animation in hard times
Posted by dermot on January 23, 2009 at 1:18 pm
In addition to this site, I also manage a blog dedicated to tracking the ongoing financial/ecological crisis. I don’t want to allow too much of that content to bleed over into angryanimator, but it’s relevant to this post - which will contain some suggestions on how to ride out a downturn. Now that even the mainstream media is forced to admit that times are bad, there’s been a plethora of glib lifestyle articles telling the public how to deal with hard times.
Right; the same people who helped get us into this mess, who ridiculed the realists, are now going to show us a way out.
Magic 8-ball says: "UNLIKELY".
The current crisis isn’t a surprise to me - I’ve been ready for it for several years…so you may find meatier fare in this piece.
2008 was a horrific year for the economy, and 2009 seems certain to be far worse - with the entire financial system threatened with systemic failure. The worst case scenario is a USSR style collapse. Whether this comes to pass is anyone’s guess - but the possibility exists. The effects on animation should be severe whether we see Recession, Depression or Splat, as studios lose clients and lay off staff. Scary rumours have been circulating from friends who work at Dreamworks and Disney. There’s a lot of fear out there - and deservedly so.
Animated projects are discretionary, even in good times. Don’t be fooled by the argument that entertainment boomed during the Great Depression. There are too many animators, and too few projects.
My resume isn’t as full as some, but includes many roles in animation, since 1988. Feature, TV, Interactive and Internet - traditional hand drawn animation and Flash. During that time there have been several slumps, some of which were downright nasty - especially 1994 and 2001-3. The coming downturn shows every sign of being far worse than those.
First, how do I make a living today? OK; my situation is NOT typical of most animators - so please bear that in mind. I no longer work in a studio. I work from home in Portland, Oregon, on contract work - mostly small-scale freelance projects. One client is in Tennessee, another in LA, and a third is in San Francisco. These contacts were acquired through friends in my former jobs in LA. I live low on the hog, and follow as low-stress a lifestyle as possible. On average I work 20 hours a week, sometimes half that. NOTE: to achieve this, it was necessary to scale down many aspects of the modern lifestyle. This is more feasible than most people realise.
I get by. Soon to be 40, I have no intention of sweating blood for soul-sucking Entertainment Corporations if it can be avoided. Granted, I don’t have health insurance (Russian Roulette), though it could be afforded, if absolutely necessary. However, I don’t intend to spend retirement on a round-the-world cruise, or relocating to Florida, to die on a golf course aged 75 wearing ugly clothes.
Again, giving advice is tricky, as everyone is in a different situation, with different skillsets. I’m including these points as suggestions/ideas - what you do depends on YOU, and your circumstances. Not all of this will be universally applicable - but there may be something here to give you pause for thought, or to give you ideas. That said, here are some of the things that I’ve done over the last few years. Sorry if this sounds glum and depressing - it’s not meant to be - but it’s a good time to take stock, and make preparations for a reduction in available work.
- Downsize! This applies not just to animators, of course, but to the general population. Many animators/cartoonists are especially bitten with consumerism - and have large collections of toys, comics, DVDs, etc. Most of this is just “stuff” - junk - and you don’t need it. You should give serious consideration to selling as much of it as you can, or even giving it away. A moratorium on buying new stuff is vital. Wait out 2009. We’ll have a much better view of things by the end of the year.
Take a drastic look at your needs and wants - and stop spending so much money on things that you don’t need! This is the single most important thing that you should do - reduce your monthly expenses. How far you go depends on you. I don’t have a car, phone or TV. My total cost of living, for rent, utilities and food is between $800 and $1000 a month. That’s the income of a MacDonald’s burger flipper. This means that I can take very low paying jobs, and still get by.
So, how do you live without a car in America? That’s impossible, right? Well, in some areas it is - but don’t be so quick to assume that you can’t. I went carless in LA for 2 or 3 years prior to leaving, and it is possible. Even the LA public transit system can be navigated. Travelling by foot and taking the train/subway/bus system, I saved myself between $5,000 and $8,000 a year in car expenses, as well as losing about 40lbs through ambulation (aka "walking").
I have no intention of ever driving again. The average motorist spends an average of $8,000 a year on their car. No thanks…I’ll walk, or take the bus - and pocket the savings.
I cancelled my phone service, and have never had a cel phone - and paradoxically my social life improved. Again, your mileage may vary. Now I use email, facebook or skype whenever a phone call is necessary. Skype is free to extremely cheap - and knocks a chunk out of your monthly expenses.
Bye bye phone company.
