Yoshimi Yamagata Aoyagi

November Dormitory Diaries: Kimura

Added 2021-12-01 01:24:03 +0000 UTC

Hello. It’s Kimura.

Here’s my dormitory diary entry for November.

During November, I did a lot of “color charting.” Basically, it’s like normal in-between animation in the sense that you copy from character design sheets, but there are more lines and we can’t use cells to divide up the frame into sections, even if there are multiple people in a single frame. It takes more time to draw than an average in-between frame so it commands more pay. I got about 6 dollars and 10 cents per frame for my work. Some frames had 20 characters in them, but for those frames, my in-between animation inspector and production coordinator managed to negotiate a higher price for me. It seems like there’s a lot of ways to go about a negotiation. I’d like to learn more about it. But anyway, they got me a pay raise.

This is off-topic, but I got the opportunity to get lunch with my production coordinator who’s the same age as me. We talked about a bunch of different stuff including how different production staff approach their work, their feelings towards it, etc. It was a really interesting conversation.

One thing they mentioned really took me by surprise. I typically work from 11 to 8, but they told me that some staff work right up until about 1 AM, just before the trains stop running for the night. I’d gotten used to working within my own system, so to be reminded that there are other animators out there drawing more invoked a bit of a panic in me.

Under company policy, we’re told to try and not work overtime, so I do the best that I can within the time that I have. I feel it vital for one to know their work limits and what sort of system they want to work under.

If I could go back in time with a fresh slate, I’d try and learn vicariously. It doesn’t do you any good to ruin your health.

November 30th, 2021

Kimura.