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| mbisonhatclub 564th Post
  
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|  "Re(3):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Wed 10 Jul 08:55  
quote:
I went in for the $100 package, but I really wish they'd give me an excuse to spend more. They said they would announce stretch goals soon, so we'll seeeeee.
But yeah, I wish these guys the best in the world. I'll be picking up the English release of the first Little Witch Academia as well. Kill la Kill (boy, that title doesn't the work the same in English) looks great too, though I hope it can find an audience.
I went with the 100 dollar package too, but that's because I'm poor and don't have leeway to spend more than that. When they just started the KS I hadn't actually watched LWA yet, but it tugged at my appreciation for ambitiousness in the indie realm, so I watched LWA first before putting money in. Then I just watched it raise up to 150k+ in the matter of a few hours.
As for stuff like Kill La Kill, it at least has the support of a lot of 4chan users who are liking what Studio Trigger is doing (LWA, Kill la Kill, INFERNO COP). I think at least two of the three 10k backers were 4chan users, and one at least made a visit to 4chan's /a/ board to let us know that his name was Zac(h/k).
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| badoor 319th Post
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| "Re(4):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Wed 10 Jul 17:58
quote:
I went in for the $100 package, but I really wish they'd give me an excuse to spend more. They said they would announce stretch goals soon, so we'll seeeeee.
But yeah, I wish these guys the best in the world. I'll be picking up the English release of the first Little Witch Academia as well. Kill la Kill (boy, that title doesn't the work the same in English) looks great too, though I hope it can find an audience.
I went with the 100 dollar package too, but that's because I'm poor and don't have leeway to spend more than that. When they just started the KS I hadn't actually watched LWA yet, but it tugged at my appreciation for ambitiousness in the indie realm, so I watched LWA first before putting money in. Then I just watched it raise up to 150k+ in the matter of a few hours.
As for stuff like Kill La Kill, it at least has the support of a lot of 4chan users who are liking what Studio Trigger is doing (LWA, Kill la Kill, INFERNO COP). I think at least two of the three 10k backers were 4chan users, and one at least made a visit to 4chan's /a/ board to let us know that his name was Zac(h/k).
I love how great of an "up and coming indie" story Trigger are. It's so uplifting. Little Witch Academia was a joy to watch and I cannot wait for both LWA2 and Kill La Kill. If I could, I would've loved to pitch in. It's just that I can't use an Amazon account for Kickstarter. 
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| exodus 4277th Post
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| "Re(5):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Mon 22 Jul 14:26
quote:
I've heard plenty of stories of outrageous overtime and employees sleeping under their desks, but what is their salary like? It's pretty much a given that plenty of video game outfits in North America don't compensate the workers enough when the hours are all counted up, but their salary is still sufficient to pay the bills and afford a few luxuries.
base salaries in games tend to be their age times 100,000 yen per year. If you're 23, you get 2,300,000, which is very close to $23,000 a year. It's not so hot. I think it's pretty similar for animation, but possibly worse??
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| nobinobita 1197th Post
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| "Re(6):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Tue 23 Jul 06:01
quote:
base salaries in games tend to be their age times 100,000 yen per year. If you're 23, you get 2,300,000, which is very close to $23,000 a year. It's not so hot. I think it's pretty similar for animation, but possibly worse??
Some stats from the Japan Animation Creators Association:
A storyboard artist finishes the storyboard of a 30-minute episode in three weeks for 220,000 to 230,000 yen (US$1,900 to US$2,000). That averages to 70,000 yen (US$600) a week, 280,000 yen a month (US$2,400), and 3,360,000 yen (US$28,800) a year, with no vacation.
A key animator earns about 3,000 yen (US$25) for one scene, and completes about two scenes of key animation frames in 10 to 15 hours on one day. That averages to 6,000 yen a day (US$50), 180,000 yen a month (US$1,500), and 2,160,000 yen (US$18,400) a year, with no vacation.
If any of the workers have family or raise children, then it is impossible to work these hours without days-off. 20% to 30% of all animators earn an annual salary of around 1,000,000 yen (US$10,000), or 6,000 to 10,000 yen (US$500 to US$900) a month.
Source:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-10-15/japanese-animators-directors-establish-first-union
Pretty horrifying statistics. They do work that requires a ton of specialized skill and education for minimum wage (sometimes less).
