Stockholm Syndrome for animators

Cartoon Brew reported on a piece in the New York Times about unpaid internships. Specifically, that they may be illegal. The piece called out Little Airplane, makers of Wonder Pets -

"At Little Airplane, a Manhattan children’s film company, an N.Y.U. student who hoped to work in animation during her unpaid internship said she was instead assigned to the facilities department and ordered to wipe the door handles each day to minimize the spread of swine flu."

In the comments in the Cartoon Brew piece, many came on anonymously not only backing it up but making out that things are far, far worse. Unpaid interns being completely mistreated, psychologically abused. Workers being treated like children. If there's any truth to the stories there, it sounds like people are expected to work in hideous and demoralising conditions. For little or no pay.

I actually hope the stories aren't true. I rather like Wonder Pets. It would be terrible to think something so pleasant comes from a place like that.

Little Airplane aren't alone. Other companies are brought up in the comments of the Brew piece, some not paying people for years. Not paying for the work they are getting. Like whole departments of slave labour.

But that wasn't the most horrifying thing of all.


No, there is something much worse buried in the comments of that Brew piece - Stockholm Syndrome for animators.



Many people are taken on as unpaid interns, put to work on productions and not compensated in any way, if any of them are like the allegations aimed at Little Airplane, they are taken advantage of.


And the victims not only accept it. They are grateful.


Grateful for being exploited.

From some Brew comments -

"As the work experience I gain allows me to be hired there or elsewhere", "don’t write off the value of the experience", "the unpaid intern spot got me a foot in the door", "couldn’t an internship just be viewed as a training session or a really long interview process?" and more.


Yes, it's hard to get your foot in the door. Harder still to make a steady living in this industry.

And, if you work for free or very little, you are part of the problem.


You are sabotaging your own craft, your own end of the industry, your peers and your co-workers both old and new. You are setting the value of your work at zero. You are setting the value of your co-worker's work at zero. Those new kids who are having a hard time getting a foot in the door, you can be damn sure you're setting the value of their work at zero.


You are part of the problem.


It's hard enough in this business. The power and the money is in all the wrong places. Most people accept the situation as normal but many of these people being exploited or working for very little are more talented than the people doing the exploiting. But those people at the top have the money and the control, creative and otherwise.

Why?

Because they won't do a damn thing for free. They don't allow themselves to become victims. And, in cases like these, you can be sure the people at the top, the slave drivers, are laughing their asses off and are getting paid damn well for it. They're getting what they want. Don't kid yourselves that they wouldn't take anyone on if they weren't getting them for free. Anyone who has had anyone hanging around for work experience knows that having a new kid around is often far more trouble than it's worth.

Which means only one thing - to retain these people for any length of time, they need the positions filled. They need the work done as part of their production. The Brew comments point to whole departments in some places being filled with interns.

The people at the top get what they want and make damn sure they are paid for it.


Creative talent, on the other hand, can be discarded and moved aside with no problem because the creative people will work for free, will work for almost nothing. They are willing victims.

And that's why it's so god damned hard to get your foot in the door.

Don't accept that.

Don't set the value of your work at zero. Stop making it harder for every single other person in your end of the business. Stop being part of the problem. Stop accepting the exploitation.

Stop working for free.


And please, stop being grateful to your captors. It's not right when it comes from a sex slave who has been kept in a box for years and it's not right from creative talent.

Things Not To Do In Animation

Oh there are a lot of things that piss me off in animation. But this is high up there on the list.

If you know a scene is not good enough, why would you possibly think it would get through the system? More than that, why would you want it to get through the system?

Bizarrely, this is a fairly common occurance in animation. Perhaps all jobs. But I would have thought in animation, people would be striving to do the best work they can. Individual animators can make or break a show and delivering a really nice end product would seem to be a fairly admirable goal. But even on a more basic mercenary level, the quality of your work will dictate your position in the industry. How well you impress your director will count for a lot in animation's small circle where word of mouth is so important. It can directly affect how much money you make, or even if you can find employment at all.

Still, this happens.

Oh well. In an industry so small, that tends to shrink more than it grows, I guess it's better for the rest of us that there are people like this. It's probably why I'm the one standing over the desk rather than the one trying to explain why my scene isn't good enough.

