Canadian Animation Resources points out the changing demands on storyboard artists. Where once a board artist's job was to visualize the script through drawings, studios are now often requesting that board artists also time the boards or cut animatics including dialogue and sound effects. It should be noted that studios are offering no additional money for these tasks.
Software is what makes this possible. When boards were done on paper, the board artist didn't have the tools to create an animatic. Now, with applications like Storyboard Pro, the same software that a board artist draws into can also output a finished animatic. While there is no question that this is convenient, it also allows studios to make requests that were logistically impossible in the past.
Just because board artists can create full animatics, should they?
Television animation is a strange beast. The person who is the director really isn't the director if you compare the job to the one Chuck Jones had. Jones would have input into the story and design. He would design the characters himself, do all the character layouts, time the animation, supervise the voice recording, work with the composer and have approval of everyone's efforts. This is why a Jones cartoon (and the cartoons of his contemporaries like Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Bob Cannon, John Hubley, and Hanna & Barbera) are so instantly recognizeable. Their personal stamp is on every frame of the film.
A director of an animated TV series may have approval over everything, but has no time to do any of the jobs that Jones did. Maybe the director supervises the voice recording, but beyond that, it's mostly giving notes on other people's work.
In many ways, the board artist is the de facto director. The board artist is choosing the camera angles and the cutting continuity, two of the main jobs of a live action director. These days, board artists are asked to provide more poses for each shot, so in effect, they are doing the character layouts. If a board artist is also timing the cartoon and placing the dialogue and the sound effects, so far as I can see, that makes the board artist the director of the show. What's left for the director to do except for passing judgment?
While the current studio perspective is that editors can be eliminated, why not go a step farther and eliminate the director as well? Doubling the board artist's fee would probably still be cheaper than paying the editor and director. It might also lead to work that has more individuality. Most episodes of an animated series rival the monotony of McDonald's hamburgers.
If studios thought more about the content of the work they produce rather than the cost, this might happen. Instead, the focus is on saving money and the place to save it isn't on producer's fees or middle management, it's on the backs of freelancers. In the Canadian industry, with no union and where the sellers (meaning animation artists) vastly outnumber the buyers (the studios), the leverage is all on the side of the studios. There's no agreement as to what a board artist's duties are exactly. The studios are free to ask for anything, and artists are aware that with a limited number of places to work, they don't dare be uncooperative if they hope to keep earning a living.
Unfortunately, this is a race to the bottom. How much more will board artists be asked to do for the same old fee? The only possible way for board artists to stem this tide is to say "No." That's a definite risk, but the studios have shown that so long as they are hearing "Yes," they will keep asking for more. If board artists are bleeding now, at what point does it become fatal? Each board artist will have to make that decision, but that decision will affect all board artists. If a few decide to go along and create full animatics, the job of board artist will be redefined. If board artists don't get paid more for doing it, then that becomes the new normal. Proceed with caution.
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BTW The production companies will rightly say their fees for broadcasters have gone down. So then, for example, Nelvana (owned by Corus) should ask for a raise in the broadcast fee from say Teletoon ( owned by Corus) or YTV (owned by Shaw who own Corus.) If the fees go up, all production companies will have more to spend. I say owned for the purpose of demonstration. Technically, “equity stake.”
Oh and maybe Toon Boom (owned by Nelvana) should lower it’s price so more can use the software that is costing editorial jobs or increase their push to train animators in lower cost jurisdictions ( http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20131113/news/news5.html). All Canadian Harmony animators take note.
Oh and all of these companies access federal and provincial tax credits and production funds (contributed to by cable operators such as Shaw) to produce their shows/ software, to promote themselves and to encourage employment in the growing digital media sector. In Canada but not necessarily.
I think it is wrong to group all directors in the same way. Many of the jobs you claim are not done by directors are in fact always done by me on every one of the productions I direct. That being said, I agree that many are trying to get board artists to do things beyond boarding and in many cases things that may not even be their strong suit and that this trend is a significant problem. I for one have put up strong resistance to this trend and have so far managed to hold it off.
There is a movement to form a freelancer's union going on currently at the Canadian Media Guild. We invited a representative to visit us at our co-work studio a few weeks ago and it looks like it could shape up to be something useful, though it is very, very nascent right now. they have a bit of info here: www.cmgfreelance.ca
For TV cartoons made in Japan, directors typically storyboard their own episodes, often times slugging the same time they draw (remember, they loop dialogues in post production, rather than pre-recording). So yeah, in some places the board artist is regarded as the defacto director.
10 years ago, jobs such as storyboard slugging and X sheet direction started disappearing, practically all gone from present day Canadian animation production. These jobs were taken over by editors, they became responsible for timing an animated show even though this function was previously done by someone with animation experience, not editing experience.
Even though it is possible to do these functions on Storyboard Pro, it should be kept separate from storyboarding, time should be alloted for proper slugging and timing, and that part can easily be done by the director.
I think that this new trend is mostly used by el cheapo productions, most of which have no clue about animation but are geniuses at getting funding, subsidies and tax credits.
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