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Window into the Chinese VFX scene - December 31st, 2009, 09:11 AM
Hi there,
i thought after being a member of this forum and a western guy living and working in China for 6 years now it might be interesting for some people to learn more about the Chinese VFX scene.
Especially when many complaining that outsourcing companies in Asia cut jobs in the West and many fear that low-wages in the East endanger jobs in the West. No doubt there is a trend towards outsourcing since economic downturn force many producers to look for cheaper options abroad.
I just want to shed some light on the environment domestic artists are forced to work and live in and how they think about us.
Here are some facts:
-a junior to mid-level artist earns between 3000-4000 RMB (~440-730 USD) per month. Senior to supervising level reach 8000-10000 RMB (~1172-1465 USD). Roto/Paint artist/Modeler sometimes even work for 1000 RMB (~146 USD) per job/model/per month
- there are no benefits (health, social, unemployment, retirement, pension) or whatsoever. Bonus is rare, many times promised but rarely paid
-no regulations on working hours neither OT payment (Many of my friends work 7 days/week) meaning there are no unions nor any regulations nor guilds thus zero protection nor any law enforcement which protects them.
- they can fired without notice nor can get paid if the boss was not satisfied with their performance or work. There are official holidays but unpaid of course, the same is true if someone has to take sick-leave.
- they are asked to do everything from matchmoving, rotoscoping/clean-ups, modeling, texturing, animating, compositing, etc.
- a job interview seldomly includes a showreel nor a a professional presentation of any kind. Most guys who run these sweat shops are either rich kids but mostly real estate guys who think that CG/VFX/Animation is an easy business to make fast bucks. Telling the boss that they know AE, Fusion, Shake, PFTrack, Boujou, Matchmover, Nuke, Flame, Realflow, 3DPaint, Mudbox, ZBrush, Dee Paint, Photoshop, Maya, 3Dmax, XSI, Houdini etc. gets them mostly a job.
- OK this means that all these kids have these application on their laptops, for free of course meaning you can download them from many Chinese servers including all plug-ins you possibly can imagine. Sure the goverment tries to implement copyright protection in China, but when i buy cracked DVD's i wonder why so many police officers, government officials buy DVD's
and copies of the latest Windows application as well.
- PC's are dirt cheap and for every IT nerd China is the paradise is Zhongguancun (Chinese Silicon Valley) probably the biggest PC and consumer market of electronic products in the world with billions of revenue every year. Taiwan is in close proximity therefore electronic appliances vast and very cheap.
- to open a company costs basically nothing 5000 RMB (~732 USD) to get a license including a tax registration. BUT there is a huge sub-culture of home-grown businesses basically operating from rented appartments in a residental area. Many of them work on very successful ad campaigns with cracked Flames/Smokes and a fully blown post-facility, the stacked up server in the air-conditioned toilet.
- talent pool is huge however there is no quality awareness nor any standards existing. The ones who can speak English try to go abroad without knowing how a company is management nor how does a real pipeline looks like. Traditional art skills (concept art, oil/ink painting, mattepainting) is really good and has a long history in China. On the animation and compositing side of things, the lack of experience and the shabby education is the biggest obstacles to become a professional in a western sense.
- the companies who are doing outsourcing jobs are mostly run by Chinese who had the money to study or work abroad and got used to the western style. And coming back to money many of them money or at least resources available many of us can only dream about. Just to give an example what CCTV's (China Central Television) revenue is nation-wide one can easily assume that money is not a problem for the ones who have the right connections (meaning having the right 'guanxi') to start an animation business for example. OK here it comes: 270,000,000,000 RMB (~39,543,057,598 USD) In general can we say that the riches government in the world is owned by the communist part with access to several trillions of USD in foreign currency reserves.
Now to my reality:
Currently i work as a VFX Supe on 50 episodes of a TV adaptation of one of the 4 most famous novels in Chinese history. Maybe you have heard about (Monkey King, Chinese: Xi You Ji) and the budget is 100m RMB (~14,6m USD) with an overall VFX budget of 15m RMB (~2,2m USD). YES !! i am not joking, the average per episode is 300000 RMB (~44000 USD) including everything VFX can do from complex wire/rig removel to clean-up work to CG creatures, mattepainting and compositing. Average shot count is 200 per episode. Timeframe until completion of all 50 episodes is 8 months !! with roughly 300 artists. Plans for the future from some really crazy real-estate guys is to build animation/vfx factories with 7000 !! employees.