I wonder if the pay is any better at the bigger name studios (Gainax, Madhouse, Production IG etc). In 2003 Ghibli posted a listing looking for new animators to start at 167,000 yen (US $1,401.13 at the time) per month.
According to this article senior animators make up to $30,000 a year, which is still ridiculously low:
http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/top-20-cities-worldwide-animation-careers?page=0,0
I don't think there's any other job in the world where people have such specialized world class skills, but get paid so little. Animation in Japan is truly a labor of love, to an abusive extent.
I hope that much of the proceeds of the Little Witch Academia Kickstarter go towards paying the animators a liveable salary as they produce more awesome work.
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| Spoon 2473th Post
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| "Re(7):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Tue 23 Jul 14:26
quote:
base salaries in games tend to be their age times 100,000 yen per year. If you're 23, you get 2,300,000, which is very close to $23,000 a year. It's not so hot. I think it's pretty similar for animation, but possibly worse??
Some stats from the Japan Animation Creators Association:
A storyboard artist finishes the storyboard of a 30-minute episode in three weeks for 220,000 to 230,000 yen (US$1,900 to US$2,000). That averages to 70,000 yen (US$600) a week, 280,000 yen a month (US$2,400), and 3,360,000 yen (US$28,800) a year, with no vacation.
A key animator earns about 3,000 yen (US$25) for one scene, and completes about two scenes of key animation frames in 10 to 15 hours on one day. That averages to 6,000 yen a day (US$50), 180,000 yen a month (US$1,500), and 2,160,000 yen (US$18,400) a year, with no vacation.
If any of the workers have family or raise children, then it is impossible to work these hours without days-off. 20% to 30% of all animators earn an annual salary of around 1,000,000 yen (US$10,000), or 6,000 to 10,000 yen (US$500 to US$900) a month.
Source:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-10-15/japanese-animators-directors-establish-first-union
Pretty horrifying statistics. They do work that requires a ton of specialized skill and education for minimum wage (sometimes less).
I wonder if the pay is any better at the big
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That is abominable. I know entry level is a region of abuse in a lot of talent industries but that is insane. That they are probably not making a living wage, never mind job security or health concerns, to me just screams i justice. A lot of vfx artists at various cg and fx houses here in north america suffer from inadequate compensation and total lack of job zecurity, but their wages are livable. It hasn't been rosy lately and structural reform is needed, but god help us if we ever let it sink that low; that's the kind of market amok that i fear.
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| Zepy 1617th Post
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| "Re(7):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Tue 23 Jul 21:27
I suspect that the situation is because the market is too small, but too many people are entering the industry because it's their dream and they're willing to work for too little pay.
There are 73 companies with start up capital of less than 10 million yen (US$100,000) and less than 10 employees, how do they even survive? Are they the reason for the underpaid animators?
According to this survey from 2009 out of 174 anime production companies surveyed, 92% of them are based in Tokyo, is there a reason for that? I mean, everything is expensive in Tokyo.
The overseas market for Japanese anime basically collapsed in 2009 causing a lot of companies to pull out of the USA and other countries, and on average profits have been dropping substantially between 2007 to 2009 (although sales figures seem to have maintained).
But now anime production companies have been reporting increased profits in financial year 2010 and 2011 due to demand from the pachinko and social games industry, but there hasn't been any recent reports on animator pay as far as I know.
47.4% of companies surveyed were set up after year 2000, after the anime boom, but we haven't seen any similar increase in the market size of the anime industry between 2001 to 2010.
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| exodus 4279th Post
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| "Re(9):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Wed 24 Jul 17:03
quote:
Most big name companies employ a lot of freelances.
just so. it's the same in the game industry, in japan. Grasshopper got sued by the japanese government for using too many freelancers and not paying them a living wage. Essentially there's a thing you can do there, where if you hire someone for under a certain amount of time, you don't have to give them benefits, and you can pay them below normal salaries. Like a summer job or something.
They did this constantly, firing people and cycling in new ones, because there are always fresh-faced people hoping to make it in the industry. They burn out/burn through these people and get new ones. It's pretty despicable.
