What You Need to Know:
- Netflix will begin offering scholarships and living expense stipends for young animators in WIT Studio's WIT Animator Academy, a 6-month course that will lead to subcontracted animator positions for future Netflix anime projects.
- The decision comes thanks to a shortage of animators in Japan, a boom in the streaming platform's audience, and the fact that anime is one of Netflix's biggest attractions. Netflix has over 200 million subsribers worldwide, with 5 million of them residing in Japan.
- According to Netflix, WIT Studio will launch WIT Animator Academy in April. Training will be handled by production company Sasayuri an dsupervised by Netflix.
- Around 10 applicants will be chosen and for 6 months starting in April, they will learn how to create in-betweens—frames in-between key frames—in animations. Graduates will be in charge of creating these scenes for original anime at WIT Studio and/or Production I.G in Tokyo.
- Netflix willpay the ¥600,000 (~$5,700) tuition per student plus a monthly stipend of ¥150,000. The program will be multilayered and ongoing and the areas of support that scholarship holders can learn could also be expanded.
Source: Netflix.com
Anime is officially taking over!
This is GREAT!