Dreamworks animation is now outsourcing a lot of its animation as it lays off 500 employees of PDI Dreamworks. They wave goodbye in this touching short released today.
[su_vimeo url=”http://vimeo.com/118379300″ width=”800″]
Unfortunately it costs too much to make things in the US. Comic art is outsourced, animation is outsourced, printing and production is being outsourced. At Hashtag Studios – Comics – Gaming we pride ourselves by stating our books are Made in the U.S.A. Do people even care about that anymore? The market can support the product, but there does come a point where the product becomes too expensive to facilitate production and the first thing to go are the people that are paid the most (probably the most deserving, in the animation industry). Paying your labor as a service is the highest cost of production in most art-based industries. I speak from experience, it’s crazy out there.
Sad to see this go, but it frees up a lot of great animators out there, maybe I’ll pick one up to have on the Hashtag staff. Wouldn’t that be cool?