Being an Animator in Japan Is Brutal
Is it true the pay is awful?
The pay/hours change depending on who you are and what your job is. The best position (which only the best of the best can manage) is "freelance genga-man aka freelance key-frame animator" ... you can demand your own prices and actually take time off after project if you want. For everyone else (and definitely for inbetween artists like me), its as bad as the rumors. I worked at a slave-labor-inbetween-studio called "nakamura pro" for 8 months before moving onto Pierrot which is where I am now. At Nakamura pro we were paid $1 per drawing, meaning you earned between $5 and $25 a day. At Pierrot it`s way better... but still pretty bad. 1 drawing = $2-$4 .... so on any given day I can earn about $40. (HORRIBLE by anyone's standards.... but, if you want to work on cool anime, there's not much choice.)
...Each month at Pierrot I earn about $1000. ...... each month at my previous "slave-labor" studio, I earned about $300 a month...
http://kotaku.com/being-an-animator-in-japan-is-brutal-1690248803