‘No Contract, No Cartoons’: Animation Guild Members Stand Together as Talks Begin

Hundreds of members of the Animation Guild, along with fellow IATSE members joining in solidarity, gathered at the IATSE 80 headquarters in Burbank on Saturday ahead of Monday’s start of contract negotiations.

The crowd was over twice that of the Guild’s previous rally in 2022 . Animation writer and negotiating committee member Joey Clift told TheWrap that the union had over 2,000 RSVPs as of Friday, doubling the number of the 2022 event. He estimated that nearly 2,500 people attended in the near 90-degree heat.

Mike Rianda, animator known for his work on “Gravity Falls,” emceed the festivities Saturday afternoon. Rianda kicked off the rally by bringing up six “animation avengers” to the stage to rally the crowd, including “Steven Universe” creator Rebecca Sugar, “Hotel Transylvania” and “Samurai Jack” creator Genndy Tartakovsky and legendary Disney and DreamWorks animator James Baxter.

Attendees also heard from guild leaders, local politicians and workers from all facets of the animation industry – all united in the fight for increased rights and protections for the security of the animation industry.

“Animation is most vulnerable to outsourcing and it’s already happening. Animation is most vulnerable to AI threat and it’s already happening,” Julia Prescott, animation writer for Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, told the crowd of thousands.

The Guild sent out a survey to gauge what its members felt was most important to bring to the negotiating table. With a record number of responses, members of the negotiating committee said generative AI and outsourcing of jobs were the primary concerns.

“You told us that addressing the impact of generative AI tools and processes are of the greatest importance and that you want us to make sure jobs in animation are made for human beings and not software routines,” Steve Kaplan, the Animation Guild’s business representative, said.

“You told us that outsourcing of our work especially now is a grave concern,” he added. “Your negotiations committee deliberated for months on this matter and is prepared to bring your concerns to the studios to have a meaningful discussion, so we can find ways to keep work in Los Angeles.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass announced increased production focus groups to keep live action film production local. The Animation Guild is also calling for their own outsourcing protections.

Then there’s artificial intelligence, which continues to be the biggest hot-button labor issue in Hollywood. Many of the signs drawn at the rally decried generative AI, the technology behind image-generating software such as OpenAI’s Sora and Midjourney, using characters from shows like “Futurama” and “Smiling Friends” to mock it.

“Generative AI is a pale imitation,” Danny Ducker, member of the union’s AI task force, said. “We make art. These programs make content.”

Rianda even added that the tool should be used to cure cancer and fix climate change, not take away jobs that people love.

“How do you think Jeffrey and 14 computers are going to do with ‘Shrek 5’?” Rianda joked. “AI cannot do what artists do, but that won’t stop shortsighted producers from using it to shrink budgets, staff and eliminate our jobs to make a profit.”

Members from other Hollywood unions showed out for the Guild rally, too. Writers from the WGA and actors from SAG-AFTRA said that without passionate animation union workers on the picket lines last summer, their deal may not have gone through. Actor and WGA board member Adam Conover delivered a fiery speech to the crowd, thanking them for their support but also asking them to stop caring so much about executives’ approval.

“They want you to believe that their respect matters, and it does not. You do not need their respect because they will never give it to you!” Conover said. “Their respect doesn’t matter! What matters is your respect for yourself! And if you respect yourself enough to say, ‘You know what, I will not work for you until I get what I deserve,’ then you will f–king win!”

Attendees also heard from TAG members with various roles in the animation production process, who offered a ground-level perspective of the various problems making animation so untenable as a profession.

Color specialist Sam Kestin (they/them) recounted how they told the producer on a project that they were being assigned work outside of their job description and could have been assigned to a “more appropriate, higher seniority role.”

The producer agreed and spoke to the studio’s labor head, but a week later, Kestin said they received a job listing that was “not the one I signed when I got hired and mysteriously included all the tasks my producer agreed were ridiculous. They changed my job right in front of me and I could do nothing.”

“These studios are not idiots. They know we are the last artists to touch a design,” she said of being a color specialist. “By strategically disrespecting and undervaluing our role, they sweep all outstanding pre-production tasks onto us.”

Kestin has worked as a freelancer for much of their career and said that the industry’s instability and lack of healthcare support has put them out of work.

“This is off my script, but I’m recovering from surgery right now. I’m a trans employee. I’m recovering from top surgery. Because one of these f–king studios laid me off five days before my surgery, I can’t work for the rest of the year, and I can’t pay my f–king rent,” Kestin said. “We are incredible artists. We can handle a job that asks for three times the assets of our colleagues, but it has got to match the pay!”

Animation writers are also demanding pay equal to that earned by live action writers under WGA rates. Currently, the Animation Guild estimates that its writers receive 21-48% of what WGA writers receive for the same work, and that doesn’t count extra work such as punch-ups and lore research that are not compensated for when writers are employed as freelancers, which is becoming more common on animated shows.

“Unfortunately, our writers are a lot cheaper, and it feels kind of gross that they’re using our contract to undercut writers, and so we want pay parity,” TAG president Jeanette Moreno King told TheWrap.

WBD CEO David Zaslav got the biggest boo after Nora Meek told the crowd about the unpaid extra labor that exists in her role as a board artist, while Zaslav took home a $50 million paycheck last year.

It’s unclear how long the negotiations will take. Insiders with knowledge of the negotiations tell TheWrap that talks between the Animation Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) were initially only scheduled through this week. But at the rally, the guild vowed to push for however long it takes to get a deal that members deserve.

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