The direction what used to be "good art jobs" are going.

[Dottonedan]

This is the direction that what used to be "good art jobs" are going.


As you can see, they skip bottom positional all together and jump right up to (Art Director) intern.  What this means, is that they want to pay someone really low wages and get really high performance out of them. (an intern) is someone in college or just graduating...and needs specific on the job credits. So these are people who are talented, but no real on the job training for most beginners....let alone a top position like an art director's gopher. I know first hand, they have them do the same jobs a full time seasoned artist is doing. The quality is less...but it's Disney and the guest are going to buy it anyways. The quality is less, but hey, when your on vaca, you need a souvie so sales are not effected by quality.


So, for someone who is ballsy enough to take it on, much is required. Almost slave labor. Sure, they get paid $a dollar over min wage + the credits + the chance to work for "DISNEY" and they do this sitting next to the guy that is working for $60-80k a year sweat'n bullets cuz he knows....it's not long before they say...asta la beuna vista baby.

[Frog]

Dan, if I remember correctly, I never even said anything years ago, back when the love seemed to be there for you, except, that I wondered if you were feeling the same atmosphere of dread in the air as to not make waves, as an old friend (my age) at Disney in SoCal with a lot of time in. She said that already ten or twenty years ago most employees were even intimidated enough to never approach HR with questions about their health care or such.

[Dottonedan]

Yes, sort of.  I didn't hear it around the water cooler, but in general yea, it was felt that the less you have to contact them about, or have discussions with HR or anyone about anything benefitting you, the better off you were. I've heard a few stories or warnings even from a few higher ups that I was close with.


Working for the mouse is never about what they can do for you. Always what can you do for them. When I started in 1998, benefits were great. Among the best you can get working for someone in addition to the perks of the parks.  From that year on, they decreased each year. So I probably arrived in it's hey day.


They (the heads of the division that are not directly in our department but oversee the division) really took advantage of an opportunity (the economy) in our department. They didn't have to do what they did (to the remaining artist).


They cut my department literally in half from 41 down to 20. I can understand downsizing due to the economy and can give them that. It's business.


Out of the 20, probably 10 were exceptional, loyal above level (even for our department) talent and were among the most respected. That shows me they had their special (save) groups  that everyone knew to be the brown nosers and then the rest were blindly plucked from the ground like a chicken hawk does a baby chicks without thought to what they were capable of contributing or had contributed. No rhyme or reason to the madness. Just a number.


Some had 1 year in, some had 10-25 years with the Co. Some were freshly hired from an internship and some were old time veterans who have rubbed shoulders with some of the elders of the Animation department like Bill Justice, Mark Davis, Ollie Johnston, Ward Kimbal and the likes. The picking process was what killed most peoples spirits. Most of the ones who were picked to stay, were known jerks and the loyal kicked to the curb. I will say tho, they did keep a few good ones (probably 6 out of 20) who were also kicked around on pay and work load.


While I was not phased by my layoff nor surprised, ( I was 2nd or 3rd in line for the morning list). It was all completed by noon. After you were told, you have 1 hour to pack your things and be escorted out by security. It all went down with multiple HR people, each in a room along with a department head representative for each product category.


Watching the others get their notice to come to the meeting room at a specific time...was like watching a snipit of schindlers list or from the History channel and the faces of those boarding the trains to the chemical showers as their names were called to head to the meeting room by themselves. Tragic.  Not as remotely tragic as the showers for the concentration camps, that was merely an illustration of the fear on their faces. That job was everything to most all. It's all they knew for their careers. Some were completely devistated. I can remember one girl that was hysterically crying and running back and fourth to each of the team leaders looking for a life line.  I didn't mind that so much for her, she was one of the ones that should have been cut. She was a known back stabbing knifing chick. Again, a movie comparison, was like watching the people run back and fourth in the halls not knowing who or where to turn to on the Titanic. They completely submerged their entire life around working for them and it was gone in one morning.


Now for the remaining crew aboard the USS Mousetanic.


Of the 6 departments managers, 2 were demoted to Senior artist and working under the instruction of what used to be their peers at an equal level. Back from whence they came even after 10-20 years of being a manager. One was fired.


One later quit a year later and went to work for Hallmark as a director. A nice well deserved step up. He was my boss and was a good guy and well deserving of that position.


The remaining artist crew were all kept at the same pay...except for the senior most highest positions. They were told to either take a (undisclosed) pay cut or leave. They stayed but grumbled till this day about it. They finally gave them back their titles and pay rate...that they had back then, in 2009 just last month.


A few of the nosers were promoted to design managers.  Both of the latest promotions were of the two that were best friends since college. One married a product buyer (who was pretty much the boss of her husbands best friend...a few years before the layoffs. We all knew the husband was preordained for managership and was promoted to Manager just this year. He has the skills of an intern but all the connections.


