An animator’s insight about the current Thomas situation
Quick explanation since I don’t see many people talking about it: the last Storytime madlibs video was animated by fans, each of them was paid around 1.80usd per second and the credit was not given until after the animators asked the team to have their links included.
I asked my friend @siriwesen, who is a freelance animator from Germany, for her opinion in the matter. Here’s what she had to say, everybody say “Thank you Siri” because she spent a lot of her time checking every detail with me in order to give me a good perspective.
Disclaimer: all of this information is based on a freelance self-employed base for the central european market, it may vary by country.
tldr: the animators did an amazing job but were grossly unpaid, even for a passion project/beginner gig.
First, I gave her an hypotetical about a job offering to pay 25usd for 19 seconds of animation
I wouldn't even type a response for that. For 25 USD I'm not even turning on my pc. Or I'd do a nitty grity break down explaining how long animation takes by the hour with a past work example. I am always saddened with people selling their work at under 20.
When I gave her a rough explanation of the situation, specifically about Alex’s situation
So just as an idea. Even when working on a frame saving project like I did til yesterday, where you have a lot of still images and hold in between several frames. 5 frames can take 1-2hours depending on complexity, if you have a line test to follow, etc, not to forget lipsync. Lipsync takes forever. I'd expect 1.80 per frame not per sec.
Like if they need 15 min for a full coloured frame, at 4 drawings they should get an hourly wage done. So 20-40 USD, and 20 is the utter lowest you should go. 20 sounds much as an hourly wage but it is not when you have to pay insurance and retirement savings.
After I showed her the madibs video
From what I can tell everyone hat freedom in what to do and how to do their scene, that means they spent time on design and thinking the scene.
Some of these movements are really flowy and smooth
Like either they pay one fixed budget to one animator or a team of animators, which would still be scummy but a beginning artist would usually not depend on the money for rent as they usually have other jobs and get a good portfolio piece out of it.
However with so many people on this... In order to get the video done in time I assume... This is outrageous. Because some artists will have just gotten bad luck on their scene and not have had the inspiration etc to create cool fucking showreel shit, so the got barely paid.
I'm gonna say some of those are relatively simple. Like you can make them within 4h, but it's still not enough pay. Motion graphics people make 30-40 an hour minimum.
I remember one time I ended up applying for a story time channel as editor and they wanted to pay editors 10usd per hour, which is absurd. If you can't afford animation, don't trick people into doing it. But be clear from the get go that this is a passion project. If its a sponsored video you better get the money for the animation.
Generally id say you could pay all the animators easily, if you have a well paid sponsorship/ product placement on the video.
Also, Im impressed they have partly fully animated clips there? Like the artists clearly went all out.
Her opinion on how to pay when you have a low budget
It's a fun video but if you wanna make it collaborative you either say: hey this is not being paid or you say: I'm sorry I have a set budget for this video and this is it so you would work underpaid, I can only offer you letters/reviews of recommendation for further work applications on real jobs, but be transparent and let the artists know, that's all im asking. They need to have the choice.
There will always be people who stay for the sake of the project because the love the channel or sth, but let people know you can't afford a proper pay for them but that you will do what you can to rectify or validate their work.
Give them shout outs, feature them at the end of the video, share them on insta tiktok and so on.
I feel like reducing the staff to 10, and paying each 100-200 would have been still a better "beginner" gig...
About the way the animators were credited
The description is the worst place to put them. Obviously they should be there but no one reads the description, especially when the vid gets embedded. Shout out your artists ffs.
About the project in general
It's just really a shit situation and I think their choice to make this such a large body of people working on it also doesn't necessarily help.
I just want to stress, that my estimates are based on a freelance self-employed base for the central european market, the prices for US Market may be different,but from what i know it is still common to pay 20+ upwards to your animators.
In Korea/Japan and other countries it is popular to pay animators per drawing,Idon't know the exact amounts but it's peanuts less than a dollar per drawing, but this is first off part of why people criticise the outsourcing in animation, because many times it is bad labor practises at bad wages to the point that animators have to have 1-2 other jobs in order to afford animating.
I dont know how things have improved over the past years but I reckon not much.
Also you can lower prices, when the major creative decisions, such as character design, colour palettes, background design, and storyboarding / timing has been pre done by other people/staff in the production, aka you just draw the characters. or you just colour them. that's how you can manage a feasible rate of drawings per day because you do a single task in a pipeline.
I can't tell how strict or coordinated and split their production pipeline was, but I think it is counter intuitive to pay young artists really bad wages because it discourages them from further engaging with the art/craft.
This is a very double sided edge. I've seen people in a former fandom of mine being heavily disappointed in finally getting to work on the actual show,also the creator - fan dynamic is often an unfair one, because it is an uneven power-balance in which the creator/idol does not only hold the financial power over the fan, but also an emotional one. it's a predisposition for an unhealthy relationship, which the one with the power has to make the active effort to break it even and remove the worship-aspect and make clear to the artist,, that they're on a job-relationship playing field.
I also think it's important to figure out if any minors were contracted. Depending on countries, it may be, that they were technically not be legal to employ, there are places where you can only set up your own business aka freelance, once you hit the legal age.
Generally speaking, I'd also give the advice to never! start work without a contract.
Also if you can avoid it, never give out a custom demo example work or custom sample tailored to the project you're applying to, if you can help it, UNLESS you get compensation for the demo. I've wasted so many hours on providing potential clients with customised demo animation/drawing design and never heard back from them.
Only do this when you really trust your client and have worked with them previously, or if this is a specific pitch for project platform (which does basically work on this basis).
About working on passion projects
The job I completed yesterday, was definitely underpaid, but the director did basically show me his financing for this passion project, he got finance and funding, but it was still more a small drop in the pit of money you usually use.
I went on board with the project because he did take the time to reply to me, explain the project details, shared history on the project, and because he has ties to animation studios and work areas that I'm interested in. I got some really amazing character animation shots out of the project which I am allowed to use in my showreel/portfolio, I got some shout outs and minor cloud due to social media and in the end I WAS PAYED (around 1500 Euros to be precise). It's not as much as it would be for the work usually, but it's still a decent amount and,at the time I took the job, my livelihood did not depend on this money.
Even though this project i took was technically "underpaid" the conditions and favours i got out of it were absolutely fine. (also got 2 switch games out of it as a compensation for late hour work, lol).
Maybe this put it into perspective of what type of "underpaid" beginner jobs are good and which ones are not.
About working for exposure
I remember back in uni, we had a lot of industry speakers who had reputable careers in british animation, and there always was this thing about "is it okay to take unpaid jobs / jobs for exposure"and the answer always was either "never unpaid" or "it depends." and i think this is pretty much the best way to answer.
There were people who did amazing music videos in the 80s and who basically got only 100 pounds from it but that kickstarted their career,but it was high risk, it's a gamble and 80 percent of the time "exposure" gigs are useless.
Thanks again to Siri for providing all this insightful information, let’s hope @thatsthat24 @thejoanglebook and the rest of the team not only adress the issue, but also take the time to pay the animators correctly. They are artists and animation enthusiasts, they should know better than doing this.
