End-the-calamity - Calamity

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end-the-calamity

1 year ago

I'm totally in support of the writers in theory but I'm trying to understand more of what you're fighting for because I've seen some people on twitter claim writers make more money a week than most of us make in a month so I'm trying to understand what the issue is. Also if that info is accurate. This is a genuine question. Not trying to have a "gotcha moment". I really want to hear from a writer.

people have always had wild misconceptions about how much a writer earns because of their lack of understanding of how the industry actually works. there's so many posts about how "you guys make 5k a week. what more do you want?!" yeah...let's do some math on that.

5k a week for 14 weeks (and that's a long room. a lot of rooms these days are 8-10 weeks. those are the dreaded mini-rooms we're trying to kill) is $70,000. for roughly three months of work. you'd think we're cooking with gas...BUT HOLD UP. that's gross! let's see everything that has to come out of that check:

10% to our agent

10% to our manager

5% to our entertainment attorney

5% to our business manager (not everyone has one but a lot of us do. i do, so that's literally 30% immediately off the top of every check)

most of these breakdowns ive seen downplay taxes severely. someone made one that says writers pay 5% in taxes and i would like to ask them "in what universe?". that doesn't even cover state taxes. the way taxes work in the industry is really complicated, but the short of it is most of us have companies for tax reasons so we aren't taxed like people on w2s/1099. if we did we'd be even more fucked. basically every production hires a writer's company instead of the writer as an individual. so they engage our companies for our services and then at the end of the year we (the company) pay taxes as corporations or llcs (depending on what the writer chose to go with). my company is registered as a "corporation" so let's go with those rates. california's corporate rate is 9% and the federal corporate tax rate is 21%. there's other expenses with running a business like fees and other shit so my business managers/accountants/bookkeepers have recommended i save between 35-40% of everything i make for when tax season comes.

you see where the math is at already??? 25-30% in commissions and then 35-40% in taxes. on the lower end you're at THE VERY LEAST looking at 60% of that check gone. 70% worst case scenario. suddenly those $70,000 people claim we make are actually down to $28,000 as the take home pay. and that's if you're only losing 60%. it goes down to $21,000 if it's 70%.

lets pretend you worked a long 14 week room (that's the longest room ive ever worked btw) and let's also be generous and say you only have 60% in expenses so the take home is $28,000. average rent in los angeles is around $2,800-$3,000. if you're paying $2,800 in rent that means you need AT LEAST $4,000 a month to have a semi decent life since you need to also cover groceries, gas, medical expenses, toiletries, phone, internet, utilities, rental and car insurances, car payments, student loan payments, etc etc etc. and again, this is los angeles. everything is more expensive so you're living BARE BONES on 4k. and these are numbers as a single person. im not even taking having children into account. so those $28,000 you take home might cover your life for 6-7 months. 3 of which you're in the room working. the reality is that once that room ends, you might not work in a room again for 6-9-12 months (i have friends whose last jobs were over 18 months ago) and you now only have about 3 months left of savings to hold you over. we have to make that money stretch while we do all the endless free development we do for studios and until we get our next paying job. so...3 months left of enough money to cover your expenses -> possible 9 months of not having a job. this is how writers end up on food stamps or applying to work at target.

this is why we're fighting for better rates and better residuals. residuals were a thing writers used to rely on to get them through the unemployment periods. residual checks have gone down from 20k to $0.03 cents. im not joking.

I'm Totally In Support Of The Writers In Theory But I'm Trying To Understand More Of What You're Fighting

they've decimated our regular pay and then destroyed residuals. we have nothing left. so don't believe it when they tell you writers are being greedy. writers are simply fighting to be able to make a middle class living. we're not asking them to become poor for our sake. we're asking for raises that amount to 2% of their profit. TWO PERCENT. this is a fight for writing even being a career in five years instead of something you do on the side while you work retail to pay your bills. if you think shows are bad now imagine when your writer has to do it as a hobby because they need a real job to pay their bills and support a family. (which none of us can currently afford to have btw)

support writers. stop being bootlickers for billion dollar corporations. stop caring about fictional people more than you care about the real people that write them. if we don't win this fight it truly is game over. the industry as you know it is gone.

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end-the-calamity

6 months ago

If it is okay to ask, what brushes would you use when it comes to drawing in the Professor Layton Artstyle?

Hi!! if you mean for sprites like these:

then i just use the basic lineart pen that can probably be found on any art program. for csp it's the G-pen and my settings look like this:

i set the pen pressure to a lower range just to have more consistency

if you mean for the box art style like this:

then i still use the G-pen for the lineart, but i use the basic default round brush which can again be found on any art program for the shading, for csp i used this:

more in depth tutorial for the box art style below, i guess?

obviously start with references, i was picturing diabolical box in my mind so i used that as my main inspo but i also had all the other box arts up, was definitely also thinking of last specters art

(note: weirdly the 3ds titles go from soft shading to hard shading? not sure why but i was going for the soft one personally)

anyway, after that i went into compositional thunbnail, sketch, then lineart, fairly basic, i would show you what these looked like but im running out of space for images. the main thing to make it look "layton style" is to have a good grasp of the characters and shapes and how they move which is not something i can teach you in one Tumblr post i have just spent a lot of time staring at layton arts

also for your compositional sketch be sure to include where youre gonna put the logo because i forgot to !!!!!!!!

for the base colours i just used the colours from their official arts, its much easier than trying to figure out how to keep their palletes later

my layers here looked like this (but turned on obviously) the first few are an overlay on battler & co. to make them more orange to fit the tone of the art, and a multiply layer for both descole and beato since theyre more in the background. theres also a black gradient around battler & co. to make the transition into beato less jarring