Compare and Contrast

The Reporter put out its take on what live-action jobs earn ...

... Studio Tour Guide

Yukking it up with tourists around the lot pays $26 an hour, but only after a training period during which compensation is $20 an hour. ...

Studio Chief

Running a studio pays a base salary of $3 million to $5 million (what Jeff Robinov reportedly got at Warner Bros.), but bonuses can bring the amount to the mid-eight figures. ...

Animation has often been the unloved step-child of the entertainment business, though this has changed in recent years as animation has become a red-hot profit center for our fine, entertainment conglomerates. Even so, weekly salaries and wage minimums for writers, board artists, designers and art directors in Cartoonland many times lag affiliated crafts in live action.

There is, of course, much overlap and many exceptions; one difference is that animation assignments tend to be longer than those on the live-action side. As I explain to members who ask, wage minimums and what work falls under what guild or union was sorted out in the 1930s and 1940s and remains with us today.

IF the Directors Guild had organizes the directors of animated shorts and animated features ...

IF the Writers Guild had gone after animation writers and board artists way back when ...

But the cookie crumbled the way it did, and so here we are. (You will find animation salaries and minimums here.)