The other promoted to manager...due to his close connections with (the buyer wife) his best friend... The three of them live and breath together. This guy was known for being a loaded cannon. A little off his rocker and had no skills in management whatsoever, yet I will give him that he was THE best well rounded artist in that department. Today, he is the softlines art manager of the team that I was on. I'm soooo glad I'm gone.


They stories never end. I have a few chosen friends in their still and people email me or text me just to rant. I stay away from it all. Why bother fretting over what they are still doing when I'm not even in that Co any more. LOL. But I guess I'm an outlet for them to release. Maybe they can't tell anyone on the inside anymore.

[RICK STEFANICK]

Unfortunately there are alot of those same intern folks doing so called seps for promotional distributors at cheap cheap prices that have to be reworked befor a screen printer can use them. I have accepted that as the norm and rely on pros like you Dan to make them work. So the bright side is you can't change the corporate direction but you as a art pro can capitalize on the oportunity.

[Dottonedan]

Unfortunately there are alot of those same intern folks doing so called seps for promotional distributors at cheap cheap prices that have to be reworked befor a screen printer can use them. I have accepted that as the norm and rely on pros like you Dan to make them work. So the bright side is you can't change the corporate direction but you as a art pro can capitalize on the oportunity.

Speaking of which, did you ever call my friend back about the freelance work? She's needing some work to do and YOU SAID, you always got tons of work to send out, so I'm holding you to it. ")  She can use the work, but again, she's more of a production artist more so than a designer artist and can't hand draw (that well).  Probably ideal for most of the clean up stuff you need done.

[IntegrityShirts]

lol Associate Art Director...Internship!!! Unreal.  I would suggest that's a typo but after all the back story from you Dan, I believe they're actually advertising that position.

[tpitman]

This has been going on for years since the advent of desktop publishing. Twenty years ago it was the "kid with a Mac" that was undermining the earning power of graphic designers. That's not to take away from the skill and talent of real professionals, or their worth in terms of recompense, but it's a reality that, especially outside high-end outfits like Disney, often people will take a chance on compromising the art to save a little money, or reduce the true talent to cutting prices simply to stay alive. I've encountered people who will spend $500 on software to beat a designer out of a few bucks so they can produce their own grotesque "media" and brag about how they "did it themselves" . . . and it shows. Then they'll spend a fortune having the piece (of garbage) printed.
Sometimes all you can do is shake your head. As for Disney, my sister worked there for 20 years, lastly piloting a boat between the hotels and Downtown Disney. After retiring, she missed messing around with the boats and went back to work part time. They were barely paying her above minimum wage for a job that entailed hauling drunken "guests" and their brats to and fro over water. I told her she was nuts, and that Disney ought to pay someone with the responsibility of piloting a boat a little more, asking them to work double shifts because too many of the "cast members" didn't want to freeze their a$$es off on winter nights schlepping the poorly-behaved back to their overpriced hotel. She left again. Said the place simply wasn't the same as in 1989 when she started.

[RICK STEFANICK]

Unfortunately there are alot of those same intern folks doing so called seps for promotional distributors at cheap cheap prices that have to be reworked befor a screen printer can use them. I have accepted that as the norm and rely on pros like you Dan to make them work. So the bright side is you can't change the corporate direction but you as a art pro can capitalize on the oportunity.

Speaking of which, did you ever call my friend back about the freelance work? She's needing some work to do and YOU SAID, you always got tons of work to send out, so I'm holding you to it. ")  She can use the work, but again, she's more of a production artist more so than a designer artist and can't hand draw (that well).  Probably ideal for most of the clean up stuff you need done.

yes i do sub out the art on every single order we do. About the time i spoke to you about her i picked up another local person here and she has been doing great. but i promised and i will call her this week. thanks for the reminder..

[Command-Z]

It's not just hiring new staff, but for all contract work, even large advertising firms are dealing with this.

I buddy of mine worked for one of the largest advertising firms on the West Coast as an IT guy. He told me they got the McDonald's contract to handle all of their West Coast advertising.

"Wow! Great! Congratulations!" He said no, not so great... the client writes the contract, not the contractor. The company pays as little as possible and requests as many revisions as they want and also sets the deadline, changing them at will. When it's all said and done, the pay is far less than the agency gets get from a much smaller company.

So why do the work? For many, like Dan said, it's for the credibility that a company like that on your client list gets you. Big companies like that on your resume make you seem "big-time" even though you got paid less per hour than from the local small business. The agency ends up working overtime to meet impossible deadlines for little more than prestige, barely paying for their expenses.

These big companies say it's necessary to keep production costs down for the consumer, all of this has absolutely nothing to do with product cost to the end user... huge corporations that are publicly traded only care about shareholder dividends and the bosses that show profits to the shareholders skim huge bonuses off the top for themselves. The money that used to go to hardworking professionals and craftsmen now goes to CEOs and the "consulting firms" who are hired to develop these scams.

[inkman996]

I must be a disney thing, my uncle worked his whole entire adult life for them as a master carpenter. He always complained that pay and benefits were about half of what he would get out side of Disney but he always stuck with them because it was full time all the time.