I'm listening to the new VNV Nation album a lot right now. I love it. Here's a track. I'd love to do a children's book with those guys. Yeah, a book and audio CD. That would be very cool.

Lost fans are idiots

No way! Did he just call us idiots? Yes. Yes, okay, I did and that's not nice, I realise. But I'm being cruel to be kind. I want to go into more on dreams and their abandonment, as I feel I have loads to add, especially with the comments that came from that. But first, I feel the need to reach out to Lost fans and stage an intervention.

You are the victims of a scam.

Seriously.

There was some finale that aired the other day and, like Big Brother back in the day, no matter how much I try, I can't avoid hearing (or reading) about it. And what I'm getting from Lost fans sort of goes like this -

Oh my God! That episode was amazing! Okay, so most of it was filler but that bit at the end... who was that guy?! Was that Ben's father's brother? Does that mean that the past is now the future and the present is the present only now reversed? How does that fit with the Phase 2 Dharma jelly? I have no idea what the deal was with that thing. He must be totally dead now. Unless that means that he'll come back because of that explosion time ahhhh....

Sorry, I lost interest there.

The writers must be laughing their god damn asses off at you guys. They write random shit that means absolutely nothing and then just read your websites to give them clues as to what to write next. Which, as it happens, will also make no sense.

It's a total scam.

I watched it at the start. The two-part pilot is stunning. And the premise - strangers having to survive on a mysterious island with nothing - was great.

Until that premise was pretty much dropped in the first season when they found a stash of everything they could ever want. By the end of the first season, I was disgruntled. It was increasingly clear that it was, in fact, going nowhere. The writers were writing stuff in before they actually had half a clue what it was they were writing. Earliest example was the monster in the jungle. A loud thing rampaging, tearing trees down. They were too afraid to go through the undergrowth.

For a few episodes.

Then it pretty much vanished, people had no problem going through the forests and, when some writer remembered about it, they wrote in some smoke. A tiny little wisp.

Scam.

And the entire first season was taken up with shit happening to people and those people not telling anyone for absolutely no reason whatsoever. The lack of communication was far harder to believe than any poxy polar bear.

But it was at the beginning of the second season when I figured out their system and stopped watching. The system? The secret?

It's a show of first acts.

Only first acts. Introduce a new element, a big mystery. That's the first act. But instead of that element going anywhere and leading to a second and third act, they'd just introduce another new element. Another first act.

And repeat.

Hence the stupid amount of people on this deserted island in the middle of nowhere. New character... ooh mysterious... new character (let's hope they forgot about that last guy so we don't have to explain any of the cack he was doing)... ooh mysterious...

And so on.

What a load of cack.

Lost is like giving someone 1000 pieces, each one from a different jigsaw puzzle. If you tell them they're supposed to fit, they may well make something interesting eventually. But it still makes you a prick for laughing your ass off while they sift through the pieces.

And that's what the writers (and I use that term very loosely) are doing to you.

I think this is what pisses me off...

You see, I'm torn.

I don't buy into the Daily Mail's scaremongering. They are alarmist, love to prey on fears and are generally filth.

But that doesn't mean that we should all sit back and buy the idea that everything is fine either. That's the trick, isn't it? Bombard you with hyped up fears and you can't possibly make out what you should possibly be acting on. Makes it far easier to dismiss something.

It's disinformation on all sides. The Age of Distraction.

Whether it's from politicians, banks, military, whoever... when you are told that things are perfectly fine, perfectly safe, they usually aren't. Or maybe even always aren't. That applies to science too. We may all have had a good laugh over the doom predictions and it's certainly been a good conversation topic but whether the planet gets devoured by a quasar (unlikely) or not, to say something, anything, is perfectly safe is bollocks.

Plain, unadulterated bollocks.

As I said in the comments of the last posts, it ignores scientific history. It ignores people who died from radiation sickness, scientists who electrocuted themselves, poisoned themselves, did who knows what else to themselves, it ignores the mothers who took thalidomide for morning sickness, ignores the tens of thousands rendered permantantly brain damaged from lobotomies based on a theory that turned out to be complete arse (yet won a Nobel prize) and it ignores so many scientific fuck-ups since the dawn of time.

