The animators producing successes like “Inside Out 2” are facing mass layoffs and overseas outsourcing as Hollywood slashes production costs
BY:
Catherine Kleo
Technology/Media Reporter
Member of the Luminative Media Team
10 August 2024 (Los Angeles, CA) — Mike Rianda is trying to get the word out: while Hollywood is enjoying a box office resurgence fueled by the outrageous success of animated titles like “Inside Out 2”, he says workers in the animation industry are facing an existential crisis.
Mike is the director of “The Mitchells vs. The Machines” and he has called on animators to anonymously share their personal struggles to forge sustainable careers in Los Angeles. The stories that have poured in paint a picture of an industry where thousands are fighting to find jobs as studios outsource more of them to other countries, while those that do find employment face burnout from ever-increasing workloads beyond their job description.
His message to those animators is clear: get involved with The Animation Guild, which is beginning its contract negotiations next week:
“We have union members on the brink of homelessness. A job that once provided a reliable income is becoming less and less viable. What do we have to lose? Why not get loud? Why not get crazy? Why not put everything we’ve got into this?”
Next week, the Animation Guild will follow the lead of its live-action IATSE counterparts with new contract negotiations set to begin with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on behalf of more than 6,000 members. Based on internal surveys, the Animation Guild estimates that at least one-third of its membership has been laid off in the past year.
As a member of the guild’s negotiations committee, Rianda has been working to get others in the industry more involved and to raise awareness that the creators of cartoons and animated features are in for “the fight of our lives; if we don’t get ironclad protections in this next contract, it could put a lot of people out of work for good”.
As with other Hollywood labor groups, artificial intelligence is a major issue facing animators and one that has been a galvanizing force to get members involved. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg, as other factors such as wages, burnout, job creep and outsourcing have made working in Los Angeles as an animator increasingly unsustainable. Says Nora Meek (an Animation Guild member who has worked as a writer and storyboard artist on multiple animation projects):
“There’s a whole host of humans back here. We’re artists, we’re animation workers and we’re making starvation wages in a lot of cases. We see how the bosses thank us for these record profits and it’s by putting us in the unemployment line.”
Haves and have-nots
Animation has brought a stable windfall to Hollywood studios trying to navigate cuts in production spending. Animation brought the box office out of a largely terrible first half to the year thanks to Pixar’s “Inside Out 2”, which has grossed an animated record $1.55 billion, and Illumination’s “Despicable Me 4,” which crossed $750 million worldwide this weekend.
In the last third of this year, and into next year, animation will continue to play a major role at the box office. DreamWorks, Disney, and Paramount all have major animations in the pipeline, as do several specialty animation houses.
Along with box office and streaming subscription revenue, these films also offer merchandising revenue that can spiral into the billions. Disney and Universal often turn their hit films into plenty of apparel, toys, school supplies and theme park rides. Paramount is looking to do the same with films based on IP like “Transformers,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”
One example: Paramount’s “Paw Patrol” grossed a modest $144 million at the global box office. But it earned the company a whopping $8 billion in merchandise sales.
But for the vast majority of Animation Guild members, the demand for more of their craft is not leading to more successful careers. The layoffs in the past year include some of the top studios in animation. Weeks before “Inside Out 2” came out, Pixar laid off 14% of its workforce after letting go 75 employees a year prior, and at DreamWorks Animation 40 employees got the axe.
Last November, Netflix laid off 50 employees, or one-third of its feature animation division. And while no artists were included in these layoffs, the streamer was planning on reducing the number of in-house animated productions to two per year, lowering the number of job opportunities for animators.
Beyond the writers’ room, Hollywood animators face the specter of more outsourcing. While Walt Disney Animation continues much of its feature work in Burbank, the studio opened a secondary studio in Vancouver in 2021 amid the increase in projects for Disney+. Universal’s Illumination does a significant portion of its animation work in Paris, while Skydance has its own animation studio in Madrid.
In the event that a deal cannot be reached with the Animation Guild, those studios and others would likely lean on their facilities outside the U.S. to keep production running during a strike. While Rianda said he’s not thinking about such a scenario, he believes that the members of the Animation Guild still have leverage through the experience they bring to the projects they work on:
“Animation is a global industry, but our union still represents thousands of the most experienced, talented and creative artists you can find anywhere in the world”.
Job creep takes hold
Beyond the employment front, big news stories regarding animated projects have only raised the bitterness among TAG members, who feel that their work is not respected by executives.
For example, Warner Bros. canceled and deleted the Looney Tunes film “Coyote vs. Acme” for a tax write-off, paying lip service to the possibility of selling it to another studio for distribution only to insist on a $75 million price tag that no studio would agree to. The response from the animation community was immense, with “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” writer-producer Phil Lord calling Warner Bros.’ move “anticompetitive.”
