The Animator Dormitory Project 2024

Hello. I’m Sugawara from Animator Supporters.

This is a crowdfunding campaign for the maintenance and establishment of current and future ‘Animator Dormitories,’ dormitories where new animators can live for less than $250 a month, including rent, utilities, and internet.

In 2020, due to COVID-19, shared living spaces such as our dormitories became infeasible, causing our dormitory operations to shrink. So, during these past three years, we’ve offered a combination of housing support, offering rooms at the Animator Dormitory and direct housing subsidies for animators living in other areas. However, now that COVID-19 has settled a bit, we would like to slowly rebuild our Animator Dormitories and return to how things were pre-COVID. We humbly ask for your support in this endeavor!

In 2015, the Japanese Animation Creators Association conducted a status investigation with anime creators and found that the average annual income for animators in their 20s is 10,000 dollars.

That’s only 800 dollars a month. However, there are many cases where animators in their first year in the industry make less than $250 a month.

The New Animator Dormitory allows animators within their first three years of industry (a particularly stringent period of their careers) to live for less than 250 dollars (including rent, utilities, and internet), network beyond the peers of the studio where they are hired, and hone their skills through art workshops taught by industry veterans.

As of March 2023, we’ve also been hiring new, salaried animators and training them.
You can see the progress of our first full-time employee on YouTube.

Since 2020, we’ve been experimenting with anime production strategies that don’t utilize a production committee, making short-form anime.
We started with animated music videos and are gradually implementing this new production strategy into our own works.

This year, we’ve partnered with vocalist Aya Hirano to produce our second in-house music video. Stay tuned for more on that!

In 2014, we opened the New Animator Dormitory as a safety net aimed at new animators.

To date, we have provided housing support to over 60 new animators.

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Some of our past residents include:

■ Masaaki Tanaka: First Term Resident.

Animation Director on Attack on Titan Season 3

■ Hitomi Kariya: 6th Annual New Animator Grand Prix Winner and Fourth Term Resident.

Opening Title Director, Key Animator, and Character Designer for the NHK morning drama Natsuzora.

And many more.

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For 2024, we hope to:
1) fund our housing support initiatives,
2) pay for dormitory maintenance costs,
3) and begin establishing new dormitories.

We’re aiming to raise about $10,000 to help run our current dormitory.
We hope we can earn your support!
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Here’s a breakdown of our dormitory expenditure per year:
1) Housing Support for Animators — $12,000
2) Dormitory Maintence Costs — $24,000
3) Establishing New Dormitories — $18,000

Total — $54,000

We hope to raise $10,000 of this total to help us maintain the dormitory.

The History of the Animator Dormitory

• March 2014: Our first dormitory (capable of housing two people) opens in Asagaya, Suginami.
• March 2015: Our second dormitory (capable of housing two people) opens in Ogikubo, Suginami
• March 2016: We expand our Asagaya location (now capable of housing 4 people)!
• March 2017: Our third dormitory (for women, capable of housing 2 people) opens in Narita Higashi, Suginami.
• In light of COVID-19, we started offering housing stipends as an additional form of support in 2021.
• We started to offer stipends in conjunction with dormitory housing.

Before 2014, we also provided housing support through stipends of 6,000 dollars annually for grand prize recipients of our art contest, the New Animator Grand Prix.
Counting benefactors supported through this initiative as well, we’ve supported over 66 animators.

Animators in their 20s earn just over 800 dollars a month on average...

Though the Japanese animation industry is valued at over $18 billion and produces a great portion of the world's animation, the animators responsible for this success are made to suffer in a system where low wages, long work hours, and exploitative contracting agreements run rampant.

In 2015, the Japanese Animation Creators Association reported that, according to their Anime Creator Status Investigation, the average annual income for an animator in their 20s is 10,000 dollars.

That’s only 800 dollars a month.

There are even cases of first-year animators making less than $250 a month.

The reason their wages are so low is that most animators are hired on piece-rate contracts (meaning they get paid a flat rate per frame of animation they produce). It takes time get one’s drawing speed high enough to produce an adequate number of frames to earn even a meager living.
A standard TV anime pays around $1.80 per frame of in-between animation.
That means if one draws 300 frames in a single month, their pay would be 300 x $1.8, or $540.

Seeing this, we at Animator Supporters set out to give housing support, illustration, and animation classes, as well as access to good jobs through our networking and referral programs to new animators here at the New Animator Dormitory.

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Please consider donating to help us sustain these operations!