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alt text: "the state of the animation industry"
"you're pirating that show? don't you wanna support the creators?" "I AM the creator."
"haha the only way I can show future employers my work is to send a link to a bunch of pirated copies of it haha what a nightmare haha"
I watch a lot of "lost media" discussion channels.
There's been a lot of lost media searches where the people looking for the thing suddenly found a crucial hint when someone who worked on the project posted a 2.5 second clip of the thing in question in a video cv / showreel.
Expect a lot of that in the future. Except about media that probably didn't even get released at all in the first place.
"Capitalism is the driver of innovation"
Is this the infinity train guy?
That's Owen Dennis, yeah.
"Keep Circulating the Tapes" of the current era
🎸 BwaaAAaaAAnnnggg 🎸
If pirating even works. Kiana Mai has a similar haha-this-sucks post about how some of her best work is forever locked behind an NDA.
Which is fucking bullshit.
I don't feel much need for a more detailed or formal argument, on that point. I don't need to fly a diagonal flag and declare workers must etc., in order to say, copyright doesn't mean keeping a fucking cartoon secret... forever.
I will say copyright only exists to provide the public with new works. Businesses are entitled to most of the money and some control. Not all. And if you don't want the money, we still get the result, assholes. The art belongs to us. Copyright is only an incentive for there to be more of it. It is our gift to you. It is not an exchange. Give us what is ours, and either take the money or don't.
Except if you actually want to get any of those changes made you'll run into a problem: money is power, and they wield that power to create artificial scarcity in order to make more profits. They also rely on keeping workers poor and disempowered so they can keep them subservient and make them agree to arrangements where they own none of their own work.
The profit motive is directly implicated in this shitty behaviour, and every single time power has been taken from the capitalists it has been because the working class has mobilised and threatened their power, and they have been forced to release their grip a little bit.
You may be right about what copyright should be for in a perfect world, but that doesn't get results. Worker power does.
New works could be paid for without the use of copyright, but the people with the money are scared of that idea.
Copyright only protects the copyright holders from other people getting to play with the thing they own.
Why do they have to pirate their own show?
Animator works on show. Show airs.
Show has no physical DVD/BD version
Show only exists on streaming service or on DRM-locked "buy and own but not really" services.
Show gets pulled from internet because some corporate license expired or some shit like that.
Show no longer exists anywhere other than the corporation's hard drive and pirates' seedboxes.
Animator needs to show their own work as part of a video portfolio to a prospective employer. A scene they made for a well-loved show is great portfolio material.
The corporation ain't sharing. Not until someone sues for the right to get a hard copy of the show they worked on -- Which given how the entire American state does when corporate interests fight any other interest, is something no one animator is willing to do as it'll probably not just drain their finances, BUT has a legitimate chance of fucking over every OTHER animator down the line.
Ergo.
Animator needs to pirate it.
In ye olden days, shows often aired only on TV and didn't get VHS releases. But animators would often just. Tape the show they worked on. Off of the telly. With a VCR.
Which in practice is the same thing as what the pirates are doing, creating a local copy of media that is airing, but corporations don't want you to realise that. So. Here we are.
Yes I have been recommending Pantheon and I can't find it anywhere :,)
Thanks for that.
It's a bit hard to recommend I feel because you can't say anything, from episode 1 the story takes off
Like it's about IAs? Sure but even that is an spoiler as in episode 1 it's not actually clear if it's actually an IA it's part of the episode
Besides the fact that Amazon current owner of the rights has uploaded it only in Australia
I see it on the High Seas and it is on its way to me.
Probably because they worked on one of the many shows that have been pulled from streaming sites lately.
For example: Discovery is basically taking an axe to the shows on HBO Max and recently pulled another 87 shows and movies from it's service.
Im fully with you on the sentiment but realistically any show that this can happen with (is licensed) will have a wikipedia article and ratings and reviews on youtube and everywhere. But yeah for the whole thing you gotta sail the seas.
any show that this can happen with (is licensed) will have a wikipedia article and ratings and reviews on youtube
How is this going to help with employers? I imagine the interview:
Trust me, my work is good. See this Wikipedia article that says that Rotten Tomatoes says it’s good.
