I stopped working as an animator many years ago. Therefore, the following rant has absolutely nothing to do with fear of losing my job. It comes from what I see as a menace to animated films.
If you are an “animator” working on a motion capture film and you are tweaking graphs, cleaning up data, etc, etc. Shame on you. Quit your job and get a real animation job because you are doing nothing but hurting or even blowing your chances of getting real employment as an animator where hand-keyed work is valued.
Your colleagues look at you as second-rate data manipulators and will never give you props if you go seek a job at a studio that relies on hand animation. You are only contributing to the nonsense that drives these producers to use motion capture in the first place.
You are a menace to animation society.
Do these words piss you off? Good! I hope so. I hope they piss you off so much that you prove to me and everyone else that you are an animator worth a piss and will get on a project where you animate everything, not just relegated to cleaning up a computer's mess and leave motion capture behind -forever-.
Stand up! Prove that you are a real animator and turn down these jobs. Are you so desperate for work? Do you really think that motion capture is animation? Do you really think that you are respected in our industry?
Maybe you are in such a financial position where you have to take on these jobs. Maybe you even like the whole motion capture idea or look. That’s fine. Just don’t call yourself an animator or expect props from those the real animators that laugh behind your back.
