employer cover photo
employer logo
employer logo

Newscape Studios

Is this your company?

Slowly imploding - Illustrator Newscape Studios Employee Review

1.0
May 7, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Decent pay with benefits -Flexibility in position -Extremely talented and kind group of artists (before they were all fired)

Cons

I'm sure you can guess from the sudden wave of 5-star reviews after 1 and 2 star reviews, but management attempted to cover up several reasonable complaints after employees were wrongfully fired/quit before they were fired. There was a lot of potential in this position and I was frequently strung along by the promise of exciting new projects, but ultimately supervisors were too unorganized and incompetent to actually follow through. Newscape saw some success in YouTube animations and immediately over hired, expanding the department until it was split into multiple teams working on various channels. Management has no experience running an animation company and it shows, with insane turnaround times (120+ shots in a week) and unrealistic expectations for 8-minute shorts made by overworked employees. These issues were repeatedly brought up to management and they dismissed concerns, only to later claim that they would have fixed them if someone spoke up about it. I kept hoping they would improve but I think they're caught in a cycle of self-destruction and will end up running themselves into the ground. After the employees were fired from animation, management actively worked to turn the gaming department against them by reading private messages to them out of context. This is defamation that could hurt the chances of fired employees to get a job in the future. It makes me extremely sad that current employees were led to believe that their former coworkers are dangerous and created a toxic office environment of paranoia and victim-blaming. I hope that current employees will be able to move on and find a work environment where they will be valued and compensated fairly. Many of them are very talented and deserve better. Miscellaneous: -Management promised holiday breaks only to turn around and state that employees would have to crunch and work weekends to get time off -No onboarding or training for new employees, they were set up for failure -Employees were forced to relocate with no assistance to high-cost cities (Denver and Austin) and many were fired before the office in Denver even opened In conclusion, I wouldn’t recommend working for Newscape.

Explore other reviews about Newscape Studios

5.0
Mar 21, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Nearly all employees are salary (non-exempt) meaning they can still accrue OT pay. - 120 hours of PTO - Consistent, reasonable work in an entertainment business full of turnover and burnout

Cons

Fully-remote work is not ideal for all employees. Most of the staff prefer it, however, and it saves substantially on office costs.

2.0
Mar 11, 2026
Anonymous contractor
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great coworkers who are as amicable as they are talented. - Flexible hours for remote contractors

Cons

- Sub-industry standard pay - Prioritizes hiring via contracts to avoid providing benefits. - Contractors are hired on a week by week basis despite signing a contract to be with the company for several months with no guarantee that work or payment will be provided during that period. - As an artist you're given only one week to do a volume of work that most other studios give 2-3 months for which degrades the overall quality of the work you can do. You are forced to cut corners or work past 40 hours a week. - Not enough resources are given to help artists meet those deadlines such as proper visual development art for new locations or reference images that aren't from YouTube Let's Plays. - Trend chasing projects with little to no originality. - While not mandated crunch is basically mandated with the limited amount of time to do assignments.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All