The same way sending them the show will help. If your show is that big they can just look it up reviews or clips on YouTube or whatever. I don't think employers want to watch an entire season of someone's work to decide to hire them, but if it's a recognizable show like some of the ones pictured they may not even have to look it up
Yeah - but if you can show someone directly what you animated, that's far better than someone's review of what you animated. If a show is no longer available due to licensing, then the seas (or physical copies if you can find them) are the way to do that.
If it’s important enough they can find a copy themselves. They want to hire you after all, they should have some method to vet the industry they work in themselves.
That is not how the animation industry works, at all. Most creative art positions require demo reels and portfolios. But sure would be nice if animators were that valued a recruiter would hunt usenet for their old pirate samples.
Also worth nothing, especially in animation, your cuts in an episode are often going to be various 10 second shots spread between multiple episodes across a season. That's why demo reels make sense.
Maybe that’s the problem, it shouldn’t. You were part of a team making a project, even if you worked by yourself, the work you produce wouldn’t be the same. It’s part of the whole package.
So how would looking at individual frames pieces without context show what you’re capable of? They would need to watch the entire piece anyways.
Maybe that’s the problem, it shouldn’t.
Good of you to offer to fix an entire industry so that these people can find work. We eagerly await your progress reports.
It would show your ability to frame, your linework, depending on the scene your ability to demonstrate action...
It sounds like you have literally no concept of how animation works at an enterprise level. It often is several different people working on individual scenes that are then stitched together at the end.
If it’s important enough they can find a copy themselves. They want to hire you after all,
So you've never applied for any job ever. Got it.
Name me one employer that creates your resume for you…
I’ll wait.
That's not how the industry works.
Or, you know, any industry.
What employer is going to go search for examples of your portfolio if you don't provide them?
My girlfriend is working on getting into Surface Pattern Design, and you're nuts if you think anyone trying to hire an artist of any kind is going to go searching out part of a portfolio that isn't included in what's provided to them.
Edit:
They want to hire you after all,
No, you're wrong. They don't want to hire you they want to hire someone with your skill set. You are just one of a number of choices that likely fit the bill for the sort of employee they're looking for. If you're not responsible enough to provide them with a sufficient portfolio (or even a decent resume), they're going to bin your application because you're clearly not responsible enough to provide the needed data before you applied. Why should they assume you'll be any different as an employee?
Notably, if you're an individual animator rather than the show-runner, your contribution to it will be several short scenes scattered across several episodes, and just linking, idk, the wikipedia article or some trailer will not work for showing what you made for the show.
Different industry, but my first game industry project was doomed to fail. I put a lot of work into it before that though and so I stole a copy of the project to have in case I needed to prove work I'd done. I don't know how often animations go under before being released but in the game industry it is a very real concern. Sometimes you have to take things for yourself or they'll be gone forever
please help me understand why the OP OC creator would not be able to provide a prospective employer a link to his own original material from his own data storage cloud.
They don't own the show. The network that bought it owns it. They worked for, or sold the show to the network when it was created. Very few original creators actually own their own media. It's very expensive for animation to be fully produced so a corporation usually has to finance it. And a corporation isn't going to just allow a creator to retain rights if they paid for any part of it.
when you explain & rationalize it like that, it seems fine and logical except
a corporation isn't going to allow a creator to retain rights
is SO blatantly sick & wrong & unjust on a fundamental level 😡
just wait until you hear about how academic publishing works
Sadly that's pretty much how all media works. The creator may have had the idea, but they usually license that idea out for a specific use to a specific entity in perpetuity. Usually because that entity is putting up all the money to create it. Almost always because the cost is well beyond what any independent creator can afford or to risk. Maybe if you are a Spielberg who has their own studios at this point, but that's pretty much it. :/
I can count on one hand how many times someone's creative endeavors that when aired/sold to a network went back to them. I can't begin to tell you how many times someone has a 100% original idea, a network funded it, aired it at such a bad time or had such bad ad campaign for it, it failed.
Then the network claims it as a tax write off so it never gets aired again, and no DVD/Blu-Ray sales are allowed. And the artists who worked on it can't get any rights to what they made. Because a company somewhere couldn't make money with the idea, now no one can. Even the inventor.
Animation is among the more common ones to have this happen to.
They don't usually do the drawing and animating on their own machine, for one. They use a workstation owned by their bosses and therefore don't have a copy of the drawings at home.