So Titmouse is an American animation studio that has found lots of success and work and has managed to make series on a decent budget. And despite them primarily using Flash, their quality output is still much higher than some rather stiff-looking traditionally animated shows (Milo Murphy's Law, We Bare Bears, Gravity Falls from time to time) and on top of that, they even revolutionized Flash to make it compete with ToonBoom of all things: youtube.com/watch?v=AizepmgmkOY
So the question is... Why the hell haven't we seen an uprising in other American animations studios when it clearly can be successful without being overly costly?
Liam Morgan
Because cartoon network and nickelodeon call all the shots, there's no room for expansion in american animation
Jonathan Peterson
Titmouse has some pretty questionable practices that allow them to do what they do.
Jace Russell
Color me interested in knowing what these practices are.
Landon Stewart
SHIRP
Andrew Perry
Canada gets tax breaks/are required to have a % of canadian content on kids TV. Sure, most of it is shit, but still.
Kevin Mitchell
salt covered whips
Anthony Barnes
>Why the hell haven't we seen an uprising in other American animations studios
Canadian studios largely fulfill that need. They invested in the hardware/software and training early.
I recall there being stories about Titmouse paying their non-union animators in New York only $400 per week, less than half what a union animator in California would make.
That said, the real question is why we haven't had any employee-owned animation studios start up. Cutting salaries isn't the only way to be competitive in the market. Making salaries equal across the board and cutting out unnecessary management-and-up levels would be competitive and give everyone a livable wage.
Nolan Scott
Flash is still a shit animation tool, ToonBoom all the way since the 1990's.
Levi Brown
>Paying union more than non-union.
That's sounds pretty typical to be honest.
John Young
It is. They've also been shifting jobs from California to New York. If the animators unionize in New York and ask for the same Californian wages, Titmouse would just move again, probably out of the country entirely. All of which Titmouse is well within its rights to do.
It's time for people to stop trying to fight only for higher wages, and start rethinking business structures completely. If animators have enough sense to organize into a union, they can also organize into a co-op.
Jaxson Watson
The problem is they have no bargaining power unlike American movie stars.
All US animators (2d especially) can be replaced at a 10th of the cost overseas for the same quality.
William Evans
They already have a studio in Canada.
Easton Rivera
I'm aware, which is why I said "entirely", i.e. closing down everything in the US.
Considering the poor reception to Nerdland, that is a possibility.
Dylan Reyes
I can't stand them. All their shit looks awful to me.
Austin Watson
I think that Yotta is kind of an employee-owned studio, their page said it's all formed by a bunch of freelancers.
Cooper Gray
It is basically commission work.
Xavier Wilson
Neat, what have they done? Is the business actually set up as a co-op/collective, or ESOP?
It's almost all commission work. If it's outsourced to a Korean studio, it's de facto commission work.
There's actually a lot of pork (middlemen fees) in the outsourcing system, and it only works because of scale. American animation studios can be competitive, if salaries were equalized. There's just no incentive to do this unless the studio were employee-owned.
Parker Martin
why do all american animators fucking suck just go back to outsourcing to Japan
Ethan Garcia
Does anyome saw the movie Nerdland?
Jaxson Nelson
"Tit"mouse, sexist much? And doing shows for children too? How did they get this far?
Jose Thomas
it's time for america to implant standards in foreign country's slaves. The koreans and Chinese would be fucked if they had a workers rebellion.
Parker Miller
>if they had a workers rebellion > china
user. user.
Isaiah Russell
Raising standards means raising their quality of life, which in the long run makes them even more competitive with the US, while increasing costs on goods for us and lowering the dollar's buying power. The only things we can fix are at home, not abroad.
Sebastian Johnson
Considering all the work their getting from Dreamworks and Amazon, they'll be just fine.
Adam Green
CHICKS
Jackson Powell
DIG
Nolan Cruz
What animation studio takes care of their employees well? I know this is a gossip pit for artists and writers but I always hear stuff about poor compensation and business practices for a lot of major studios.
Blake Hall
Because Titmouse = Filmation, Flimation was doing everything Titmouse was doing back when they were in business but then John K fixed Hanna Barbera by rebooting The Jetsons and TMS was given a actual budget to work with with Orbots & Blinkins and put everyone else to shame (what they had with Dic was LESS then what they got on the likes of Cobra and Orguss).
Logan Stewart
>has found lots of success
Work, yeah. But a lot of their stuff has flopped pretty hard.
Chase Taylor
The way that American cartoons are structured makes it pretty much impossible for small studios to start and come up. In Japan it's easy because you buy a slot on a channel, the channel doesn't necessarily decide everything that goes there. You have to make a show that CN and Nickelodeon or Disney Channel want or else it's not going to happen. Most people probably don't want to start a studio just to work on stuff others tell them to like Titmouse. There are a number of studios who do though.
Carson Lewis
Shows flopping are never really put on the fault of the studio making it, just the studio who approved it.
Aaron Stewart
>China >""""""workers'"""""" rebellion
user please
Ethan Bailey
Now, now, user. if they all committ mass suicide, that would kind of act like a rebellion.
Aaron Bailey
Geez, we get it, you hate Titmouse and love TMS. Just fuck the company already and get it over with.
Blake Edwards
GIANT
Ayden Hill
>just go back to outsourcing to Japan t. Doesn't no a thing about animation Once Japan realised they are pretty much pumping out 80% of global animation alone, they started to charge america expensively. That's why america out sources to korea, who have "literally who" studios by comparison to japans studios.
Jordan Gutierrez
know*
Ryder Nelson
Yeah, they are. But I think it might just be an online network of dudes at their computers
Chase Green
No, it's because Korea pays a third of what Japanese studios pay as if a (low end D-List) Japanese studio pays $900 a month it's Korean counterpart only pays $300 a month hence why studios use Korea.
Of course you do have studios that pay their staff alot more money then that like with TMS (6600 yen a hour) & Rough Draft (21,000 won a hour) who pay and treat their staff like a American studio. Thats because TMS = Termite Terrace 2.0.
John Watson
is toonboom really that superior?
the more i look for stuff it seems alot of programs use it from all of FOX's shows and fucking princess and the frog used it
that movie was brilliant looking and that voodoo song was great
Xavier Morgan
It's all in how you use it. It certainly is the most popular of the animation programs next to Maya at least.
>Thats because TMS = Termite Terrace 2.0.
And how do you suppose that is? If it's because they worked on WB shows, then that's a pretty stupid reason.
Nathaniel Collins
More like Adobe never make any improvements to Flash for the benefit of the animation industry despite knowing how widely used it is. Why Titmouse stands by it I'll never know.
Gabriel Jenkins
You guys know this is actually a problem right? China is having civil unrest and they're tired of being shit on all the time for no pay. There's like the beginings of a civil/revolutionaary war over there.
Which is why lots of major companies are moving out of china and into India, and other semi-developed 3rd world countries.
Jayden Garcia
>Why Titmouse stands by it I'll never know. Because ToonBoom is a rather new program in the states and it's much easier to find hundreds of animator applicants who are highly familiar with Flash than TB. And Titmouse also opened when ToonBoom was even more recent in the States than that. To shift over and have their employees go through training or find new people who know the program would cause a huge halt in production.
Jeremiah Thompson
No, it's because their directors acted like directors.
Later on they stopped doing that and acted like the others but their older directors still did what made them special in their golden age (Masuda, Tomizawa, Hachizaki, Aoyama (when stationed there), Yano, Yokobori, Takiguchi, Noguchi and Oyamada for starters).