Find it "impossible to save money"? Well, calculate how much money you spend in a week, and in a year, on lunch. For bonus points, calculate how much money you spend on that mid afternoon cup of coffee in a week, and in a year. Yeah, I love to eat out - but is it worth $5,000 a year for lunch? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to make your own?
The internet has filled the hole formerly occupied by the TV (a $100 a month expense, also relegated to history). Having no TV, and getting your entertainment online or through Netflix, is one of the best things that you can do. One of TV’s main functions is the creation of artificial desires. You’ll find that the craving to spend, spend, spend will drop off dramatically if you remove the thing.
- Get out of debt. This is a hard one for many - though it’s a lot easier if you follow step 1, above. Many people are carrying student loans - even for a soft-skill like animation. I was incredibly lucky - first job was in animation, at the age of 18 - straight from school. We were paid poorly, but we were paid. After four years working for Don Bluth, I left the studio with a skill and a few thousand dollars in the bank. Compare that to today’s animation student, who leaves school with a partial skill at best, and up to $50,000 in debt.
This is an outrage…and yet, how useful to employers, to have workers desperately in debt - and who are terrified to be unemployed…
If you are in this position, then you must do what you can to not make the situation worse. If you have a credit card, try to pay the damned thing off as soon as possible. Albert Einstein once called compound interest "the most powerful force in the universe". If your interest rate is 10%, your debt will double every 7 years. If your interest rate is 20%, it’ll double every 3.5 years! It’s called "the rule of 70". Divide your interest rate into 70 to find the doubling time.
Do not make yourself a debt slave. Replace your credit card with a debit card - works the same, but you can only spend what you’ve got in your checking account.
- Take on more freelance work. I’d rather have 10 small freelance
jobs that are sporadic than one full-time well-paying studio job. The advantages are many: if you work freelance, you can work from home. Home can be anywhere with an internet connection. You are not exposing yourself to the physically and spiritually toxic environments of corporate America. You can lose 50% of your clients, and still survive.As your client base expands, you can call your own shots - and eventually become your own boss.
I left Los Angeles and moved to a small Canadian town in 2007, to work for a TV Flash animation studio for 12 months. I found that I couldn’t handle the 40 hour work week any more. After that, I returned to the States and moved to Portland, Oregon. I was able to make the move to Portland without a job, as my cost of living was extremely low; rent is relatively cheap in Portland (compared to LA), and I had 3 small sources of income (again, enough to average the annual income of a Burger-flipper).
I recently completed a 30 second TV commercial for a client. The total cost of the animation was about $3,500 - with another $1,000 for an After Effects pass. Granted, we already had the characters designed and pre-rigged from the client’s website - but nevertheless, that’s a price tag with which most established studios cannot compete.
By making it possible to charge a low price and live off of it, you actually create work that otherwise would not exist. Even a smaller studio would have charged several times that amount - and likely delivered a sub-standard product. They’re just not in the same division as a lone animator working out of his bedroom, farming out bits of piecemeal work around the world as needed, with no studio overhead or rent. Had my clients gone to an LA studio, they’d have been billed $30,000 or more, not $3,000. Money that they just can’t afford. The job would never have been done.
- Retrain. You animate in Flash? Learn some After Effects as well. (This is #1 on my to-do list). To survive, you’ll need more than one skillset - so pick another program or two that complement what you’re doing now.
If you do lose your job/income, then do NOT sit on your ass watching Jerry Springer re-runs. Cop on, and use the time to learn a new application, or work on buidling your resume. This sounds obvious, but too many people use that free time to wallow in self pity, or sloth, or booze. BAD ideas.
If you work on feature, then come to terms with the fact that you may end up working on projects for cel-phones/devices/internet. There are a lot of smaller jobs as you move away from the dinosaurs of the feature animation world…and this offers more flexibility. If you only know 3D, a few classes in Flash is a good idea. Flash is one of the easiest animation programs used professionally.
If you’re really smart, you’ll learn a skill completely outside the entertainment industry. Something practical - and necessary for a wrecked economy (think the Great Depression).
- Reduce expectations. If I had the 1990s to live again, I’d give up on the asinine "American Dream". Instead, focus not on getting rich through unearned riches from the stock market - instead, concern yourself with preserving what you already have. You don’t want your carefully gathered savings lost in a bank crash/401K debacle/Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
If you learn to take pleasure in the mundane, your materialistic cravings will subside - which will, paradoxically, make you happier, and wealthier (if not in terms of mere currency). In "Paradise Lost", John Milton gave the best lines to the bad guys - in this case, the Devil himself. Cast from Heaven into Hell, Satan says:
The mind is its own place and,
in itself can make a Heaven of Hell,
a Hell of Heaven.Which is a more elegant way of saying "If you can’t have what you want, want what you have."
