alright, so critics are praising this movie for its “low budget” animation turning over a profit, but as an animation student, let me tell you how much of a scam this all is
how is 30 million USD low budget
1988′s Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo has an estimated $10,000,000 in it’s production, that includes equipment and pay and commercialization and production, and is considered by most to be the best-animated movie of all time, with a huge budget put into animation, an animated film with a low budget would be something like that Lord of the Rings animated movie from the 70s, or a Ralph Bakshi movie, only a couple million dollars.
Digital animation has advanced to the point it’s effectively cheaper, faster, and easier to produce than hand drawn cel animation, providing less animators and less cost. There are even reports that half of the Sausage Party animators were overworked and barely paid at all, too.
This has me to believe that most of the $30,000,000 didn’t go into the actual production, pay, advertising, the real number would be around $6-8 million dollars, the rest of the money being embezzled to producers like Seth Rogan, Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon, Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, and Evan Goldberg and the studio itself
in short, even though they had a $30,000,000 budget, which is 3 times the amount of the best-animated film of all time, cut down by 30% due to digital animation technology efficiency…….. they haven’t even paid or credited most of their animators, and even overworked them,most of the money went to Seth Rogan and his cronies in a classic Adam Sandler/Happy Maddison Productions style Hollywood-embezzlement scheme
one of the biggest fears for American animators is the industry turning into piss-poor conditions, like seen in Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan, where animators work in sweatshop conditions, are overworked, and get little pay for a job that requires a 4-year college Masters degree
PLEAAAAAAAAAAAASE actually spread this around, because not only is this just a shit practice at all, it damages a relatively-small, niche career type by encouraging massive budget animated movies while the actual animators themselves receive less wages, and more hours, and if these blockbuster budget animated films are made, and they don’t receive the money needed to actually turn a profit, film studios will abandon animation studios. Unions have never worked well in the animation industry, since it’s a niche industry and not something large scale like a factory manufacturer, with practices like Walt Disney Studios actually accusing Unionized animators of being communists during the McCarthy trials of the 1950s, or studios dropping entire animation departments as a whole and replacing them with outsourced animators in Taiwan. You’ll be really helping an entire industry improve in quality just by the general public knowing how much of a toxic practice this is.
update, animators for the film were reviewed by Cartoon Brew and discuss how horrible the conditions were for animators for this film:
Looks like the ones in the jokes are not the only dicks involved with this movie
Rebagel for awareness.
I wanted to see this for the animation but now I’m even more eager to settle for a pirated copy, that’s fucked up
Probably gonna bring this up on the podcast when we talk about the movie
This is absolute bullshit!!!!
Then people wonder why most animators try to make it on their own or make their own indie studio. Sure that means your films might not get shown in a movie theatre, but people are more online than actually going to the movies. I highly encourage people who dream in working with big studios to rethink things. This shit has been happening for YEARS and if more animators band together instead of looking for work from these guys it would impact the industry immensely (plus maybe actual good adult animation content). I highly encourage to go live your dream and not having to work for people who treat you like garbage. Sure you can like it, sure it could have been funny, but going to see this movie in theatres is supporting studios to treat people like this more and more.
I know I posted a lot about this, and I don’t care if you are tired of seeing it because everyone needs to know. This is my livilihood and its insulting to hear how animators are treated. If you support this movie, you support the idea that myself and any animator should be working under these conditions.
Mooncustafer 