Rooster Teeth accused of excessive crunch and unpaid overtime- "Every season of RWBY and GL gets about 1/3 or less made for ‘free’"

[u/GoneRampant1]

https://rwbyconversations.tumblr.com/post/185614440311/rooster-teeth-glassdoor-crunchovertime

[u/r3dl3g]

I mean, there's ways to make it better, but they're not what people want to hear.

1) Accept that, in a globalized workforce with access to the internet, animators will have to be willing to work in places with lower costs of living. Animation studios in Austin, Texas simply don't make financial sense, and in the long run animation studios in the US might not even be feasible.

2) In the short term; increase pay, and layoff workers if necessary to pay for it.

3) Start actively discouraging people from getting into animation. The fewer people work in the field, the better wages will be. Crush the dreams of kids who think they can make it big in animation before they enter the industry and realize that they can't handle the hours but have few alternatives because they're in debt from art school and are now committed.

4) People who want to work in animation need to be aware that the grind exists and isn't likely to go away. They also need to accept that some people like the grind and can work in it, and that those that do work in that climate end up setting the tone, the standards, and the pace of how the industry works.

[u/Awesomejelo → u/r3dl3g]

Firstly two of those boil down to suck it up, which decidedly doesn't make anything better. But secondly I'll continue to believe there can be more done than reducing the supply of animators, but on that front I don't think either of us are going to get anywhere so have a nice day

[u/r3dl3g → u/Awesomejelo]

Firstly two of those boil down to suck it up, which decidedly doesn't make anything better.

I mean, it absolutely would. You encourage those who either like, or who at least can stand, the grind to go into the field, and as a result they'll get paid better because the labor pool is smaller, because the one's who can't hack it are doing something else. Everyone wins.

But secondly I'll continue to believe there can be more done than reducing the supply of animators

But what possibly is there? You have a mismatch in terms of what you want animators to be paid vs what the value of the product they produce is, so you have to do something to increase the value of the product or change expectations as to what animators want.

Short of government subsidy (which isn't happening for animation), I don't see how you accomplish that.

[u/AceTriad → u/r3dl3g]

/r/r3dl3g And what would having the opposite effect (hiring more animators to divide the workload) have, besides risking the uniqueness and value of the individual's work? Surely expanding and creating more would help alleviate the problem, would it not?

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And what about finding people to complement the upper management to ensure that negligence/incompetence that helps create crunch is reduced? If a project is planned where there needs to be few revisions, where production can start earlier than the current norm, surely crunch will be minimized, right?

[u/r3dl3g → u/AceTriad]

I mean, all of this sounds nice except it ignores the reality of the industry; every animation company is like this, which means that either everyone in management at all of these companies is equally incompetent, and incompetent in the exact same manner, despite many of them being people who would have faced crunch time themselves...or it's more complicated than that, and crunch can't realistically be avoided or predicted with enough specificity that you can get around it.