I work now non-stop for 4,5 months without a single day of rest and 15 hours on-set, of course it is winter and no heating system nor air-suction system existing. We shot for 1 month above 3000m (close to Tibet) in snow, drizzle, rain, ice with 2 HDCams and a crew of 15 production guys and 30 stunt/wire members. Lunch is outside, wake up call was 5:30. Stunt and wire crew (all Kungfu kids from famous Hunan martial art schools close to the Shaolin temple, some even grew up there as Kungfu monks because their parents couldn't afford their aducation or simple had not enough money to raise them) are without doubt the best of the best and the toughest guys i ever met but at the same time warm-hearted and extremely polite. No matter how long you drag them, they work their ass-off to please their master ('sufu') or climb up (of course unsecured) on the roof supporting beams of the studio ceiling to fix their wires. One of our directors is a ex-stunt guy and he commnd them with a voice like a drill sergeant of a marine corp. No argueing or complain, they obey like they have learned as Kungfu student.
The studio i am working barely fullfills any safety standard. Like mentioned no air suction system, especially critial when they paint spray a new built set besides our huge bluescreen cyc or when they burn diesel instead of vegetable oil for their set torches. Besides that the whole floor is covered by powdered fine sand to act a set flooring. It already killed my on-set keying previz machine once and my assistance spit blood after 3 months of being constantly on-set. BUT the efficency is high, no bullshit, no coffee break, no safety harnesses, no union regulations, sets are build around the clock, labors are plenty and cost basically nothing, a carpenter earns 40 RMB (~5,85 USD) per hour, some work for half or a third. Quality of construction is good, eventhough breathing in such a set is not recommended at all is paint highly poisoning. I wear during my supe time a half gas mask from 3M which makes the communication with the director a little bit difficult but anyway let me feel a little bit like Darth Vader
Fixed can be basically everything in no time, like mentioned a broken set piece or prop including a camera operator who dropped 15 feet from a crane after a bolt broke and lead to a several brain insury or a power supply cable which caught fire after being overloaded.
So my conclusion and explanation why producers pull out their secret outsourcing weapon and are looking into Asia (China). It is cheap and fast and many things can be accomplished or even tried out which would be impossible in the West for obvious reasons like insame TNT explosions or alike.
Ok thats it, hope it was interesting even too long (for sure) but i think its a post that can give someone a window in how things run on the other side of the world.
If someone is interested to learn more, pls feel free to visit my China blog at http://mkolars.spaces.live.com
Thanks and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all VFX folks around the planet, pls don't forget not only you have a hard time now, i live with it every f***ing day.
Hi there,
i thought after being a member of this forum and a western guy living and working in China for 6 years now it might be interesting for some people to learn more about the Chinese VFX scene.
Especially when many complaining that outsourcing companies in Asia cut jobs in the West and many fear that low-wages in the East endanger jobs in the West. No doubt there is a trend towards outsourcing since economic downturn force many producers to look for cheaper options abroad.
I just want to shed some light on the environment domestic artists are forced to work and live in and how they think about us.
Here are some facts:
-a junior to mid-level artist earns between 3000-4000 RMB (~440-730 USD) per month. Senior to supervising level reach 8000-10000 RMB (~1172-1465 USD). Roto/Paint artist/Modeler sometimes even work for 1000 RMB (~146 USD) per job/model/per month
- there are no benefits (health, social, unemployment, retirement, pension) or whatsoever. Bonus is rare, many times promised but rarely paid
-no regulations on working hours neither OT payment (Many of my friends work 7 days/week) meaning there are no unions nor any regulations nor guilds thus zero protection nor any law enforcement which protects them.
- they can fired without notice nor can get paid if the boss was not satisfied with their performance or work. There are official holidays but unpaid of course, the same is true if someone has to take sick-leave.
- they are asked to do everything from matchmoving, rotoscoping/clean-ups, modeling, texturing, animating, compositing, etc.
- a job interview seldomly includes a showreel nor a a professional presentation of any kind. Most guys who run these sweat shops are either rich kids but mostly real estate guys who think that CG/VFX/Animation is an easy business to make fast bucks. Telling the boss that they know AE, Fusion, Shake, PFTrack, Boujou, Matchmover, Nuke, Flame, Realflow, 3DPaint, Mudbox, ZBrush, Dee Paint, Photoshop, Maya, 3Dmax, XSI, Houdini etc. gets them mostly a job.
- OK this means that all these kids have these application on their laptops, for free of course meaning you can download them from many Chinese servers including all plug-ins you possibly can imagine. Sure the goverment tries to implement copyright protection in China, but when i buy cracked DVD's i wonder why so many police officers, government officials buy DVD's
and copies of the latest Windows application as well.
- PC's are dirt cheap and for every IT nerd China is the paradise is Zhongguancun (Chinese Silicon Valley) probably the biggest PC and consumer market of electronic products in the world with billions of revenue every year. Taiwan is in close proximity therefore electronic appliances vast and very cheap.
