Pros
- The lead animator in my project taught me a lot. -You'll meet so many people who hate this place and that will come up in conversation, repeatedly. You'll bond out of spite. -There's free coffee... it's not good, but it's free. -Also, they'll give you wine and cheese whenever they're announcing massive layoffs. Food for bad news. -Every month they'll have an outing to a bar that always falls on a deadline, so as an animator you'll go maybe once.
Cons
- Misleading contracts, permanent employment status is only good until the project ends. Will you know that it's ending in good time? Is it written in your contract? Of course not. Is that legal? Doesn't sound like it, but they don't care about their employees. You'll find out two weeks before the fact. Moreover, after laying off their animation department with little warning, they have the nerve to ask you to give it your 110%, work overtime (not for money, silly, but for pizza!), and to keep talking to a minimum. Also, you gotta come in on weekends, that's a good lad. -They rather outsource rather than keep their in-house talent. Anyways, it's not like anybody is actually getting trained (see below). -Training? Character model sheets? Time to ease you into production? Oh, sweet summer child, in your dreams! Your first day will go like this: here's your scene now do it. Then the supervisor will get annoyed about your questions. -High turnover rates. Honestly, people who've been there a long time have done so out of convenience, not actual enjoyment. There are, maybe, seven 2D studios in the city. -It can become a toxic environment since everyone is actually super unhappy ALL the time and it shows. Cheers. -The worst rigs that you'll ever see in the industry. In fact, they are so bad you will learn how to rig out of necessity. The views don't interpolate between each other, not even for a simple head turn. There's a lack of cohesive parenting and sometimes the drawings don't even have pegs. You spend so much time redrawing assets and props, since the tools given out are shoddy and incomplete (a student can do better, seriously). For example, the show I was on made their props in Flash (why?) and then exported them to Harmony (again, why?), which resulted in drawings with hundreds of deformation points that were a nightmare to manipulate. Not to mentions their "3D assets", which are really just 3D renders that were turned into PNGs with a bunch of OL and cutters that you could not manipulate. You CAN work with 3D objects in Harmony, why this tomfoolery? -You will be forced to work overtime, not for monetary compensation, but for pizza! Who needs to pay their bills anyway... -Their pipeline is a mess, the director will want to oversee all aspects of the production and approve each one individually. This creates a backlog of work, since you will have scenes with no characters (or wrong characters), nor props and backgrounds in them that you're supposed to miraculously finish within the same day. Only of course, after the lead animator and supervisor tentatively approve your posing, which is then sent out AGAIN for the director's approval. It's a waste of everyone's time and simply nonsense. I mean, why hire a supervisor if the director is also doing that job? -Lack of interdepartmental communication. Is your animation deadline coming up soon? Like the next day? No worries, scene-planning is paid by the hour and they leave at five, and even though you have been asking for your scene to be scene-planned, they don't care. So is every other department, as an animator you really have the short end of the stick. -Got a problem with the rig? Something you have asked the rig team to fix for literally ages, well guess what... That problem has been around season 1, if it wasn't fixed then it's really not gonna happen now. You're an animator, a miracle worker, figure it out. -No job stability, for some reason Oasis does not look for projects until they have nothing else in the pipeline. Is this a sound business model, heck no. Why do it, then? Who knows. -Do you have feedback to give to management that would make your life easy? Great! They'll take it and shove it into a deep closet somewhere in between: "I know" and "don't care". -The union did not help, animators make less than before. Also, they take even more money from you with each paycheck. Cool. -If you like animation, give it a couple of weeks. You will absolutely hate it by working here.