[Jo Eun Kim]

In the first article, “A Tale of Two Titmouses: A cartoon Brew Investigation,” I’m STRONGLY surprised that artists in the New York TV animation industry earn less than half the amount that starting artists in Los Angeles get for the same job.

Although some artists working in NY studio satisfy with what wage they earn, for instance, the artist who said he did not work for wages, I believe there are more people than those people who think like him. We learn because we want and need to. We work because we want to and need to. But most of us want to work with reasonable salaries because we work as we have to live a life. Animation major, as it is an art major, is one of the fields that require expensive tuition to learn. But those artists graduating 4-years colleges but earning $400 per week seem like misvalued than unskilled laborers.

I feel Titmouses seems like pretense and hypocritical. They state that they offer more valuable things like an opportunity on the project, internship system, or health insurance, and so on. Even if I understand it is good but still the wage is too low. I do not want to talk about the wage gap. I want to talk just about the amount of NY studio wage. It is too hard. It does not show any respect for starting artists. I’m feeling so bad. I know money is not everything. Besides money, there are a lot of things, such as welfare or atmosphere in a company, to be considered as important as money is. However, T should not hide from the fact that they mistreated their artists in NY studio although they believe they encourage them with more valuable offers than salaries.

It also doesn’t make sense to me when an artist reports what his supervisors said about the reason for the shift, transferring the clean-up work to NY studio from LA studio. As the artist told, the reason was that the company considered the quality of work done by the LA studio as sub-par. This doesn’t support their defended argument on lower wages for the artists in NY studio. If they respect their higher quality of works, why do they reduce so much on the wage even to the half of what artists in LA studio earn, even though NY studio is a non-union branch.

 

The next article, “Rick and Morty’ Co-Creator Justin Roiland: ‘Fuck The Union’”, shows a controversy between Roiland and the Animation Guild. Raiload blames how unprofessional and desperate the guild was on this weekend. He says, the Union just put pressures on dealing with without enough time. However, the Union disputes on his ideas that the companies were uncooperative in term that the previous company, Starburn, wouldn’t return their calls, and the second company, Rick and Morty, was rapidly replaced to make the second season. Since knowing the transition later, the Guild has no choice but to make a contract as soon as possible. From my point of view, I guess that Roiland knew the problems or it will make a problem, however, he ignored the issue for his benefit. It is hard to negotiate for a working condition between company and the Union, because they both want to make a ‘good’ outcome in any way. I just personally hope they eventually find out the good outcome for both someday.

[Author]

Posts