Over the past several months we’ve been hearing stories of how the working conditions at VFX houses and animation studios have been brutal. We’ve heard this with how Marvel Studios and Disney are hurting the system, and then there was that scathing report about how it was a nightmare for animators working on Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse.
Well, when it came to Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, a plan was implemented for animators to have a good work-life balance. The creative heads didn’t want the animators overworked and exhausted, which other studios seem to ignore.
Director Jeff Rowe and producer Seth Rogen wanted to do things differently and ensure that the animators would be able to do their best work. During a recent interview with Variety, Rowe talked about how they came to set up the production the way they did, saying:
“That was the thing that was really important to us on this film, and I learned it from Seth and Evan because in getting to know Seth, I’m like, ‘He has a really good work-life balance and everyone at Point Gray does,’ and I asked him about that and he is like, ‘Well, when you’re doing live action, sometimes you’re on a set for 40 days in a row and it is exhausting and tiring. And we want to make sure that our people have time away from that and that it doesn’t become their entire lives.’
Rowe went on to say “I really took that to heart and wanted to make sure that when we made this film, we did it ethically.” He even went out and got feedback from the film’s animation team about what would make them most comfortable while working on the project. He explained, that some of them wanted to work “three days a week,” and others asked to work remotely.
“We’d be like, ‘Great, let’s figure that out, and let’s accommodate that because that’s your process and that’s what leads you to make your best art,’ and we would often do that with most of the team and just try to make sure everyone always felt supported. I never want the team to be suffering more than I am. And I also hopefully am suffering more than the team because I’m the captain and I’m paid to absorb that, and they’re not. It’s important to preserve that. People just do better work when they’re rested and have home lives.”
I love that Rogen and Rowe worked out a way to make this animation production the best experience it could be for the animators working on it. This is a nice change of pace from all of the horror stories we’ve been hearing.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is currently in theaters and it’s having a solid box office run!