Churlishness

We've gotten questions about this the last few days, and now CB points out the odd behavior, to wit:

... Now that the profile of our show [BoJack Horseman] is rising, we need to get a lot more protective about what we show online. I know a lot of character designers have been posting their work online since season 1. Sadly, we need to bring an end to that practice. If you have samples of your artwork for the show posted on Tumblr, Instagram or any other website, you’ll need to pull it down. Same goes for any storyboard samples, background and prop art, animatics and any other original art created for the show. ...

The usual drill?

Management frowns on artists putting artwork samples from un-aired shows and unreleased movies into their on-line portfolios. In fact, management does more than frown. It has conniption fits. It tells employees too get said art off the internet pronto. At decibels near the threshold of pain.

And it's understandable. The production isn't out in the marketplace yet, and the release of development materials might negatively impact the unfinished product. But that's for unseen shows or theatrical features.

Once a show or movie is released, managers at most studios are fine with artists showing work samples in their digital portfolios. Industry-wide, the understanding is that people need to get hired, and the major way to get hired is to show the latest storyboard and/or designs to prospective employers. It's the way the biz works. And few managers are interested in ancient work created for shows long gone.

So BoJack suits wanting work to be taken down after it's been up for months? Weird. Just weird.