Working on SPIDER-MAN: ACORSS THE SPIDER-VERSE Was a Nightmare for Animators and 100s of Them Quit
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was an incredible, visually stunning animated film that featured a great story and hundreds of different Spider-Man characters. When you watch this movie, you can tell that it was not an easy job for anyone involved, but according to a new report from Vulture, it was a nightmare project to work on for animators.
It was such an awful experience that over a hundred animators quit over the course of the production due to the working conditions. There are four pseudonymous sources that shared this information for the report and they share that the working conditions involved working 11 hours a day, seven days a week, for more than a year, and for a salary that wasn’t worth the grueling workload.
There were also issues with the short production time and producer Phil Lord slowly approving layouts, which left some animators without any work to do for three months or more. It was also explained that Lord would also demand edits after scenes had already been completed and approved by the film’s actual directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, and Kemp Powers.
This would force the animators to have to redo all the animation for these scenes! One of the sources explained:
“The changes in the writing would go through storyboarding. Then it gets to layout, then animation, then final layout, which is adjusting cameras and placements of things in the environment. Then there’s cloth and hair effects, which have to repeatedly be redone anytime there’s an animation change. The effects department also passes over the characters with ink lines and does all the crazy stuff like explosions, smoke, and water. And they work closely with lighting and compositing on all the color and visual treatments in this movie. Every pass is plugged into editing. Smaller changes tend to start with animation, and big story changes can involve more departments like visual development, modeling, rigging, and texture painting. These are a lot of artists affected by one change. Imagine an endless stream of them.”
While all of the animators love the work that was done on the film, they are not happy with the dysfunctional way how the production was run. Another source explained how Phil Lord works, saying:
“The analogy for the way Phil works, it’s getting a whole bunch of construction workers to make a building without a blueprint. You get them to start putting bricks on top of each other. You get the wood guys to put the wood in, put the windows in, get some metal scaffold in there. And he’s like, ‘Nah, knock that part down. But show me some construction worker who can put bricks on top of each other again and again then watch it get knocked down on a daily basis.”
That doesn’t sound like the best or most effective way to create something. Vulture reached out for an official response from the studio, and producer Amy Pascal responded and said that the previously finalized shots would be re-done over and over, and added “If the story isn’t right, you have to keep going until it is... I guess, welcome to making a movie.”
Of course, she’s not going to admit to any issues with the production or taking advantage of the animators working on the film. I get that making a movie is hard work, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. All these issues could be avoided with proper management and it sounds like Lord might not be the best at that.
You should read the full report! It’s both fascinating and sad.