Hard work, step-by-step advancement
Director Ang Lee once said: Taiwanese, being people from a small island, need to take the initiative to leave it and engage with the world. Both culturally and geographically close to Taiwan, Japan is a kingdom of animation, and it represents the top choice among Taiwanese animators for overseas careers in the field.
“Full of rich resources and with many related exhibitions” is the general assessment of the Taiwanese animators who have gone to work in Japan. Manga, animation and gaming are interrelated fields there, and they have given birth to all manner of peripheral products and merchandise. Consequently, the animation industry in Japan has tight, well developed and complete chains of production. The high level of professionalism and comprehensive systems of promotion characteristic of the Japanese animation industry are even bigger reasons why many Taiwanese animators move there for extended stays.
To enter the Japanese industry, many people start from scratch, enrolling at a professional animators’ school. In addition to the education, they also can make connections for future employment. Chang Shao-wei, who is head of the animation studio Poirot, took this route.
“Taiwanese emphasize the value of experience, but the Japanese emphasize the cultivation of youth,” says Chang. Because there are so many styles of animation there—ranging from martial arts, to sports, to stories based around female leads—each animation studio has its own specialties. He notes: “Companies in Taiwan hope to get experienced, battle-tested talent; whereas Japanese firms hope to get newcomers that they can mold entirely to suit their purposes. That ultimately results in each studio having its own style. The new talent will turn into the kind of animators the company needs.”
But animating isn’t easy, and many find the working conditions too challenging to stay on. Lin Hung-sheng, who graduated from a professional animators’ school and who does background animation work for Mukuo Studio, recalls: “While studying at animators’ school, those ahead of me all said that the work was very hard and the pay poor. But it would go in one ear and out the other. When we graduated, we learned just how true those reports were.”
In the field it’s quite normal to work 12 hours a day, six days a week. Plus, you often end up working on tight deadlines, so you might have to pull all-nighters. Some studios even have dormitories where workers can catch a few winks.
And starting salaries aren’t high. Typically, there is a basic wage, which is supplemented depending on how many projects one works on. Sometimes, in the case of internships and probationary hires, there is no salary whatsoever. For all kinds of reasons, animation studios there have extremely high rates of personnel turnover.
But once you get past the initial growing pains, the professional respect you get isn’t based on your years on the job but rather on the actual work you can do. And there is a comprehensive system of career advancement, so that quite a few people decide to stay in Japan and pursue their careers there.