- to open a company costs basically nothing 5000 RMB (~732 USD) to get a license including a tax registration. BUT there is a huge sub-culture of home-grown businesses basically operating from rented appartments in a residental area. Many of them work on very successful ad campaigns with cracked Flames/Smokes and a fully blown post-facility, the stacked up server in the air-conditioned toilet.
- talent pool is huge however there is no quality awareness nor any standards existing. The ones who can speak English try to go abroad without knowing how a company is management nor how does a real pipeline looks like. Traditional art skills (concept art, oil/ink painting, mattepainting) is really good and has a long history in China. On the animation and compositing side of things, the lack of experience and the shabby education is the biggest obstacles to become a professional in a western sense.
- the companies who are doing outsourcing jobs are mostly run by Chinese who had the money to study or work abroad and got used to the western style. And coming back to money many of them money or at least resources available many of us can only dream about. Just to give an example what CCTV's (China Central Television) revenue is nation-wide one can easily assume that money is not a problem for the ones who have the right connections (meaning having the right 'guanxi') to start an animation business for example. OK here it comes: 270,000,000,000 RMB (~39,543,057,598 USD) In general can we say that the riches government in the world is owned by the communist part with access to several trillions of USD in foreign currency reserves.
Now to my reality:
Currently i work as a VFX Supe on 50 episodes of a TV adaptation of one of the 4 most famous novels in Chinese history. Maybe you have heard about (Monkey King, Chinese: Xi You Ji) and the budget is 100m RMB (~14,6m USD) with an overall VFX budget of 15m RMB (~2,2m USD). YES !! i am not joking, the average per episode is 300000 RMB (~44000 USD) including everything VFX can do from complex wire/rig removel to clean-up work to CG creatures, mattepainting and compositing. Average shot count is 200 per episode. Timeframe until completion of all 50 episodes is 8 months !! with roughly 300 artists. Plans for the future from some really crazy real-estate guys is to build animation/vfx factories with 7000 !! employees.
I work now non-stop for 4,5 months without a single day of rest and 15 hours on-set, of course it is winter and no heating system nor air-suction system existing. We shot for 1 month above 3000m (close to Tibet) in snow, drizzle, rain, ice with 2 HDCams and a crew of 15 production guys and 30 stunt/wire members. Lunch is outside, wake up call was 5:30. Stunt and wire crew (all Kungfu kids from famous Hunan martial art schools close to the Shaolin temple, some even grew up there as Kungfu monks because their parents couldn't afford their aducation or simple had not enough money to raise them) are without doubt the best of the best and the toughest guys i ever met but at the same time warm-hearted and extremely polite. No matter how long you drag them, they work their ass-off to please their master ('sufu') or climb up (of course unsecured) on the roof supporting beams of the studio ceiling to fix their wires. One of our directors is a ex-stunt guy and he commnd them with a voice like a drill sergeant of a marine corp. No argueing or complain, they obey like they have learned as Kungfu student.
The studio i am working barely fullfills any safety standard. Like mentioned no air suction system, especially critial when they paint spray a new built set besides our huge bluescreen cyc or when they burn diesel instead of vegetable oil for their set torches. Besides that the whole floor is covered by powdered fine sand to act a set flooring. It already killed my on-set keying previz machine once and my assistance spit blood after 3 months of being constantly on-set. BUT the efficency is high, no bullshit, no coffee break, no safety harnesses, no union regulations, sets are build around the clock, labors are plenty and cost basically nothing, a carpenter earns 40 RMB (~5,85 USD) per hour, some work for half or a third. Quality of construction is good, eventhough breathing in such a set is not recommended at all is paint highly poisoning. I wear during my supe time a half gas mask from 3M which makes the communication with the director a little bit difficult but anyway let me feel a little bit like Darth Vader
Fixed can be basically everything in no time, like mentioned a broken set piece or prop including a camera operator who dropped 15 feet from a crane after a bolt broke and lead to a several brain insury or a power supply cable which caught fire after being overloaded.So my conclusion and explanation why producers pull out their secret outsourcing weapon and are looking into Asia (China). It is cheap and fast and many things can be accomplished or even tried out which would be impossible in the West for obvious reasons like insame TNT explosions or alike.
Ok thats it, hope it was interesting even too long (for sure) but i think its a post that can give someone a window in how things run on the other side of the world.
If someone is interested to learn more, pls feel free to visit my China blog at http://mkolars.spaces.live.com
Thanks and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all VFX folks around the planet, pls don't forget not only you have a hard time now, i live with it every f***ing day.
