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So last night I was typing a blog for two hours and it refreshed, I lost everything.
I do NOT wanna type all that stuff out again, so I'll summarize.
Basically, when I was a kid in 2000, I wanted to work at Disney, I was inspired by Disney himself and also John Lasseter at Pixar. I grew up to be a mixed media artist and cartoonist, but in high school I really questioned whether I could achieve the dream of being an animator or at least a concept artist, and I got some answers that were disappointing due to the realities of the animation industry.
- You don't own the characters you create. (They are owned by the company. Contracts may differ. Sometimes ALL your artwork is owned by the company for as long as you work there, and you're limited to artistic freedom.)
- You won't make revenue alone from merchandise sales.
- You will have power struggles with higher ups and execs on your ideas, and it won't be pretty
- Getting too attached to your characters is risky, and the company can just scrap them if they don't like them/not making enough money. All they see is dollar signs $$$
- If you're a woman, you're highly susceptible to sexual harassment and treated like second class.
- General work conditions, and not getting paid enough.
- Unreasonable deadlines, forcing you to rush, at that point are you even enjoying it?
- I wanted to work with 2-D films 20 years ago, my dream became out-of-date and obsolete by the time I grew up. (There are talks about bringing 2D back, but for the longest it has not been profitable)
Jhonen Vasquez, creator of Nickelodeon cartoon Invader ZIM, had struggled with the company, they scrapped ZIM after he fought constantly to make the show "darker," And he had issues with receiving any revenue from the Hot Topic GIR shirts over the years, profiting off of his creation
C.H. Greenblatt, creator of Chowder and Harvey Beaks, advised artists not even to enter the industry, to just have a small independent team if you want to animate. He said that he felt awful growing so attached to his characters only for Cartoon Network and Nick to just scrap them.
John Lasseter used to be my hero. I watched a well-made video exposing John Lasseter for his allegedly prideful, idea-stealing, creepy behavior. He would give people, mostly woman unwanted physical contact, and even kiss them on the mouth without consent. (Ew?) He's also sabotaged Pixar films for power, and sexism, Brave is a good example. (Too many details with that, I'll just link the video explaining everything here.) In the video it also explains a woman like myself, who had the same dream for working for Pixar, she harassed constantly, eventually discouraged and left the company when nothing was done about it. (This in particular crushed me.)
So knowing all of this, am I really heartbroken that my dream was not what it seemed? To be honest, I was disappointed, but I moved on a while ago anyway, because it was obsolete. It's like if an 80's kid loved the Jim Henson films, and wanted to be a puppeteer, only to find out 18 years later, no one even does that anymore. 2D was what I wanted to do, and it just wasn't profitable. Oh well. (I had a real conversation about this with an artist at an art university tour back in 2014.)
I'm also very attached to my characters, so selling them off to corporate without the guarantee my projects will be greenlit, isn't the way to go. It's just too risky. I'm sorry if this has discouraged anyone wanting to get into the industry, but these are the realities, and know what you're getting into if you want to do it.
-Noodle
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