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About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

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Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#41

Post by egypturnash »

neonnoodle wrote: post #15
chmod600 wrote: post #8

Most people are probably best off with good jobs that sound boring but are highly demanded. Could be plumber or software engineer or accountant or whatever. People are happy to see you, happy when you do your job, and pay you well. People work as a team rather than compete. Don't underestimate the value of pleasantness in day to day interactions. Cool sounding jobs are competitive and you are likely to be treated poo…

So I’m an animator and I’d like to work on my craft. I’d also like a comfortable living, nothing outrageous by American standards. I’m not interested in the “job” of animator (unless something really wild came along), because these jobs don’t sound very appealing. It is very competitive, a “dream job” that attracts lots of young artists willing to work to death for a chance to break in to the business, but with relat…

I trained as an animator and really, if you want to be able to pick up any of these things, move to Los Angeles. Find classes, visit figure drawing sessions, find people who are in the industry or on its periphery. The internet spreads it out but you are still much more likely to luck into things like “hey my buddy is looking for help on a project” and “I’m gonna go visit my friend who works at WB, wanna come along?”.

You may get some of this by joining animation forums. Join in stuff like “reanimation” projects or other weird passion projects. Don’t expect it to be paid for a depressingly long time.

And personally? I use my animator training to draw comics and do commissions, it’s fucking grueling work. Even if you can get a union gig.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#42

Post by [deleted] »

euske wrote: post #17
k33n wrote: post #4

I'm curious what data is underlying the claim in the headline. Are these animators leaving the industry entirely, or just quitting one job and taking another?

I think they quit the anime jobs entirely and move to more marketable jobs like graphics design. This 90% claim is more or less anecdotal, as I read that the industry veterans say that they saw only 1 out of 10 young people survived in this industry. Many work environments are similar to each other: there's no written contract and they have almost no unemployment insurance, etc. I don't understand how those anime lov…

[deleted]

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#43

Post by neovive »

setr wrote: post #34
chmod600 wrote: post #8

Most people are probably best off with good jobs that sound boring but are highly demanded. Could be plumber or software engineer or accountant or whatever. People are happy to see you, happy when you do your job, and pay you well. People work as a team rather than compete. Don't underestimate the value of pleasantness in day to day interactions. Cool sounding jobs are competitive and you are likely to be treated poo…

SysAdmins fit this bill, but I know them as having a pretty terrible social position — no one cares about you until something goes wrong, and then they’re pissed at you. Fix it, and go back to your dungeon.

I've worked in IT support for many years and this generally comes with the territory. Although some users/customers value your contributions and are very grateful, the majority unfortunately view IT as dial-tone service; only interacting with IT when something "doesn't work for them." As an IT professional, patience is highly-valuable skill.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#44

Post by tharkun__ »

afavour wrote: post #32
ipaddr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mortgage software actually sounds interesting and complex. Game developer working for someone else sounds boring.

There is no way that being a game developer does not sound interesting and complex. I say this as someone that doesn’t even play many games! But it’s something almost everyone has a point of reference for and has (hopefully?) enjoyed at some point in the past.

I would say it depends. Never say never.

Personally mortgage software sounds complex but boring to me.

Game developer sounded interesting and complex before I knew more about it. Now it's more boring as in after knowing the death march culture I don't want to know more. I guess your parent meant that too by 'boring'. If you work for yourself or with like minded indie developers that sounds more interesting to me.

It can definitely be complex.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#46

Post by nerdbaggy »

alspacka wrote: post #28
neonnoodle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I’m an animator and I’d like to work on my craft. I’d also like a comfortable living, nothing outrageous by American standards. I’m not interested in the “job” of animator (unless something really wild came along), because these jobs don’t sound very appealing. It is very competitive, a “dream job” that attracts lots of young artists willing to work to death for a chance to break in to the business, but with relat…

I’m an animator and the complex jobs == production hell. Every facet of the industry is a race to the bottom, just a matter of how insulated you are from it. Luckily I’m in medical animation where things move a little more slowly

Is it true that for TV shows a lot of the actual animation team is outsourced to countries with low income?

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#47

Post by spfzero »

chmod600 wrote: post #8

Most people are probably best off with good jobs that sound boring but are highly demanded. Could be plumber or software engineer or accountant or whatever. People are happy to see you, happy when you do your job, and pay you well. People work as a team rather than compete. Don't underestimate the value of pleasantness in day to day interactions. Cool sounding jobs are competitive and you are likely to be treated poo…

This is so right on. If you care about the remuneration, then you'd best do something highly valued. If you care about doing something you "love" instead, that's manifestly not highly valued, then don't complain about the money.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#48

Post by sigstoat »

euske wrote: post #17
k33n wrote: post #4

I'm curious what data is underlying the claim in the headline. Are these animators leaving the industry entirely, or just quitting one job and taking another?

I think they quit the anime jobs entirely and move to more marketable jobs like graphics design. This 90% claim is more or less anecdotal, as I read that the industry veterans say that they saw only 1 out of 10 young people survived in this industry. Many work environments are similar to each other: there's no written contract and they have almost no unemployment insurance, etc. I don't understand how those anime lov…

> Many work environments are similar to each other: there's no written contract and they have almost no unemployment insurance, etc. I don't understand how those anime lovers turn blind eyes to this and still somehow "enjoy" anime. It's horrible, horrible stuff.

do you only "enjoy" art from artists who have good corporate jobs, or live in countries with UBI?

no? hmm.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#49

Post by numpad0 »

artursapek wrote: post #24

How far are we from automating the job of animators with tech like what makes DeepFake videos?

Decades, perhaps. I don’t think there have even been an ML model that generate vector drawings, only patchworks of existing bitmaps from training data.

Re: About 90% of Animators Quit Their Jobs Within 3 Years

#50

Post by yann2 »

paulpauper wrote: post #38

THis is not suprising at all. It's similar to game design. 1. demanding hours and work with mediocre pay and little hope of promotion 2. no lucrative stock options ,even working for Disney or Pixar pales in comparison to how much $ Facebook,apple, netflix and amazon, workers made 3. no fat six-figure salaries. It's one of those jobs where people do it out of a passion, so there will always be a supply of workers even…

>working for Disney or Pixar pales in comparison to how much $ Facebook,apple, netflix and amazon,

I dont think you know too many creative people. Artists i.e. people with an imagination, are much more capable of finding routes out of corporate energy draining traps, than the rest of the chimp troupe. The rest have no hope really other than to claim their salaries justify whatever meaningless shit they are made to do.

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