 Welcome back to an animation recommendation and this time it's not about either a short or a book or a program or a tool, it's more about the industry as a whole. If you're following animation industry or if you're following me on Twitter, you've seen I've been retweeting a couple of things and I'm also, I'm not shy about salaries and surveys and just the general state about the animation industry because you have to be aware of what the standards are, what the fair wages are, what fair conditions are and not be working at a company where maybe the conditions are not so good but you think this is the normal way and everything after that needs to be like this. I'm not a fan of the saying well this is how it's always been done so it doesn't mean anything, it just means that either people tolerated like that, that's how they wanted it to be. There are always better ways to make your work environment better, your relationships better, your salary better, all in a fair way. Now this all leads me to something that I saw just recently and it says here after like 20 years of self-working animation I firmly believe that workers with better schedules with more days off and treated with more respect create more creative and does lucrative work. I'm a very goal oriented person I always turn my work in on time but listen and then you can see the threat there and I 100% agree. You will generally, I mean again maybe this is subjective everything that I'm going to say now which I said before is from a subjective point of view but in my pretty much 20 years of animating and almost I was like 18 years of working professionally it's always been better when I was rested obviously well treated but like where you're in an environment where it works for you versus you're being hounded or you work crazy over time where you just break down your body or physically and mentally you're just exhausted all the time it's just not a sustainable work environment for you to have a long lasting career. Now I say also all of this as an outsider when I started ILM ILM was union and then not union for the longest time. So I have been not with the union for the longest time now switching to Warner Brothers which is technically in LA I am now part of a union shop so I am also looking at all of this in terms of new education and learning more and it's not just me saying all this going I know everything and trust me this is a recommendation hence the title to really dive into some of the different accounts I'm gonna blend in there and just learn more about the industry and I'm also coming from a very spoiled perspective where I have been treated really well again subjectively that doesn't mean that everybody at the companies that are worked out or things or like schools whatever whatever I'm involved with has the same experience like me but I have to say that so far it's been really really great and I can't when I mean you read some of those statements that people have gone through in terms of work environments and bosses and deadlines and just the grueling aspect of this industry I've been super spoiled that I've never been part of that it's always been great but it doesn't mean that that's the norm but I will always advocate for a better work environment for better wages just for a better support of animation workers so if you go through these I'm gonna go and show you I'm gonna put these in the description but you see all those hashtags for storycraft unionite equal pay for equal paint there's so many in there you can see that you can sign petitions even if you're not in the union you're gonna see this a lot of storycraft unite with that hashtag and there are lots of things that you can just look at this is from a story point of view is animation story group you have animation gilly writers call designers is a bunch of stuff and if you follow me on Twitter or I would follow a salty animator and there's there are many accounts out there they have anonymous submissions for instance in terms of salaries so I would always recommend that you look up and educate yourself in terms of salary ranges but then also as you want to apply for company do your research and find out what are the working conditions what do people say about it and generally if you are interested in a union and how the negotiations are going at the moment I would recommend that you just follow directly the animation guilt you got a lot of news you got a lot of help a lot of articles there's a lot in there in terms of education where you will know a lot more about this industry and again this could be none of interest because you're not part of a union you might not be also in LA or in America as a whole but I think generally wherever you are city country this sounds so like I'm preaching down like you need to educate yourself but it's also for your own self-interest if you just want to look at it from a very self-serving point of interest it's better to know more about wages working conditions what's good and what's bad so that when you are in an interview and you know you're not part of a union you're not supporting any of this from a very selfish point of view you still need to negotiate for yourself when you are in a job interview position so it's better to have more information than the company so you have a negotiation point so you know the minimum salary working conditions health benefits vacation sick days all that stuff it's better to know more so you have a better position when it comes to negotiating your future job your next job and so on so that will be my initial condition for this for this week for me whenever I publish these but check out the link in description and put in all of these accounts in there read up on it it's super interesting it's definitely helpful and that's my recommendation