With the rise of animation and VFX, animators across the industry have complained of being overworked and mistreated by major studios. But Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem producer Seth Rogen and director Jeff Rowe say they attempted to end that terrible industry trend with their new release.

In an interview with Insider, Rowe explained their approach to promoting a work-life balance behind the scenes.

“That was the thing that was really important to us on this film, and I learned it from Seth and Evan [Goldberg] because in getting to know Seth, I’m like, ‘He has a really good work-life balance and everyone at Point Gray does,’” Rowe said, referring to the actor’s production company.

The director recalled that Rogen told him, “‘Well, when you’re doing live action, sometimes you’re on a set for 40 days in a row and it is exhausting and tiring. And we want to make sure that our people have time away from that and that it doesn’t become their entire lives.’”

Rowe explained that he took that advice to heart and set out to make the movie “ethically.”

According to the director, they checked in with the animators to see how they preferred to work on the film and accommodated their needs. Some preferred to work only three days a week, while others preferred to work remotely.

“I never want the team to be suffering more than I am. And I also hopefully am suffering more than the team because I’m the captain and I’m paid to absorb that, and they’re not,” Rowe said. “It’s important to preserve that. People just do better work when they’re rested and have home lives.”

Animators who worked on Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse recently revealed they were overworked and forced through endless cycles of revision, so much so, multiple people stated they would not work with Spider-Verse producer Phil Lord again. Marvel animators have similarly expressed that the studio is a “horrible client” prone to overworking their employees to the point of exhaustion.

But as a producer on Mutant Mayhem, Rogen enjoyed having more of a say in their workflow.

“We dictated the system, and we dictated the process in a lot of ways. We are creating the infrastructure and process for them, not plugging into someone else’s infrastructure and process,” he told Polygon regarding his reluctance to work on a Marvel film.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is now playing in theaters.