Hollywood Animated Over Artist Shortage

“Artists wanted. Top salaries paid. Come one, come all.”

Wishful thinking by the earnings-impaired? A revenge fantasy by doodling dreamers?

Not anymore.

In fact, California employers are not only eager to hire artists. They’re desperate.

Since the animation boom began with the success of movies like “The Lion King,” “Toy Story” and “Space Jam,” television shows like “Beavis and Butt-head” and “The Simpsons” and the explosion of digitally enhanced video games, CD-ROMS, and commercials, production studios have not been able to hire artists fast enough.

Animation studios have resorted to raiding colleges for semiskilled undergraduates and hiring full-time immigration lawyers to wrangle visas for talent from Eastern Europe, Korea, Japan and elsewhere.

In response to the shortage, California Gov. Pete Wilson recently included in his 1997-98 budget a proposal for $1.2 million in merit grants for 500 California students who are preparing for careers in the digital arts.

If approved by the Legislature, the grants would provide up to $9,000 per student, depending on the school selected, for training in computer and special effects animation and related skills. Matching funds from private industry are required.

By the academic year 2000-2001, the program would be providing about $6 million in grants to students annually.

“The governor met with a large group of studio executives at Paramount last summer who told him that one of their most pressing issues was finding trained digital artists in this state,” said Rosalie Zalis, a senior policy adviser to the governor.

“Currently, some 60 percent of artists hired are recruited from out of the country, at great cost to the studios and to our talented young people who would benefit from these opportunities,” Zalis said.

A key provision of the grants is that they will be awarded based on skills demonstrated in the student’s art portfolio rather than on grades.

“This will open up the door to talented youngsters, including those in underprivileged communities who may not have had the academic success,” she said.

“It will also, we hope, go a long way toward raising awareness in the Legislature that the arts are important to the state economically, and, hopefully, arts funding will be increased in the coming years.”

Frank Terry, who directs the character animation program at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, finds all of this a bit ironic in a state that drastically reduced funding for arts education in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

“To dismiss arts education as an expendable expense is the worst decision that could possibly have been made and now our private industry is paying the price for it,” Terry said. “The special effects and computer animation companies are the ones who are pushing the state to rectify it.”

The hiring frenzy has slowed somewhat from a year or two ago, when Warner Bros. and Dreamworks were competing to staff new animation studios, insiders say.

“It’s coming down to talent now instead of bodies and I think there’s more scrutiny,” said Aaron Berger, a talent agent at AniManagement in Valencia.

But new enterprises such as the recently launched HBO Animation division and the Pixar-Disney deal are keeping the demand high.

Full-page recruitment ads from every major company, including Sony Pictures Imageworks, Dreamworks Animation, Klasky Csupo, HBO Animation, Walt Disney Television Animation, Pacific Data Images, Nickelodeon’s Nicktoons, Industrial Light & Magic, Fox Animation Studios and others are featured in current animation magazines.

Entry-level salaries, even for animators right out of school, seem to be falling in a range between $800 and $1,200 a week, said Cal Arts’ Terry. Within a few years, some artists are earning annual salaries of $125,000 and up.

“If the generation of kids that graduated from college four years ago were told they had to be a digital animator, they would now be making more money than most doctors and lawyers,” said Gail Currey, director of digital production operations for Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas’ renowned special-effects house.

In addition to looking for character animators with computer skills, employers are seeking people skilled in storyboarding, layout, lighting and camera operation and related areas.

“You can be a competent animator, not necessarily the best, and still earn a very solid living,” said Terry. “The current marketplace makes virtually every personality employable.”