#someday I will get organized enough to start drawing earlier than 4:30 pm on the day I'm supposed to post

[auronlu]

Title: Love Her and Despair Chapter 7: "We Interrupt This Broadcast" Final Fantasy X Characters: Isaaru, Maroda, Auron, Pacce, Elma, Lucil Rating: G Word Count: 2300 Summary: Arrival in Luca with more fanfare than one could wish. Navigation: Previous Chapter | Map of Pilgrimage / ToC The Story So Far: Thirteen years after Yuna falls defeating Sin, Grand Maester Isaaru resumes his pilgrimage with his brothers, investigating rumors of Sin's return and a heretical Cult of Sin. After dealing with Sin-attacks on Besaid and Kilika, they arrive in Luca.

Maester Lucil and Elma, Commander of the Djose Chocobo Knights

Despite Isaaru's pleas, Kiyuri insisted on flying Bevelle's banners for arrival in Luca. The grand maester would have his due, even if it dashed his hopes of slipping through the city quickly and quietly. Judging by the din from the docks, he would do neither. Other towns welcomed maesters with hymns and ceremonial. Only Luca could sprout souvenir stands and hawkers in the time it took for the S.S. Konna to hoist sails and put into port. Cheering crowds waved prayer flags. Sphere cameras flashed up and down the waterfront like so many pyreflies. Children clutched collectible summoner statues and played dueling aeons while waiting for the ship to dock. Over the general hubbub, the public address system blared a breezy patter, the local equivalent of pious homage.

"Ladieeees and gentleman, we'll return to the pre-game show shortly. But first, here's an exclusive update on today's developing news story. The S.S. Konna has arrived at Dock Three. We can now confirm that Grand Maester Isaaru is aboard. We repeat, Grand Maester Isaaru has arrived! We missed him at the High Summoner's festival, but he's joined us for Luca's most famous tournament, the Eleventh Annual Sir Tidus and Sir Wakka Memorial Cup! And it looks like all Luca's turned out to welcome the ruler of Yevon and the undisputed leader of Spira!"

"While we wait for the maester's party to disembark, Jimma, this is a good time to remind folks of the new security measures in place at the stadium for our fans' safety. All bags will be searched, and machina not approved by Yevon will be confiscated. Sphere cameras with Yevon's seal are permitted. If you're wearing goggles, please remove them as you approach the turnstyles."

Isaaru waved to the crowd placidly while the crew secured the moorings and lowered the ship's gangway. Maroda shook his head at the broadcast. "It's only going to get worse, the longer Sin's out there."

Isaaru nodded. "One more reason to be on our way."

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[blog-researchblog]

A Frame by Frame Look at the Life of an Animator

Casey Stoneback

The Seven Questions

Growing up I’ve been asked what I want to do when I grow up. It’s the age old question many children have been asked growing up: what do you want your career to be? I’ve had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with my life since I was in high school, but the article “7 Powerful Questions To Find Out What You Want To Do With Your Life,” helped me narrow down the type of life I want to live as an adult, beyond what career I want to have. 

Not all the questions were easy to answer, and some were honestly no help at all, but the first question was very easy to answer. What am I passionate about? The one thing that I’ve been consistently passionate about my entire life is art. I didn’t really consider it as it being a legitimate career until I was in high school, but I have been making art since I was a child. Art is still a very broad field, but I can still easily narrow down what subcategory of art I’m most interested in. I’m interested in the field of animation and/or visual storytelling. Animated TV shows and movies are really important to a lot of people, including myself. I strive to be part of that process and make something that’s important to someone, which answers one of the other questions in the article: What are my goals in life?

