Oh I've seen, heh.
The long and short of it is this... Nitrogen is a tough studio that has been a good experience for some, and a bad for others. I'm perfectly happy there.
I've had problems, but I've gone to management and dealt with it behind closed doors. Others not so much... Others post anonymously on forums and try to sink the ship.
Nitrogen has a blanket policy that if you don't finish your contract, you get no credit. Simple. Many of these animators broke their contracts and so got no credit.
They claim that it was horrible working conditions... yet others think it's great... They say the boss is an ******* (and he can be), but others like him a lot.
This turned into a "let's sink nitrogen" quest, and I went on the forum and defended. Unlike ALL of the other posters, I didn't hide behind an anonymous signature... I owed up and put my name, and now I'm being just TRASHED online... they are getting into my personal **** now.
Honestly I'm just tired of it all.
I'm sure there were people hard done by, but there are way better ways to handle it. I've handled events like this and everyone left happy. It was a first go at a feature for this studio, and there were mistakes made...
But when you're fighting to keep a project going, and every week 2 or 3 people are abandoning ship for more money at another studio... It just made it all the harder to finish. But we did, and I'm proud of my fellow crew, and proud to have worked, and continue to work, with them.
I doubt that studio is worse than others. From what you say I find it easy to believe that it's much better than other studios.
At the same time...knowing even a little about the business...they were probably treated like slaves and they probably have a point in their complaints.
There's a reason people like me take sell-out jobs doing videos for corporations and it's because right now the CG people are the softest of the soft targets. If something has to give in a movie (and something always does) it's going to be given by the CG people. That's not likely to change anytime soon either since usually when they start talking about doing something about it someone suggests getting like 12 people to go protest international tax policy of other countries...which is slightly LESS effective than me protesting the fact that it sometimes rains. Even this current little outrage is not going to result in anything. Nitrogen isn't the problem and never was. The fact that we're content to be stand alone entities is.
Again, from what you've said, I doubt Nitrogen is worse than other places and it's probably WAY better than most. IN THE ANIMATION WORLD. But, compared to say...for example...the sell-out job I took: you're slaves. You get to work on cool films which I'm actually VERY jealous of, while I animate the science of corrosion for the DoD, (making things rust is about as exciting as it sounds) but I don't have to know how many hours you work or what you get paid to know that unless you're getting points, it's crap compared to what I make. I also don't have to know anything at all about your bosses to know that I probably get treated better overall. That's not a brag..it's comment on the fact that my chosen profession regularly treats the workers like **** because it can.
We're the only aspect in the entire industry that doesn't band together, and any one person, no matter who that person is is very easy to replace when you only have to deal with one or two. On live action films the guy plugging in extension cords is better protected. There is almost zero incentive not to treat them like garbage.
also...not for nothing, but the policy about no credit is also BS. Of course you get credit for partial. It's called partial credit. Did you use their work? Then you should say you used their work. It's gotten so bad that animators actually say thank you when getting whipped these days. Once again...I'm VERY jealous when I see my friends with credits from This, or Warcraft, Man of Steel, Peanuts...then they tell me what their day to day is like and suddenly...I feel like calling my boss to kiss his back side in thanks for not treating me like that.
Once again: nothing against Nitrogen...I have no personal knowledge of that studio, for all I know they are the blessed angels of the animation world. This is more commentary on the animation world in general.
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Still haven't seen this movie. Still want to. I think it looks funny and given the group of people involved, I think some offensiveness is to be expected.