As promised, there was lengthy discussion at TAG's membership meeting regarding uncomped overtime ...
I gave a brief history of the problem: Shorter schedules and longer scripts, the reluctance of some members to request authorization for o.t., people taking work home and working without pay. Falsification of time cards.
I said some of my remedies for abuses had been going to studios after-hours to see who was working; meetings with crews about tight deadlines and then talking to the producers and show runners about adjusting schedules; meetings with Human Resource staff about overtime abuses.
Some suggestions from members:
* TAG should meet with crews at the start of a show and lay out overtime rules.
* Get show-runners and story editors to cut scripts to the right length so production board artists aren't boarding extra panels that then get cut in editorial. (I said I didn't know why this wasn't done more, since it was an easy fix.)
* Adjust schedules by a day or two when it's needed by artists.
* Installing time clocks. (This last wasn't regarded highly.)
Sharon Forward spoke about eye strain and possible damage that comes about from long hours drawing on the Cintiq. She talked to equipment suppliers who said they didn't know if the Cintiq resulted in eye damage or not, as there had been no studies done on the subject. Sharon suggested that artists who work on the Cintiq should take breaks every hour or two so their eyes can rest, turn down the brightness of their Cintiq screens, and wear yellow-lensed glasses to counteract the blue light from the computer screen.
Question: If you work on a Cintiq or equivalent platform, does it cause eye problems for you?
After the meeting, I talked to a production board artist who worked 10-12 hour days Monday through Friday. (He works on-call, so he isn't compensated for additional hours during the week. He used to work weekends -- which should be compensated at time-and-a-half, but he received no money for those hours either. He no longer works on weekends.)
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1 comments:
I'm just a bystander, not an A-list animator in a studio forced to use a Cintiq but...
The idea that Cintiqs gives off different light than any other LCD monitor (they are just LCD monitors with a pen tracking ability) sounds terribly far-fetched. They buy their LCD panels from the same manufacturers (NEC, Hitachi) that everyone else does.
A Cintiq has been my primary monitor for several years now, I stare at it for many hours a day and yes, even draw animation on it. I'm staring at it now. I've never once been moved to think it might be a danger or was harming me. Leaning over it to draw bothers my back but that's a different issue entirely.
If too-blue light is genuinely a problem... these things have color temperature settings. Set it to 5000K and it will be so brown you'll be wishing it were blue again.
But blue light... really? That sounds like urban rumor. More likely... animator with "eyestrain" needs a proper prescription for their glasses to see close-up work. Are any of these people contact wearers? That might be the problem there. Contacts make lousy reading glasses.
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