Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

Post by wahnfrieden » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:02 AM UTC

pubby wrote: post #126

soulofmischief wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If people were paid fairly, most productions would be untenable. A similar argument was used in favor of perpetuating slavery prior to the civil war. > People just have to accept that means the industry will shrink dramatically. So many things will just never get made. I've accepted that. Now let's pay people fairly for their time and skill. > That also means far fewer people will get to become animators. They’ll h…

Slavery ended as industrialized agriculture was taking off. While farmers are paid better now, there are a lot fewer of them. Perhaps we will see the same with animation; there will be a few well-paid and highly-skilled artists that are automating with a bunch of AI. I doubt that will be the solution to equality though.

Post by astrange » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:04 AM UTC

Moru wrote: post #36

savanaly wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with your diagnosis, but I don’t see why it’s considered to be a problem. Why shouldn’t people be free to trade off salary against other desirable traits in a job? Even at the extremes?

Because it's a very uneven power balance. Big company using young inexperienced workers that just want a foot in the door on a childhood dream and have no idea how much their work is worth. Most companies knows to exploit this to the full. Especially known in arts, music and game industry. Less so with (metal) industry jobs where there are old unions helping the workers to a healthier power balance. Except for Musk t…

Post by Larrikin » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:05 AM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #8

searches for "union" hahaha yep, this word exists in this article but entirely in the context of how Japanese animators have absolutely no union. I ain't saying the US animation union is perfect but at least there is one; if I hear that some big production like Spiderverse2 is at a non-union shop then it's off my list to bother seeing, even via piracy. I trained to be in this industry and burnt right the fuck out fro…

Post by dron57 » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:08 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #142

nitwit005 wrote: post #78

> because people just don't particularly care enough to look through the glass. No, I suspect absolutely everyone with any knowledge of animation knows animators are paid terribly. The article itself has a meme image about the pay.

Western animators aren't paid that terribly, just anime animators, and only some of them. But part of the compromise that Western animation does to be more productive is that it all looks bad. There's a fake-anime style Superman cartoon on I saw that has the artistic quality of maybe a Japanese elementary schooler. And then Netflix makes animated sex comedies that look like old Flash cartoons.

Post by chasing » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:15 AM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #120

chasing wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "if we paid people fairly things would be prohibitively expensive" argument is a terrible one, just to note. First, it rarely seems to actually be the case since the requirement that employees be paid fairly mostly just drives away low-value efforts. It's also an attitude that, if taken to its logical extreme, demands society have an underpaid underclass that suffers so the rest of us can have nice things.

First, there is no such thing as a "fair pay". All of it is driven by demand and supply, always, except when regulations or external factors somehow break things. Second, of course increased costs of production lead to consequences for end users or people who buy the content. We see that all of the time in every industry.