“Equal pay for equal paint!” That’s the rallying cry of The Animation Guild as they resume negotiations with Hollywood studios on September 16 for a new three-year contract. In addition to a deal protecting workers against the threat of AI and jobs moving overseas, the union wants pay equity for color designers — a job historically dominated by women.
There’s been progress in Hollywood to address long-standing concerns that the wages of historically female-dominated crafts lag behind historically male-dominated ones. Most recently, costume designers closed a pay gap with peers during contract negotiations in July, after six years of organizing around the issue.
In 2021, studios agreed to increase the starting wage to $51.50 an hour for color designers, who create the palettes for anything that moves in animation, like characters, props, and effects. This wage placed them one-third closer to the starting wage of other design roles in animation like background painters who make a minimum of $56.38 an hour.
“The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers deeply values color designers and recognizes the importance of their role in the animation process,” said a spokesperson from the AMPTP. “That is why we have agreed to outsized wage increases for their craft over the last decade, including in our last contract negotiations.”
But color designers are still paid 9% less under the studio contract that covers a majority of union animation workers. The union says this could be because the role of color design evolved from a department dominated by women during the animation boom of the 1930s.
“These members are being denied their right to equal pay, and we as a union have the obligation to come together and resolve this issue,” says Teri Hendrich Cusumano, vice president of the guild. She’s organized around this issue since 2017.
Rachael Cohen is a color designer who works out of her home office in Glendale. She began organizing for pay equity after she joined the animation union in 2019. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
Rachael Cohen is one of around 200 color designers in the animation union. Armed with a stylus and knowledge of color theory, she receives digital files of characters drawn like coloring books with only black outlines. When selecting color in Photoshop, Cohen takes into consideration intricacies like a character’s pose and the way light works in real life.
“This is definitely not something that anybody off the street could say, ‘Okay, I'm going to be a color designer tomorrow,’” says Cohen, whose credits include shows like Cartoon Network’s Infinity Train.
When she first started in the industry, she assumed background painters were paid more, because it required more skill or responsibilities. “But I don't think that's necessarily true based on the work that I've done in the past few years,” says Cohen.
The difference in pay can’t be explained by the job itself, according to a 2024 report by The Animation Guild and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. When the skill and working conditions of these two jobs are compared, the demands are nearly equal if not greater for color designers, says Clare Hammonds, the author of the report.
“The fact that some of these pay inequities remain so persistent points to the fact that these are really rooted in the historical origins of the work itself,” says Hammonds.
The all-women ink and paint department of Walt Disney Studios works on “Snow White” in this 1938 behind-the-scenes tour, starting at 3:23 in the video. Credit: YouTube.
The job of color design emerged from the traditionally women-dominated department called ink and paint. This is where studios employed artists to hand-trace characters onto film and then paint them in color.
Women have a history of working in a variety of roles, including as animators, since the early days of the art form. But when inking and painting emerged during the animation boom of the 1930s, it was seen as an entry level position. Studios often relegated women to this department, says Mindy Johnson, an animation historian and author of a book on Walt Disney Studios.
She says historically when there was a job with a lot of women, it became labeled “women’s work.” Employers who bought into the gender norm that men were the breadwinners would say, '‘Oh we can reduce the job expense there because women don't need a lot of money,’” says Johnson. “The work is devalued to the detriment of those doing that work.”
But, she adds, “when you look technically at what the women were accomplishing with color, it was perhaps one of the highest points that elevated artistry.”
It was learning this history back in 2017 that motivated Hendrich Cusumano to start organizing The Animation Guild around pay equity for today’s color designers.
Now it will be the third time the union has brought the issue to the negotiating table.
“People who have decided to dedicate their careers to this role have had a discount on their labor for their entire careers,” says Hendrich Cusumano. “It’s time we fix this.”