One of my main goals related to my career is to do something with art, and more specifically make art that impacts people’s lives. Like I said earlier, I want to use animation and visual storytelling to make that impact. Moving on to smaller life goals, I want to live in a city or very close to a city, because I really want to live in a diverse area. Diversity is really important to me, and living in an urban place will put me in an area with so many people with all different types of backgrounds and stories. Some other goals are wanting to be able to travel a lot, and try working both freelance and for a studio/company just to see what both are like. These are all things I really really want to do, but leaves the question: what don’t I want to do? The last question in the article that I felt was truly insightful and important for me to answer was along those lines. What do I not like to do? I feel like this is really relevant to my career, because I know myself and I know I have zero motivation and interest in things I’m not passionate about. I really could not sustain a career outside of art, I just don’t have the drive for that. Any other field would bore, exhaust, or just plain confuse me. I know I have no choice but to give it my best shot in the animation industry, since that’s what I’m most passionate about. 

With these questions and answers in mind, I wanted to know how attainable they are in the field of work I want to go into. To find out more information, I consulted the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Outlook Handbook

According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook entitled  “Multimedia Artists and Animators,” a short summary of the field says, “Multimedia artists and animators create images that appear to move and visual effects for various forms of media and entertainment.” The site also listed some specific parts of the field, and stated that most artists in it stay within one certain medium (TV, movies, games, etc). Another thing to note about this career is the work environment. In addition to that, for the most part they work normal hours, but may have to work overtime when deadlines for projects are approaching. Most artists either work in an office, or from home. 

The employment of multimedia artists/animators is expected to grow by 4% between 2018 and 2028, which is the average growth for all careers. This projection is due to the fact that the demand for animation across many platforms including TV, movies, video games, etc. keeps going up and is expected to continue to rise.  To be able to get a job in the field, most jobs require a portfolio to represent the artist’s work (in this case it would be mostly digital pieces), and usually at least a bachelor's degree in some sort of digital art major. Self study is also an important part of this process for artist’s to better themselves and get more experience. The handbook also lists these qualities that are essential to this career: artistic talent, communication skills, computer skills, and creativity. While this information is helpful and insightful, it isn’t very personal. I wanted to know more about the first person point of view as an animator. 

An Animator’s POV

To find out more, I did an interview with my animation professor from last semester, Professor Elizabeth Schnieder. For my first question, I started with asking her what got her interested in animation, since seeing something that inspired me was a big part of me picking this career path. She said she saw the work of William Kentridge as MASS MOCA, and “fell in love with the idea of creating moving artwork.” After looking into his name, he’s an artist that specializes in prints, drawings, and animated films. I found this interesting because this is different to the inspiration I had. She had a more traditional “fine” artist that inspired her, while my inspiration was a cartoon I grew up with.

My next question felt very important to me, since it’s something I struggle with even as a student: How do you avoid burnout? She recommended planning, consistent working every day, and setting goals. She also said stepping away and coming back to look at a project with fresh eyes helped. I also asked what she does on a regular basis, and she said “I always have a cup of coffee every night at 7 pm,” (which made me laugh because I do the same thing), “and sit down to work on my personal animations for two hours at least.” This is a little bit different than what someone actively working for a studio would do, but 2 hours is still a lot of time on top of being a professor.

Another question I asked that felt important to me personally was if she had time to make art for herself, to which she simply said, “I always make time!” I really like this answer because it’s so short and simple, yet so important. I think I’ll be keeping these words in mind for awhile.

I also asked was what she felt  was a major issue in the field today. Her answer was sexism. She ended it on a lighthearted note though, and said she felt optimistic that the next generation behind her will have a more inclusive workplace. She said “I’m excited to see more content from female animators, writers, and directors.” I agree with this because I’m also excited to see what productions from women will come out in the future, and as a woman I hope to be a part of an inclusive production like that someday.

The last question I asked her what current events are related to this field, and I found her answer interesting and honestly inspiring. She said “the thing about animation is that you can talk about anything and everything, so all current events can inspire your stories and content.” This precise thing is one of the reasons I’m interested in animation in the first place. I want to tell stories that are important to the world, that will make a difference in someone’s life. 

