Apr 21, 2012

High cost of working with visual effects animation

There's a price to pay for working in visual effects, and we're not talking about the money that students need to pay John Textor to work at Digital Domain. Many artists are faced with paying the ultimate price–a matter of life and death.

The LA Times published an important article yesterday by Richard Verrier about the health problems faced by visual effects artists and how they're fighting back. The stories aren't pretty:

or:

Meanwhile, on Friday afternoon, union representatives hosted an information session for Sony Pictures Imageworks artists who are pushing to unionize the studio, a story that we covered last week on Cartoon Brew. The Animation Guild reported that the meeting was a success with over 75 Imageworks employees attending.

So will this turn out to be the VFX Spring as some are suggesting- There's a lot of positive sentiment right now, but no one is under the illusion that working conditions will improve overnight. Animation Guild rep Steve Hulett noted on his blog that the Imageworks meeting was “only the first few steps of a long hike, but we're going to do whatever it takes to reach out and get visual effects artists and technical directors under the big union tent.”