Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1542912
An accomplished animation Timing Director, Christine Smith Ishimine was a member of the TAG Negotiations Committee and Co-Chair of the TAG Timing Committee. As her Co-Chair, I will also attest that Christine was no less than a folk hero. Christine was the driving force behind fixing one of the most punishing provisions in the TAG Contract—the "unit rate" payment method for animation timing. Unit rates pay workers only for the volume of material they deliver—no matter how complex, no matter how many hours they work. Perversely, the more demanding the assignment, the less workers get paid; industry veterans, delivering the most challenging scenes on television, reported earning less per hour than working the cash register at Trader Joe's. Workers also lost qualifying MPI health and pension credits, even when working more than the required hours, because these "hours," too, were unfairly credited only on volume of work. Studios enjoyed this arrangement, and for nine years stubbornly rejected TAG's repeated efforts to remove this unfair compensation from the Master Agreement. The problem drove Christine, in 2021, to create the TAG Timing Committee. Our committee assessed field conditions; collected concrete, quantitative data through surveys and self-reported work hours; drafted data-based contract proposals; and developed presentations to convince AMPTP producers to accept them. Then, right before negotiations started, came Christine's devastating cancer diagnosis. Christine threw herself into intense chemo and radiation treatments. Though she had to leave the Negotiations Committee, she created a bracing, personal video testimonial for our presentation, punching squarely at the injustice of robbing workers of health coverage. Without doubt, her powerful testimonial drove the AMPTP to ameliorate the miserly contract formula for calculating health and pension—a substantive gain for our craft. The curse of unit rates would not be solved until 2024. Christine, still in treatment, at first said that she could not join the Negotiations Committee; but when the committee member representing our craft had to leave, Christine jumped in, a few short weeks before the showdown with the AMPTP. Christine pulled it off. The producers, who for three contracts had refused to budge, at last agreed to give up abusive unit-rate pay. "I was a bit gobsmacked… Christine was the one to stand up and bring that focus and a quiet, but steely, strength to the negotiations table," says Paula Spence, TAG's Treasurer and a member of the Negotiations Committee. TAG Business Representative Steve Kaplan says: "She faced this work with elegance, the gentle and loving nature of her being, and the fortitude and strength of a hardened warrior." Christine left us far too soon, on Dec. 10, 2025, at the age of 52. But her legacy is redemptive. While our struggle is never finished (already, unscrupulous studios are devising new ways to make weekly compensation behave more like unit rates), we have Christine to thank for this important, hard-won measure of fairness and dignity. Surviving Christine are her husband, TAG member Neil Ishimine; their children, Hannah, Casper, and Lila; Christine's mother, Anna Velasco; and scores of loving friends and colleagues. A GRACIOUS WARRIOR RAY KOSARIN REFLECTS ON THE INVALUABLE CONTRIBUTIONS MADE BY FELLOW TIMING DIRECTOR CHRISTINE SMITH ISHIMINE. CHRISTINE SMITH ISHIMINE (1973–2025) Animation Timing Director; Founder and Co-Chair, TAG Timing Committee 34 KEYFRAME F I N A L N O T E