Lord himself became the target of criticism in a Vulture magazine report from “Across the Spider-Verse” animators, who accused him of repeatedly calling for edits to already completed scenes on the Marvel movie that led to more strenuous workloads of “more than 11 hours a day, seven days a week.” The animators alleged the extreme workload led to mass burnout — 100 animators left the project before its completion.
While “Spider-Verse” was unique in its ambition and scope, Animation Guild members have complained the workload required of artists on major studio projects has only increased — and wages aren’t keeping pace with the new demands. TAG calls the trend “job creep,” in which artists are pressured by producers to not only do their jobs, but to take on other elements of the production process, of which they are not necessarily specialized.
Rianda pointed to storyboard artists who “have to draw out the entire movie as a comic book.” Studios are asking storyboard artists to edit the storyboards, provide scratch voices and even do basic animations of certain scenes:
“Look, here is how it works. They’re already being underpaid for one job, and now they’re asked to be underpaid for multiple jobs. But there’s a lot of pressure among those who are employed to not say no, because so many of their friends are out of work. So you are screwed. The studio puts you in a bind. Because they know you need the work”.
In fact, Nora Meek (the writer I noted above) said that job creep can render entire jobs in the animation process obsolete. Storyboard artists, for example, are being pushed into working as layout artists, which involves taking the storyboard shots and providing more key details about the size and placement of characters in a certain frame before the full-on process of drawing animation frames begins:
“They’re expected to keep things tight and on model, which eliminates the purpose of a job like a layout artist who would normally take a storyboard and make it on model before it goes to animation.
Color designers are also now expected to finish models of characters. And these are entire jobs that are just replaced, just because studios feel like asking us to do it”.
The rising cost of living in Los Angeles is making it harder for animators to stay in the city, yet leaving for more affordable parts of the country can lead to fewer job opportunities, even if the work is remote.
But many got trapped. Once COVID safety protocols were lifted, major studios began requiring workers to go back to the office. Many simply could not afford to move back to L.A. One said:
“I’ve worked hard. I’ve worked long hours on a production, but despite my experience, I’ve lost potential jobs at Disney and Warner Bros. because they require work at their offices in Burbank. I get it for some jobs like writers, but for people like me, we get the assignment, we do the art and turn it in, we get notes back and that’s about it. We don’t need to be in the office for that. But the studios insist”.
The GenAI storm cloud
Also looming over the animation community is artificial intelligence, though what form it will take in the future is unclear.
Productions like “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” have used forms of AI that make animators’ jobs easier by automating repetitive tasks such as line work. For animators that’s almost acceptable.
But the bigger concern involves generative AI, the technology from companies like OpenAI that has the potential to replace tasks now done by human animators. The Writers Guild of America leveraged its 148-day strike last year to secure protections against mandated use of the technology. But some of those protections are now sagging.
The Guild is keeping the details of how it plans to address generative AI in its contract under wraps, but the guild has heard reports from members about the technology being used by studios as part of pitch meetings to animators about certain projects. While pitch work isn’t union-covered work, it is a job that a lot of concept artists who may be members of the Animation Guild could take, possibly with the hopes of staying onboard with that project if it gets greenlit.
At the moment, generative AI isn’t seeing widespread use in animation, but that is expected to change soon change. A recent survey conducted by CVL Economics (which has done a detailed analysis of the effect of GenAI in the entertainment industry) says AI could disrupt at least 29% of animation jobs. And 78% of entertainment companies involved in animation said they have adopted or are planning to adopt the technology in the near future, the CVL analysis showed.
Yet while AI is a major priority internally, guild insiders aren’t making the technology the main subject of their messaging campaign. Over the past week, the guild has encouraged animators to send in video messages about their Hollywood struggles, signaling to fans that the creators of their favorite shows need systemic change.
A particular focus during the buildup to negotiations has been on writers, who are paid on a different scale than live-action shows and films that are under WGA jurisdiction. While the guild was able to negotiate minimum increases in the last round of contract talks, the current minimum rate of $2,126/week is less than half of the $4,515/week rate for WGA-covered shows.
Animation writers can often be paid even lower, as many animation studios no longer hire writers’ rooms, instead employing the writers as freelancers, who aren’t paid for work like table reads and punch-ups, for which staff writers are required to be compensated. Said the guild in a statement:
“At a time when less shows and movies are being greenlit, animation writers are now required to find exponentially more work to make the same wages that a staff writer would make on one project”.
For Rianda (the chap that opened this piece), that increased involvement shows that animators are aware of what they and their creations are worth to the industry — and that they’re ready to unite to assert that worth:
“The impact that we leave on pop culture with our work is indispensable. If the studios continue to take us for granted and make it impossible for us to make a living doing what we do best, it will be at their own peril, because they will lose what makes their films and shows so great”.
