She-Hulk star Tatiana Maslany, series creator Jessica Gao, and producer Kat Coiro spoke about the CGI criticism leveled at the show, as well as their own concerns about the treatment of visual effects workers. The trio’s comments on the issues came during the She-Hulk panel at the Television Critics Association Summer Press on Wednesday.
Over the past few weeks, several stories have come out of VFX houses and their employees accusing Disney of being particularly difficult to work with. According to the stories, Disney often creates bidding wars for its projects, undercutting prices thanks to its size and power in the industry. This leads to smaller teams on each project, which increases the demand for man hours. In addition, Disney also often requests changes extremely late in the process, causing artists to work even worse hours, the anonymous employees said.
“I feel incredibly in awe of how talented these artists are and how fast they have to work. Obviously a lot faster than they should be given,” Maslany said during the TCA panel. “I know there’s a lot of looks at the CG and criticism or whatever. I think we have to be very aware that working conditions are not always optimal and that they have made these incredible strides in industry and technology. I look at it and I see thoughts, you know, it doesn’t look like a cut scene from a video game.
“And we stand in solidarity with what they’re saying,” Coiro said. “The truth is, we work with them, but we’re not behind the scenes in those long nights and days. So if they’re under pressure, we stand by them and listen to them,”
Faced with these conditions, many VFX houses and studios began trying to unionize, giving artists and employees more collective power to help run their studios and demand higher, fairer prices from Marvel.
“It’s just a huge undertaking to have a show of this scale where the main character is cg, it’s a very overwhelming and huge thing, and it’s terrible that a lot of artists feel rushed and feel like the workload is too much,” Gao said. “I think everyone on this panel stands in solidarity with all workers and is very much in favor of good working conditions.”
“For the union,” added Maslany.
She-Hulk has received backlash for its CGI following the release of each of its trailers so far, including one last month at Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con panel. She-Hulk’s release date was also pushed back a day, with a quiet announcement on Wednesday via Disney Plus’ official August schedule.
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