And ignoring the results of previous experiments is hardly scientific.

Scientific history is full of fuck-ups. To deny that would be to deny science.

Everything is not perfectly safe.

The only question is how large the consequences will actually be when the current generation of scientists inevitably turn out to be wrong.

But the Age of Distraction we live in worked wonders. People had a good old laugh about it. Some people got genuinely scared or at least appeared to on this net we call 'inter'. Some people condemned the scientists. Some people condemned those people. Most dismissed the sources, having long since proven to be alarmist. And, ultimately, we just went on with our lives. Exactly as we were expected to do.

So what if it had been dangerous? What if it is dangerous now?

Next week, people will have forgotten about this and moved on. They have bills to pay, the next big fear to jump to, the next scandal to talk about. After all, you can be sure that some people took advantage of the distraction to move the Iran invasion plans closer. It is the anniversary of the modern green-light all war justification, after all. Perhaps that will be next week's topic, before they move on to the next.

Everything is not perfectly safe.

I hate them. Every single one of them.

I really do hate them. So much.

My laptop blew up a few weeks ago. Okay, it didn't blow up exactly but the hard drive died. So it cost a bunch to get the hard drive replaced and I've been battling with a fresh install of Vista ever since. It's all these poxy updates. It downloaded and installed about a thousand and four crappy updates, each one with the sole purpose of trying to break my system.

And they succeeded.

It took another fresh install and a careful series of updating bit by bit followed by a huge trip through the system restore to get it working. And I'm still having to look at that 'your system didn't shut down properly screen'. The system stutters with a ridiculous amount of processes running, most of which are totally pointless. It has eaten up far too much time. All I want is a laptop that works.

It's easy to blame Vista but I have an XP desktop machine that is a magnet for spyware, malware and every other kind of ware they're is. I don't know if someone is secretly downloading shit the second I turn my back but I have every protection programme on the planet running on that thing and I still end up spending hours cleaning that piece of crap every time it gets infected - which is several times a day.

It's a constant battle.

Even at work, with corporate strength virus protection and firewalls, it turned out someones USB key was infected with a trojan and they were happily passing it around the studio.

I just hate computers. They take up far too much time than they deserve. Are there any computers anywhere that actually work as they should? That don't crash? Don't get broken by system updates? Actually, you know, work?

Do I have to?

I'm just not a people person. I know that. Call it a fault if you will but forcing me together with a bunch of people isn't going to change that. It's not a 'face your fears' sort of thing. Well maybe it is but if I was afraid of spiders and you threw me into a pit of the things it would only serve to make me more afraid of them. Substitute contempt for fear and people for spiders and it's the same idea.

We've been working on Mr.Hat for ages now. If I didn't get on with the people here by now, I never would. But, as it happens, the people here are a rather good bunch. All the more reason to not get any ideas about forcing us to have 'fun' together - something that could tear apart the good work that all those months of distant polite civility has done.

Oh, and here's the icing on the cake - the place we'll end up is right where the boss lives. And miles away from anyone, or anywhere, else. So I'm just going to be thinking of the godawful hour and a half journey home. That's assuming it's not some Hills Have Eyes thing in the ass end of nowhere.

That's all the fun I can stand.



On a totally unrelated topic, Toonhound (one of my favourite sites as it deals with UK classics, loads of which you USers have totally missed out on and, while your cartoons were going down the toilet in the 70s, some absolute golden crazily creative classics were being made in the UK) reports that Bob the Builder is going CG. Read their article here.

Now I'm not a huge fan of Bob the Builder, it's mostly because I think the theme song is pure evil and I'm pretty sure it plays a message from Satan if played backwards. But the stop motion is lovely. It's tangible. Real. It just draws you into it. Will they get that in CG? Seeing as I reckon the number one reason to switch would be that they are trying to be cheap, I would guess not.

Design flaws

I'm working on a Dell computer that's probably about three years old. They may have changed since then but this one is just so utterly shit. It's like it was designed by someone who never intends to use a computer in their entire life. The front has two USB ports under a flap at the front, at an angle, facing down. Oh, and they're backwards.