A Current Event Across the World

While I felt this interview was extremely insightful, I still wanted to know more about what’s going on in the field. To see what’s going on in the world of animation, I looked for a current event within the field. One subject that kept popping up no matter what I searched was the poor working conditions and poor pay for animators in Japan’s animation industry. The article I found to be the most useful was Younger Animators Still Struggling Amid Anime Boom. This article goes over the research done by the Japan Animation Creators Association (JAniCA), which is a non-profit organization that documents and hopes to improve the working conditions in the anime industry. It also goes over some of the thoughts and solutions that Yasuhiro Irie, the Representative Director of JAniCA and an anime director himself, and Daisuke Okeda, the auditor and lawyer of JAniCA.

As the anime industry gets bigger, the profits seem to only be benefiting middle aged veteran animators, and newer/younger animators are not also being properly compensated. Workers have faced unpaid overtime, and some have even been hospitalized from being overworked. 

Animators in Japan can usually be broken down into two categories: people that draw genga and dōga. Genga are the keyframe in an animation (the most important frames in a story), and dōga are the frames in between keyframes to make an animation more smooth and fluid. Dōga work is given to newcomers, and as they improve and gain experience, they should move up to working on genga. The current issue with this system, is that the newer animators may quit before getting to move up in the industry simply because they don’t make enough money to survive. According to the most recent JAniCA report, the average monthly income for animators between the age of 20-24 is only ¥128,000 (1,168.47 US dollars). 

In the article, Irie and Okeda gave their thoughts on possible solutions to solve this problem. One of their ideas was for studios to negotiate with more sponsors in order to get the money to pay animators properly. Here’s how they explained it:

“Companies should also look outside Japan, to sponsors like Netflix or those in China, he adds. It’s still too early to tell whether such nontraditional sponsors will truly make a difference, says Okeda, but he notes that since last year, when multiple animation companies began working with firms like Netflix and Amazon, ‘many titles with good budgets have emerged. In terms of A-tier titles, the average budget has increased by over 30 percent.’”

One of their other ideas was more government assistance within the field. They argue that while it’s not huge, since anime is consumed globally it does bring in a significant amount of money into the country, so the industry should be compensated for that. Another solution in addition to that is moving studios outside of Tokyo where the cost of living is lower. Two successful examples of this are Kyoto Animation, located in Kyoto, and P.A. Works, located in Tomoya. While it took years for the studios to reach the successfulness they’re at now, Irie says that “‘if new studios learn from such examples, they may be able to get a head start and improve more quickly.’” 

One last solution is that a might help, but unions are usually formed to negotiate with one big cooperation, and in the case of anime, it’s broken up into many smaller production companies. These are just a couple ideas to solve the issue of animators being underpaid, because there's no one single way to solve it with the snap of a finger. Irie believes that hopefully, things will change soon since more and more headlines about the poor working conditions animators work in are being published. Hopefully these issues being brought to light will push companies to change and improve.

The reason I picked this article in the first place is when I was looking for articles about news in the animation industry, the poor working conditions and pay in Japan specifically were what almost every search result was about. I’ve also heard about this problem before, so I wanted to learn more about it anyways. One reason I picked this article specifically, is because I know of one of the studios mentioned, Kyoto Animation. Not only have I seen some of the things they’ve produced, but about a month after the article was published, which was only less than a year ago, it was all over the news and internet that Kyoto Animation went through a huge deadly arson attack (due to the studio’s success, it was luckily able to recover through donations and is still open). 

I feel as if this article is relevant to the career I’m going to into, because while it’s not about America and it’s highly unlikely I’d move to Japan to become an animator, it’s still a relevant story in the world of animation. It’s important to know what’s going on in your field of work, even in different countries. I already had a vague understanding of the issues in the anime industry, but from this article I’ve learned the specifics of the issue. I had no idea the pay there was that low. What I’d still like to know is how the working conditions in Japan compare to working conditions in America (within animation). I’m curious to know if American animators are also underpaid, even if it’s not to the extreme that Japan is going through right now.