What is the company culture at SHADOWMACHINE?

Pros

Cool projects. Attracts talented people. All the other pros are thanks to the union.

Cons

I don't even know where to begin with this review. I’ve been in the industry for over a decade, and this was hands down the most toxic work environment I've ever encountered. The first, biggest issue is that they still, somehow, do not understand the animation pipeline. I think most of these directors and showrunners aren’t interested in television production, I think they only want to get paid to make their personal projects with celebrity voice acting. Production seems to have no awareness of whether or not the crew is on track, at any time. When asked point blank about deadlines, one member of production will refer you to another, who will pass the buck to another, and on and on until you give up. In lieu of providing clear deadlines, they run their productions by assuming that everyone is behind all the time, and they micromanage accordingly. They assign arbitrary quotas without taking into account the size or complexity of the task, and will get on your case if you’re “behind,” even if “behind” means you spent eight hours on an eight-hour task. Another indication that they have no idea what they’re doing: you can make production happy by submitting busywork in order to hit your quotas. All they check is the number of files/seconds of animation you uploaded that day. It’s a farce. Further, they have no sympathy for anyone who takes time off, for any reason. Production actually told us that their schedule has zero room for sick days. I saw one member of production roll their eyes because an employee had the audacity to take a week off after contracting Covid. All that would be somewhat bearable if the studio fostered an exciting creative environment, but they can’t even manage that. I think this is largely due to the fact that the hierarchy of every show is completely backwards. From what I can tell, the showrunners and art directors do very little show running or directing. Their role is to do all the creative work while the rest of the crew acts as glorified clean up artists. Maybe this is by design, because given the ridiculously tight schedules, there’s no time for creative work, anyway. Nearly all key posing and design is worked out in the boards. If you’re not a board artist, you’re basically a board tracer, not a designer or animator. On top of all of that, production frequently calls artists into to meetings with the sole purpose of chiding them, threatening them with dismissal, or even yelling at them. Nothing seems to prompt these meetings other than being “behind schedule” (which, as stated earlier, seems to be an arbitrary status. I think “behind” is code for “having an attitude”). When artists actually do fall behind, production is unwilling (or unable, more likely) to come up with solutions. Thus, employees are cowed into keeping their heads down and working unpaid overtime, which production happily turns a blind eye to. The only reason they get away with all these things is because they have "cool" projects. They take advantage of young and inexperienced artists with impostor syndrome. Even coworkers of mine who say they love working here constantly talk about burnout and needing to take months-long hiatuses after each season. Oh, and production loves talking about how terrible the underpaid overseas studio they’ve been outsourcing animation to for years and years is. Classy. Stay far, FAR away. They are not worth your time or sanity.

Advice to Management

Stop treating your employees like they're disposable.

Pros

Great talent Great production leadership Great work culture Good pay Good benefits

Cons

Pay could be a bit higher. Ideally they could build long term employment strategies for the crew. Rather than project based contracts, permanent crew would be retained if longer sighted production strategies, would solidify projects already green-lit, and scheduled for production.

Pros

Great coworkers, good communication and understanding of the stress of tight production timelines. Good WFH support.

Cons

Production timelines are extremely tight for the expectation of quality delivered as a storyboard artist.

Pros

Cool projects. Attracts talented people. All the other pros are thanks to the union.

Cons

I don't even know where to begin with this review. I’ve been in the industry for over a decade, and this was hands down the most toxic work environment I've ever encountered. The first, biggest issue is that they still, somehow, do not understand the animation pipeline. I think most of these directors and showrunners aren’t interested in television production, I think they only want to get paid to make their personal projects with celebrity voice acting. Production seems to have no awareness of whether or not the crew is on track, at any time. When asked point blank about deadlines, one member of production will refer you to another, who will pass the buck to another, and on and on until you give up. In lieu of providing clear deadlines, they run their productions by assuming that everyone is behind all the time, and they micromanage accordingly. They assign arbitrary quotas without taking into account the size or complexity of the task, and will get on your case if you’re “behind,” even if “behind” means you spent eight hours on an eight-hour task. Another indication that they have no idea what they’re doing: you can make production happy by submitting busywork in order to hit your quotas. All they check is the number of files/seconds of animation you uploaded that day. It’s a farce. Further, they have no sympathy for anyone who takes time off, for any reason. Production actually told us that their schedule has zero room for sick days. I saw one member of production roll their eyes because an employee had the audacity to take a week off after contracting Covid. All that would be somewhat bearable if the studio fostered an exciting creative environment, but they can’t even manage that. I think this is largely due to the fact that the hierarchy of every show is completely backwards. From what I can tell, the showrunners and art directors do very little show running or directing. Their role is to do all the creative work while the rest of the crew acts as glorified clean up artists. Maybe this is by design, because given the ridiculously tight schedules, there’s no time for creative work, anyway. Nearly all key posing and design is worked out in the boards. If you’re not a board artist, you’re basically a board tracer, not a designer or animator. On top of all of that, production frequently calls artists into to meetings with the sole purpose of chiding them, threatening them with dismissal, or even yelling at them. Nothing seems to prompt these meetings other than being “behind schedule” (which, as stated earlier, seems to be an arbitrary status. I think “behind” is code for “having an attitude”). When artists actually do fall behind, production is unwilling (or unable, more likely) to come up with solutions. Thus, employees are cowed into keeping their heads down and working unpaid overtime, which production happily turns a blind eye to. The only reason they get away with all these things is because they have "cool" projects. They take advantage of young and inexperienced artists with impostor syndrome. Even coworkers of mine who say they love working here constantly talk about burnout and needing to take months-long hiatuses after each season. Oh, and production loves talking about how terrible the underpaid overseas studio they’ve been outsourcing animation to for years and years is. Classy. Stay far, FAR away. They are not worth your time or sanity.

Advice to Management

Stop treating your employees like they're disposable.