Makes no sense.


Thing is, it sounds small, but when you're working with this design flaw every day it just has a way of getting under the skin. What a piece of crap. Mr.Dell, you may go and shite.

Just who do you work for?

"Non-partisan". I actually heard one producer use that. How far would he go, I wonder?

You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I've seen pitched. Or ads that agencies or clients wanted to produce. I don't even know if I believe in the concept of 'evil' but, if I did, I've seen it and heard it from my drawing desk.

Often, in the world we live in, making money overrides morality. It's like the "I'm just doing my job" is the out-clause for anything. Some tits even believe that's the good way of doing things - let market forces sort them out.

Well, it's a tired reference I know, but if you are a Stormtrooper on the Death Star, sooner or later someone is going to drop a proton torpedo into your little hole and blow the shit out of you. And you'll deserve it.

The last ad I ever animated on was for Pfizer. For asshole clients. It made me feel dirty. I haven't worked on an ad since. I guess I should count myself lucky that I've been able to avoid it.

Pop

I find some pop culture references quite funny. I enjoy Harvey Birdman and without the constant references to old Hanna Barbera characters that show would be nothing. But there's just too much of it. Robot Chicken, Family Guy and others are completely built on their pop culture references and many other shows that have more to offer still don't seem to be able to resist peppering their shows with 'humorous' nods.

I guess I wouldn't mind if they really played with them or parodied them well or whatever but, for the most part, it seems to be enough just to show a scene from something people know.

It's like the television equivalent of a band shouting 'anyone here from Bristol?!' to a Bristol crowd. People hear it and think, 'Hey, I know what that is!'. Like recognition is all people need to feel involved. Maybe it makes them feel special and part of something bigger.

Just seems a bit lazy to me though.

So why am I bringing it up? Well, as I'm sure many of you know, Family Guy is getting a Clevelend (Cleveland?) spin-off. I enjoy Family Guy. It certainly made me laugh, especially early on. But it's run its course and it's a shame to think that another show just like it will take up the space and resources that could have been given to something totally new. That isn't built on just pop culture references.

Oh, and happy St.Patricks Day to all you Irish/Americans/Irish-Americans.

Settling into the new routine

Spending a whole week being pissed off is tiring. Like, really tiring. It has just worn me out.

It's not good for me and it's not good for anyone around me. But you get to a point where you fully absorb your rage into your system and what comes out is apathy.

I'm just too tired. So very tired.

At least it's Friday. Hoping for a nice relaxing weekend doing mostly nothing at all. That sounds good.

Oh, I've just noticed there's a word missing from that image above. I'd fix it, well, there's the apathy...

One down

In reality, he didn't use a crayon. And the results of his DIY restoration work, while not perfect, weren't actually all that bad. There's a damaged part at the bottom of the painting but the main large offending mark right on the front has been taken off quite nicely.

Hard to believe it's only Wednesday. I'm wondering now if I'll survive the week. I feel like wrapping myself up in a sleeping bag and hibernating for a season or two.

As the rage builds

Yesterday's post was written (and drawn) in a very quick angry reaction to what I encountered when I came in. Since then, my rage just built and built.

Thing that pissed me off the most, well, that's in the drawing above.

His workmen, under his supervision, wrecked my stuff. I got almost no work done yesterday as I was consumed by anger. On top of that, other unrelated crap was heaped on yesterday. Not a good day in general.

Today, I am just left with thoughts of revenge.

One tip for company owners and producers: a homicidally pissed-off worker is not a good worker.

Goddam pack of wankers

I am so pissed off right now. So pissed off.

The studio is in the process of a revamp. So I come in this morning and workmen have been in all weekend. Here's a partial list of what I've found -

A box of my cds has been stood on, breaking the cases.
A painting on canvas has some kind of industrial strength glue all over it.
A rare and pretty priceless movie poster has been torn.
Mr.Potatohead is in pieces (okay, he's used to that).
And to top it all off, my workspace is smaller than ever.

Did they think the painting was a collaborative effort and it needed more white? What the hell does it take to be careful?