- Relocate. Not for everyone, but think about moving to a place where rent isn’t $1200 a month or more, as in Los Angeles.
Relocation is a lot easier if you’re not burdened with a house full of plastic junk - so if you are going to do this, travel light. When I moved from Canada to Portland, I came in with two suitcases and a luggage bag. Again, separate wants from needs. You only need one plate, one cup, one knife, one fork, one sleeping bag. Many things can be picked up when you arrive (it being cheaper than shipping furniture, etc.)
Relocation may not be a good idea if your social network is in a particular city - but if things turn really bad, then what is the point of sitting in an LA apartment and watching $1200 a month or more evaporate out of your savings account?
- Network. Get on Facebook, MSN messenger, and stay in touch with those co-workers that you like or trust. It is too easy to let people drift out of your life. Social Networking sites are an easy way to keep in touch with ongoings, without pestering people. I’ve been able to farm out surplus animation to former co-workers - and also to take on jobs that would be too big for me to take on, were I out of touch.
- Question your assumptions. By assumptions, I mean the cultural myths that say: we leave school at 18, get a job, pay taxes, marry, have 2.5 kids, buy a house/mortgage, work for another 20 years, retire to Florida or Spain, and die, surrounded by a bunch of ungrateful family members. Really? Is that the best they have to offer? Um, sorry pal, but count me out.
There is no law that says we have to do any of these things. You may be one of the lucky ones with no ties that bind - in which case many possibilities open up - emigration to other countries. Will the job situation be better in Brazil? What about New Zealand? Tasmania? India? Japan? North Korea? Maybe I want to spend the rest of my life animating short films for Greenpeace, instead of crappy re-tread cartoons for Disney’s mobile phone division.
- Health. For the love of God, don’t fall victim to the curse of “animator physique”. Animators have a sedentary job, which is compounded by stress and half-decent wages - which leads to drinking and overeating…which leads to weight gain and health problems.
Ask yourself: is it worth ruining my health permanently with diabetes, alcoholism, or glandular problems, just to enrich an indifferent company that sells an ephemeral product?
- Investment. By Investment, read "emotional investment". This is more applicable to younger people, as by the age of 35, most animators have learned this the hard way. NEVER invest your deeper emotions in any company owned by another person. You are just a mercenary, a temporary hire. You are NOT a member of their family, even if they say that you are.
Either you own the company, or you are a TEMP.
You work to the best of your ability, but don’t ever give them a piece of your soul. If you find yourself working extra hours without overtime pay, then it’s time to take stock, and plan your next move (elsewhere).
In the age of youtube and other such video sites, there has never been a better time for talented young artists to make a splash with their own projects. You can sit around your employer’s studio bitching and moaning, or you can use your talents to make your own film, stick it on the internet, and see what happens.
Just be sure that you’re not working for a corporation that claims ownership of all your intellectual property while you’ve been on their payrolls. Be smart.
In summary - in the near future, there will be fewer job opportunites from large entities like corporations, and those jobs that do exist will be on a smaller scale, for a lot less pay, and probably be from smaller organisations.
Or, I could be totally wrong. Happy days may be here again, etc., in which case…
The best approach is: “Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”
If you want more info, the following sites might be of interest - but only if you have the stomach for serious content:
Ran Prieur is one of the smart cookies on the Green spectrum. In How to Drop Out he tackles some of the pros and cons of extracting oneself from the economic system. The linked article includes an update on his previous 2004 essay on the subject, which is a little more nuanced. He has a page of criticisms and replies to the essay here.
Albert Bartlett: Arithmetic, Population and Energy. A well known 1 hour video lecture by Albert Bartlett (the Gandalf of Gloom), about exponential growth. A real eye opener.
Bad Economic News: Automatic Earth. This site collates all the bad stuff, and offers commentary and analysis. They were calling the current financial meltdown a long time before the TV bobbleheads. It’s a depressing read, so be warned.
Wikipedia on Voluntary Simplicity. There are a lot of people who have been stripping the clutter from their lives. The ones that I’ve met are happier than most, for some reason.
Lifehacker: Save money in a recession. Some similar points to those here.
2 Responses to “animation in hard times”
[...] entry is fully written in it’s author’s blog. Read all about this here. This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can [...]
Working from home is great because you not only save money on transportation cost, but you no longer require clothes or regular baths.
I have also wondered about the toys and comic books; several friends in various facets of the entertainment industry have offices/cubes/studios full of unopened toys and limited edition DVDs. Consumerism would be nice if they let you buy things that people really need like flexible protractors and illegal drugs.
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