Monday, March 09, 2015

Be Care What You Wish For...

An interesting read. No regrets, apparently. Wonder how long Henry will be able to take this before he collapses or just leaves.
Slaving away in Japan as Animator

9 comments:

Tom Moon said...

I wonder what you have to make in Japan to afford food, clothing and an apartment. It must be incredibly low, unless the company itself provides these things. And if the two-second animated example is any indication, high-grade Japanese schlock is still... schlock. The animation looks jerky and the subject matter trite.

So if it's "creative satisfaction" he wants, why not work an 8-hour day as an animator in this country, then go home and do something truly creative and original evenings and weekends?

Well to each his own.

Surly Bird said...

Tom...I have to say I found myself thinking the exact same thing. I didn't see anything that even looked remotely on par with Ghibli or Studio I.G. Not knocking the artist, but the samples on his tumblr didn't exactly blow my mind.

All I can think is...well, you got what you wanted and I hope it was worth it. And I get the impression it is or was. But the claims of not being able to work on important, high-quality movies doesn't really resonate with me. Doing torture-anime or Pokemon is preferable to working on stuff for Adult Swim?

But I do respect his ability and willingness to take the bull by the horns, walk the walk and other clichéd sayings. Can't say he didn't do something about his situation.

Tom Moon said...

And why not go for a job at Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks? Even with layoffs taken into consideration, it's got to be more financially rewarding.

I wonder what the laws in Japan are pertaining to unions. Know anyone from Japan who could answer that Ronnie?

Rickart said...

Not too dissimilar from guys like Ben H. and Roger R. who work their butts off to get a whole comic's worth of pages done in a month. They really love that work and I don't judge them for going for what they love even when it's not for much pay. You'd think that DC and Marvel would be paying a lot better for their comics work these days since it's the tree from which all the cinematic fruit comes from.

Tom Moon said...

Who is Roger R.?

Tom Moon said...

I can understand the pride that American comic artists take in producing the pages they do, even if it's for low pay. But at the bottom of the article Thurlow describes the kind of work he does, and it seems to include a lot of detail work and "in-betweening". So it sounds like the artistic satisfaction he gets is from belonging to a team that he thinks is turning out a creative, high quality product, rather than anything he is doing as an individual creator. This makes it especially puzzling to me, but again... to each his own.

JMG said...

Roger Robinson

Rickart said...

Good point.

MrGoodson2 said...

I definitely would not want that life. But that is where this product comes from. That work ethic somewhere in the world feeds the product maw. Imagine how much worse it must be in India and South Korea.