Livestock

I'm sure not all producers are like this but I swear our producer will hire anyone who walks in off the street no matter how much the director protests. It's always, "well let's see how he gets on" or "we'll just give her a go and if she doesn't work out we'll know soon enough".

Then things get really awkward when there's actually a bunch of really talented people looking for work. We've hired all the students and mountain goats and have no room for actual animators.

Stop hiring livestock. Please.

Monday mornings

Especially on a Monday. Life is hard enough without some grinning idiot trying to be nice. They say you're never fully dressed without a smile. Well, I say go naked.

Unless you're seriously ugly. Then wear clothes. But no smiles.

14th of February

Valentine's Day is bullshit. Plain and simple. You don't need me to tell you it's just a cynical money-making exercise and if you buy into it you're a sucker. I'd just be telling you what you already know.

But, that aside, some of it is plain insulting. For anyone living with depression, it can be a very tough time. Dealing with loneliness is tough enough and many (if not most) people with depression can feel completely alone even if they do actually have supportive people around them. Valentine's Day is a kick in the pants once a year for anyone in that situation.

It can be really tough to deal with.

But is it less insulting to those in relationships? No. No, it's not. It's more insulting. I need to be told what day I'm going to be romantic on? Dictated to by card companies? Peer pressure? Flowers? Chocolates?

Puh-lease.

Most guys are probably already with me on this. But girls? The ladies? You buy into this sort of stuff for some reason. Why? It's like the diamonds thing - they're just rocks. But it's advertising and marketing. That gave us the 'diamonds are forever' crap and it gives us Valentine's Day too. Are women more susceptable to advertising? I don't know, that's a whole other subject but, when it comes to romance, I have little doubt that they are.

But if your man does the Valentine's Day thing, he's just doing it to get off the hook the rest of the year. He's doing it out of a sense of duty. It's fake. False. Seriously.

I say forget about Valentine's Day. If you want to do something romantic, do. But do what you want to do and when you want to do it.

Oh, but if you know anyone lonely, anyone with depression, reach out to them on this corporate blackmail day.

Just on a whole different subject, I had installed a counter the other day and suspected it was telling me lies. Turns out I had it set to count page hits rather than unique visitors. I've changed that now. What is the norm when it comes to counters - page hits or unique visitors?

Oh, and they're not free

Don't for a second fool yourself into thinking these papers are "free". Companies are willing to pay good money (or even dirty money) to advertise in these things. That means your attention has a monetary value. The second you take one of those papers you are paying by giving that attention.

That is a transaction. So you're not handing over money. But your attention is worth more than that to them. That's why they aren't even bothering their asses charging for them.

Realise the value your attention has. Don't just give it away without thinking. It's worth something. You are paying. And if you think advertising has no effect on you or you know enough to make your own decisions, well, that's bollocks. You think these companies are going to sink that much money into something that doesn't work? You think that's how they became so rich?

No. You are influenced by advertising with every choice you make.

Every time you take one of these papers, you are paying.

You free newspaper guys

You guys have well and truly made my shit list. You're worse than those charity people who mob streets. Don't get in my face in the morning. I'm grumpy enough at that time without being offered 576 free papers on my way to work. You clutter the streets, slow people up who are already slow enough and don't seem to understand that, if I wanted a paper, I could find you. You don't have to push the damn thing in my face.


I hope you all get crabs. Itchy crotches upon you all.

The Aftermath

Thing is, you don't even care if I had a good weekend, do you? Nothing pisses me off like being brought into conversations that not one party cares a damn about. Small talk is utterly pointless.
Even a simple 'good morning' on a Monday can send me into a rage.

Others include:
Hello, Lovely morning, Heard the forecast? See the match? Why aren't you wearing pants?
And I can assure you the last thing I want to hear about is your fecking boyfriend. That doesn't just apply on Monday. That's every day of my entire, probably short, life.

Puh-lease. Mondays. Leave. Me. Alone. Especially if I so obviously look like shit. By the way, if there was a third panel to this image, it would be me punching her in the face.

I wish I had drawn a third panel.


Edit: Oh what the hell. Here's what the third panel would look like: