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Working in animation and knowing what goes on behind the scenes vs. what fans and observers project onto people and shows (both praised and criticized) makes me never want to make assumptions and form opinions on things that I am not directly involved with.
People will say X person is a horrible baby-eating satanist when they are actually kinder than most, or form weird parasocial relationship 'unpronlematic uwu' projections of people who have, in reality, made their workplaces unbearable. It can be pretty funny but also frustrating
Also it's weird how quickly people go straight to "horrible garbage person" with someone they don't know. Truthfully they're probably just like anyone else on this earth. Alright.
Also, there's so many bits and pieces to be considered when making judgements, so it's easy to say "why didn't you do X when X happened?" Or "why didn't you try harder to do X?" When you don't know what's going on around that thing that produced that decision.
ANYWAY you're going to be disappointed to hear that this came on from the Chris Pratt discourse, who I don't really care about, but I could see some of the same patterns in things that happen around these parts.
Also, I've worked on things that get criticized a lot despite their leadership's literal blood, sweat and tears trying to make this business a better place, and I've worked on things that have been almost universally praised and maybe should have been looked at a little harder.
I've also learned that showrunners are not really the final decision-makers. Lots of times all the praise AND all the vitriol goes toward the showrunner. Time and budget is such a huge thing too. Man, there are so many people involved in making cartoons you wouldn't believe it.
Trying to advocate for a more diverse workplace can be frustrating too. As a storyboard artist you can reccommend people for a job until your ears bleed, but time constraints may call for a person with experience. People do their best to hold the door open but damn it's not easy.
Or say, you're a showrunner who has only been in storyboarding. You only know other storyboard artists. Maybe you have a week to find someone in...I don't know, 3D modeling? And you are given a very limited pool to choose from. I'm starting to realize that it goes a lot deeper.
It starts from the beginning, from which schools studios will go to to find interns or newbies, from who gets admitted to those schools.
On the bright and hopeful side, I know some studios are actively developing outreach programs that will start looking to nurture talent starting in high school. (That's really exciting to me, because I know that's when adults in your life start to say "do something realistic!")
I know a bit about one of those future outreach programs :^) so I'm hoping we can get the word out to kids about the different jobs in animation, what to put in a portfolio, etc, and hopefully help people to bypass the expensive and often exclusive art school process.
Anyway this thread went in a million different directions but it's stuff I've been thinking about for a while across multiple cycles of Twitter Animation Discourse
It's just based on my experiences and observations, so keep that in mind too.
It's just based on my experiences and observations, so keep that in mind too.
