like the job that Seth MacFarlane, Mike Judge, Stone & Parker, Tex Avery or Hanna & Barbera have/had. Yes, people have to pay their dues... but most never get anywhere near the rewards they dreamed of as a kid.

Having been my own boss from the age of 22 (now 46) where I wore all the hats, I have a hard time identifying with wanting to go into the corporate world. It has nothing to do with "selling out", that is usually silly talk put forth by those that can't find a path to any measure of success in their given field. It has more to do with having to put up with the office politics BS that is ubiquitous.

My response to your posting was mostly what seemed to be an oversight about the current approach to specialization in all fields, whether it's appreciated by most or not. I respect that you have had a firm footing, in a coveted arena, for so long.

For me, I've just been a life long cartoon fan, that had no interest in doing the previous, labor intensive style of animation; that is loving the opportunities that digital animation has opened up to those of us that used to love to doodle as kids, but had too little resources for anything of substance.

I was wrote an article about "the myth of the starving artist" and I highlighted the all too numerous ways that artists can earn plenty of income from their craft if they choose to do so. Don't get me wrong. I see nothing wrong with working in a big studio if that is the artist's dream. Many people truly want to be there, but it isn't the only road.

Why be a cog in a machine if you can build your own machine? It makes sense for the large studios to focus on specialization just as much as it makes sense for them to churn out the same formulaic films they have been doing for decades. They can't afford not to.

A serious talent may very well command serious money, and studios don't need that talent filling most of the open chairs there. They need cogs which will fit nicely into their well oiled machine. This mentality also leads to greater and more widespread outsourcing to Asia as well though. Still, it just makes sense. Why would a studio hire someone with a real showing they could be a great director when they need someone to do inking?

I remember one place I worked where management actually yelled at an artist something to the effect that, "You're not an artist! You're a body in a chair!"

Best to consider doing your own thing if you don't fit into the system. The opportunities out there today are limitless.

I was wrote an article about "the myth of the starving artist" and I highlighted the all too numerous ways that artists can earn plenty of income from their craft if they choose to do so. Don't get me wrong. I see nothing wrong with working in a big studio if that is the artist's dream. Many people truly want to be there, but it isn't the only road.

Its an oddity that has long puzzled me. When I was teaching at several art colleges, I routinely saw developing talent that had bottle-necked their focus.
They just wanted to be an "animator", or a "storyboard artist", or a "director", or a "game tester"--all single slot destinies.
I could never figure out where they got that kind of thinking from--whether it was the school advertising, or friends/family......or magazines.....it never made sense. When I would mention the idea of, what I call, a "fully-functional cartoonist" many of them would fidget nervously. It was like I was reminding them of inadequacies.

And, sadly, I probably was.

I did not see a lot of diversity in the talent pool therein. I did not see a lot of people showing willing experimentation in more than one kind of medium, outside of the course curriculum. Disheartening to see on my levels, both for the craft and the talent.
Its like trying to diversify means the goal is set further and further away, something that frustrates and frightens young talent. Describing the journey as a "process" doesn't dissuade that fear........it just falls on deaf ears.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

Thanks, Ken for sharing your thoughts.

My 2 and a half year old grand daughter is mad about the original Winnie The Pooh, so I've seen all or parts of it on a regular basis for months. It never ceases to charm and entertain me. Every aspect of that film works...and it is still earning money and still loved by new generations. The direction, the animation, the background art, the music are all unified and at such a high level that one is transported, charmed, delighted. I understand that it remains the highest grossing Disney film ever, which means that kids born in the 21st century are looking at it and loving it. They have no problem entering that world, without 'contemporary" jargon in the dialogue, without contemporary music...the magic of art is that it transports you out of your own world....

But I still don't understand telling people who have excellent credits in both animation and video games, that having done one now excludes them from consideration for the other! It just doesn't make any sense. If it really is true, it worries me.

Like you, I am committed to broad based general animation education. Our students need the skills to be able to adapt and earn a living, and to be able to create their own films. Drawing is still the basis of everything.

Should we be telling them to watch what they put on their resumes so that they won't be harmed by having had experience in both gaming and animation?

I agree with you that all of this could negatively impact the animation industry and animation as an art....The future for those who have the passion and drive to be animation artists may be in the internet and the ability to produce your own film(s). The growth of software that cuts costs , is intuitive, and allows the marriage of classical and computer animation could lead to a whole new world of animation. Fingers crossed.

Like you, I am committed to broad based general animation education. Our students need the skills to be able to adapt and earn a living, and to be able to create their own films. Drawing is still the basis of everything.

Should we be telling them to watch what they put on their resumes so that they won't be harmed by having had experience in both gaming and animation?

Y'know.............as much as that kind of craft-segregation irks me, it really is the studios hiring that call the shots? Why not approach them ( or the suspects) and find out if that is truly what they doing? After all, you are fronting for a school that is supplying talent they will eventually see in the hiring process anyway........so you finding out how to best tailor talent for THEIR needs helps everyone.
And along the way if someone.......ahem......."innocently" asks the question of just WHY they might be discriminating against specific work experience, then there might come an answer( or maybe someone will wake up and realize how bone-headed it is).
If........IF it turns out its just the "new thang" that studios are doing.....and they are just not going to change the "policy" then yeah, maybe advising students to prep specific resumes listing segregated experience might be the wisest thing to do.
Its accepted form to do this with certain job functions within animation mediums anyways...... for example, storyboard artists usually try to specify just their 'board work, and include only 'board samples in their submissions. There's no real point adding in walk cycles or other stuff like that. It might be prudent to generate resumes with just that kind of specificity.

But........if the problem is recruiters actively snubbing talent that work in other mediums for some bizarre internal political reasons.......well then it might be a tougher fight. I'm not sure if we could muster enough collective strength to pull their heads out of their asses then.....

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)