Outsourcing

Several start-up studios in other countries wanted to talk to us about
outsourcing. I talked for quite a while with a rep for a studio in China
that employs 1500 animators. They are starting to get game work
sent to them, but their goal is for a slice of the feature animation
market. The rep showed me some tests, much of which were
attempts to recreate shots from high end vfx shows.

They did their version of Gollum, which looked kind of like WETA's
Gollum with about 40% of the appeal and animation quaility.
The guys were basically asking me "How do we get better?" I said they
have to spend money on american salaries and bring over seasoned
animators to supervise (not me).

Their top animators make 1200.00 a month. When they do get good
they will start taking jobs away from here.  The only thing preventing
this remorseless transfer of industry that's historically befallen other
manufacturing sectors is that animating is part algorithm and part
artform.    Chinese studios, like Japan in the 50s and 60s, may be
able to reverse engineer the algorithm but the art is an ineffable
thing that bubbles up in the culture.   Rather than copy, they will
have see if they can draw from within themselves and refine it and
see if it can be accepted in the global movie market.


I also spoke with two young Columbian animators who are starting an
Animation school in Medellin and also Sao Paolo, Brasil. They wanted
to buy me a coffee and sit me down for an hour to learn about the
production pipeline of an animated feature, and use this to structure
their production courses. They seemed to have very ambitious plans
as to how much of a film would get produced by 15 students in a
semester, and I think I did nothing but confuse them when
attempting to break down the just part of the pipeline. I'm sure
they'll figure out the best way to structure things for
their purposes.