It's very similar to the tactics of wal-mart in the u.s., which hires people at minimum wage, has them work odd hours so they don't get to have benefits, and reaps huge profits as they pay their employees dirt. They employ 2.2 million people, most of whom are on government support to supplement their income because they can't live off what wal-mart pays them.
brutal capitalism is a real dickface sometimes.
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| nobinobita 1198th Post
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| "Re(2):Re(10):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Thu 25 Jul 15:31
quote:
Most big name companies employ a lot of freelances.
Funny talking animal cg
Contract workers pretty much define the majority of the artists at smaller cg houses e.g. those not named pixar, and it's tough watching departments clear out as the project cycle winds down. A number of game studios in north america have gotten wary of disosable labor for software engineering lositions over the past sseveral years due to the substantial time cost needed to ramp them up and get them working to the quality and standards of the place
. constantly interviewing people is also a time cost to existing emplyees. QA is still a spot for freesh faced disposable workers, though.
In north america, freelane/contract workers still get paid a lot better than their local minimum age, Even for some lower level positions. I think brandon and nobi know first hand how the job market in the video game industry is first hand, though; there's a ton of talent out there and a ton of freshies eager to get in. Structural issues are still there, but it sure as hell beats what's going on in japan... For those that can land a job, anyway.
When I started my career in games I was pretty much working for the same rates as an entry level Japanese animator. I was living in Atlanta doing contract work for early mobile ports of popular games. It was pretty rough, but I justified it with the naive belief that "this will be good for my portfolio!"
There are a lot of companies out there eager to take in recent college grads and pay them next to nothing.
Lots of animation studios are also in the practice of working people just under fulltime, much like Walmart. Or they hire everyone as a contractor, but still expect them to show up every day like it's an office job, just with no benefits. People will get away with whatever you let them.
Fortunately there are still lots of places in the US where you can make a good living off of art and games and fun stuff. I moved to the Bay Area a few years ago and I've never been happier or better taken care of.
There are still lots of jobs in LA too. On a related note, you can't get a creative job in LA without being in a guild or union. I don't belong to any myself, but I've heard from people who were at first philosophically opposed to them, but now quite happy with the rates they're being paid. If that's what it takes to prevent people from being exploited for doing what they love then more power to JAniCA:
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-05-04/japan-to-spend-214.5-million-yen-to-train-animators
^I believe the first Little Witch Academia short actually got funding from the government through JAniCA.
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| Spoon 2475th Post
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| "Re(3):Re(10):'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Thu 25 Jul 16:31
quote:
Most big name companies employ a lot of freelances.
Funny talking animal cg
Contract workers pretty much define the majority of the artists at smaller cg houses e.g. those not named pixar, and it's tough watching departments clear out as the project cycle winds down. A number of game studios in north america have gotten wary of disosable labor for software engineering lositions over the past sseveral years due to the substantial time cost needed to ramp them up and get them working to the quality and standards of the place
. constantly interviewing people is also a time cost to existing emplyees. QA is still a spot for freesh faced disposable workers, though.
In north america, freelane/contract workers still get paid a lot better than their local minimum age, Even for some lower level positions. I think brandon and nobi know first hand how the job market in the video game industry is first hand, though; there's a ton of talent out there and a ton of freshies eager to get in. Structural issues are still there, but it sure as hell beats what's going on in japan... For those that can land a job, anyway.
When I started my career in games I was pretty much working for the same rates as an entry level Japanese animator. I was living in Atlanta doing contract work for early mobile ports of popular games. It was pretty rough, but I justified it with the naive belief that "this will be good for my portfolio!"
There are a lot of companies out there eager
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Didn't finish my thought on talking animal cg, but ice age 4 s for some strange reason is a colossal success in some random parts of europe, like germany.
I do think that there are some positions more abused than others in the game industry. I've seen too many unpaid intern designer openings, and a relatively recent EA job for developing oculus rift technology for next gen (likely the next frostbite engine) required relocation to sweden and was unpaid. Generally i think software engineers in north america are slightly less screwed salarywise, but there is still plenty of room for abuse.
Personally i think that a union's most critical service would be to save the workers from themselves: they literally do not know how much they are worth, and are so happily eager to undersell themselves that they wind up screwing the whole market.
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"'Little Witch Academia'" , posted Wed 10 Jul 02:09
and recreated with modern sexy and beautiful style that amaze you and feel never been experienced world before.
