PLEASE SIGNAL BOOST THIS! RUSSIA HAS BLOWN UP THE KHAKIBKA HYDROELECTROSTATION DAM AND IS FLOODING COUNTLESS UKRAINIAN TOWNS AND VILLAGES! THIS IS THE BIGGEST ECOLOGICAL CATASTROPHE IN EUROPE SINCE CHORNOBYL!
Post written and provided by @ohsalome: Now, the situation is desperate. I know I’ve bothered you with donations recently, but this is a time-sensitive matter. I’ve collected several organisations that are currently helping to evacuate people from the territory that is/will be soon flooded. Please, please, send them any cent you can and signal boost this, the things are really BAD and we need as much help as we can get:
PEOPLE ARE DROWNING, THE ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ARE BEING WIPED OUT! THIS IS SOME OF THE MOST FERTILE SOIL ON THE EARTH, WHICH HAS BEEN GROWING GRAIN FOR EXPORT TO HUNDEREDS OF COUNTRIES, INCLUDING THE ONES MOST DEPENDANT ON FOREIGN EXPORTS!
Here you can also donate to the Firefighters foundation that works directly with The State Emergency Service of Ukraine. They’re collecting money to buy a lot of motor pumps tu pump the water from flooded areas.
So Netflix is releasing this animated movie but here’s the thing - all backgrounds are done in AI. No actual BG artists were hired or credited for this work.
And here’s the kicker - I gave them too much credit. I realized that not even the AI users are credited apparently.
Check this out:
“+Human”. No names, no nothing.
I know it’s tempting, but please don’t hate-watch this thing. Numbers equal profit even if the people watching are just doing it to mock. Don’t give Netflix and other studios even more incentive to fire more animators and replace them with machines trained on their work and skill.
Hilariously, the excuse used is ‘there aren’t enough artists’. That’s not true - there are more than enough artists, but the real issue is that no one wants to pay a living wage. Here’s a short video about the reality of animation in Japan.
The biggest winners in this equation at the end of the day are the AI infrastructure owners - owners of Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, etc. Do not feed this machine, it creates more monopolization of entire industries, raises a powerful few and dehumanizes the rest.
EDIT: a lot of people are unsure what the anime’s called - it’s The Dog and the Boy.
I was out of work for six months without pay because we had no work for our studio thanks to Netflix cancelling animation projects we had prepared to work on
I’ve long since cancelled my netflix subscription….
Hey fam! The Mouse is refusing to recognize the unionization efforts of its production workers. If you’re not familiar with what PAs or PMs do, I’ll outline it briefly. The tl;dr is that NO ANIMATION WOULD GET DONE WITHOUT PRODUCTION WORKERS. They are the glue holding together every single production of your very favorite cartoons!
They take notes in all the meetings with the artists.
They make sure the artists are meeting their deadlines (and showing up to the meetings in the first place).
They help us navigate studio servers to find the files we’re looking for.
They send us our time cards, and make sure we get paid!
Production workers do all this and more, often for minimum wage. The hardships that they suffer as a result–the long hours, the unpaid overtime, the abuses of power–are horrific.
You’d really think that they’d be compensated fairly for these jobs! Can you imagine trying to live in Los Angeles or New York on minimum wage with a job that definitely won’t allow you time to pick up a second or third one??
This isn’t some Change.org petition. It’s not going to sell your email to spam companies. This is through IATSE (our union)’s website.
