Sweatshop in Animation Studio

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India - Sweatshops in Animation Studio From 1998 to 2005, I used to work in the Animation Industry. I worked at Film Roman, INC., home of The Simpson's and another popular Animated TV show, The Family Guy. I worked in the Research and Development Department using Windows-based software called USAnimation, a 2-D proprietary software that enables and composes all the layers into one, in sequential order and high-definition quality. USAnimation is the software that Disney Animation uses; hence it is very popular in the industry. In late 1999 to 2000, the digital animation world was on a huge surge, along with 3D and Web animation, other businesses were opening up in hopes of doing work for the bigger companies, for example, Warner Brothers Animation, DreamWorks SKG, and especially Disney. In 1998, FOX decided to have Film Roman, INC., work on season 1 of The Family Guy, we decided to ship our work to smaller companies to get the bulk of the production done, quickly and efficiently. We found out China, India, Philippines, and other countries were opening up studios and purchasing USAnimation to service their work. We looked into a company, Color Chips, in Hyderabad, India. They were well-managed, experienced animators, and have licensed over 40 USAnimation computers, meaning there would be 40 people working in production and would be a lot quicker to complete. Our production team had a budget and with the financial limitation, it would not be appropriate if we purchased the USAnimation licenses of our own, hired animators and crew. Ethics and moral belief were not in the discussion through our meetings. We knew that we would send work to a sweatshop, but all we wanted to do was get them the job and hopefully prolonged the contract with FOX for season 2. Obviously, money was the factor and within the budget that was given to our department, sending to Color

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