TELL DISNEY YOU STAND WITH PRODUCTION WORKERS!!!
if you’re not in this job, you would never know how intense, involved, and straight up complex animation production is, but because it’s mainly administrative, behind the scenes, and most skills are taught, production staff are often viewed as highly replaceable and unimportant. not everyone is nice to us, and more and more studios are stripping production personnel of our “corporate” status, meaning if the show ends or gets cancelled, studios aren’t required to relocate us to another one. when this happens to artists, the guild protects them, but production will lose all benefits and will need to file for unemployment until they can find a new job (which isn’t easy in the animation industry these days!). remember, a season of a show takes only about a year and a half to make. losing all benefits and having to file for unemployment every year and a half is NOT a way to build a career nor is it a stable and sustainable way to live!
to follow up on OP’s points, here’s some more stuff production staff does:
STORYBOARD AND ANIMATIC
managing the master project file, which sometimes means scanning, cropping, camera adjusting, and typing hundreds or even thousands of panels, dialogue, and action notes by hand into storyboard pro if the artist drew them in photoshop or traditionally
pinning up and taking down boards for pitches and reviews (yes, manually, with push pins on walls). every note drawn on those pieces of paper needs to be scanned and sent to the artists.
inputting new and revised panels into the board project file and then exporting them to the animatic editor, which necessitates memorizing the board front to back because artists don’t always track their panels or tell you which ones have been updated and you have to know instinctively.
conforming, which means going panel by panel and comparing it to every frame of the animatic to make sure they’re a complete match, which happens multiple times and usually requires quick turnarounds.
RECORD
reaching out to recording studios, voice directors, and talent agencies to coordinate record times and availabilities.
creating the schedules, typing up scripts, adding line numbers, updating line counts, exporting boards, collecting audition tapes, arranging catering, watermarking literally everything, and making sure everyone involved gets the right stuff and the most updated versions of that stuff ahead of time.
circle takes.
sending the raw selects to the dialogue editor, arranging radio plays, and sending the clean selects to the animatic or post editors.
DESIGN AND SHIPPING
creating all the templates artists need to design a show’s assets (hundreds of them!), which includes pulling board references so they know exactly what to draw, compiling brush libraries, mood boards, and vis dev pieces.
tracking the progress of hundreds of designs across multiple episodes in every stage they’re in (and as OP said, making sure the artists turn them in on time).
creating a reference list (a GIANT spreadsheet breaking down every single use of every single design in every single scene of the episode–takes DAYS to create for just one episode!)
preparing shipments of everything the animation production facility (usually international) needs to make the cartoon, which involves a lot of exporting, layer adjustments, cropping, re-exporting, and cataloguing.
POST
acting as the main point of contact for those overseas animation facilities, which often means trying to field questions from a non-native english speaker every day.
making sure the showrunner and exec producer review weeklies/dailies quickly and thoroughly and the notes get to the overseas studio on time.
configuring the retake list so the production can stay under budget (determining retake categories and footage count, which are connected to prices–involves a surprising amount of math!)
assembling retake materials, including creating lists of tasks for artists to do, getting them the shots or designs they need to fix, and making sure all fixes are completed in time.
CONTRACTS
negotiating rates with every non-corporate player involved in the making of a cartoon and making sure all NDAs and legal contracts are signed and correct.
sending boards, designs, animatics, (and as OP said, time cards) to dozens of people with highly specified jobs who require very specific items to do those jobs, making sure they get them at the right times, and making sure whatever they send back (be it notes, sheets, or lists) makes it to the appropriate party so the right action is taken.
and this is all in addition to very stereotypical secretarial work like taking notes at meetings like OP said, managing the showrunner and producer’s calendars, and maintaining a pleasant atmosphere for the crew (coordinating game nights, decorating the office, organizing parties or lunches, etc.). production is expected to know everything, what’s going on at all times, and how to fix it, which is a lot of work and often, a lot of pressure!
All the leg muscles and feet studies I did to level up my anatomy drawing. It all started 17 months ago as part of an art challenge I started on my Youtube channel and it’s finally done!
Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.
As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life Deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.
If you have any more resources to add, let me know! I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.
I hope this helps, and happy writing! <3
12/26/2020 update!
Based on recommendations from followers, I capitalized Deaf out of respect and acknowledgement of the Deaf Community, and added some sources about Black Deaf Culture and BASL. Will definitely be adding more.
I also want to include more articles specific to Selective Mutism, but need to do some more research first.
