The Animation Industry is COLLAPSING 

Well I’ll like the video, but you severely overestimate how many people I know.

I'm just prejudiced against corporate giants, studio and network executives, tycoons and moguls and artificial intelligence because of their greed, lies and sins and I don't trust them, I don't care about them and I don't love them.

Cartoon Saloon is an Indie Studio and they won an oscar for the Secret of the Kells.

@@robertwurzburg6777 It was nominated but it lost to Pixar's Up. Great movie though!

After the AI datasets stop being trained on copyrighted work, I couldn’t care less if AI exists. It’s just another form of competition, which is part of life. I actually think AI will make human-made art more valuable, because I don’t think most customers will want assembly line, manufactured entertainment; not because of any perceptible quality difference but on principle alone.

That’s saying a lot coming from you. When even PikaPetey is depressed by the industry, we’ve fucked up as a species.

I've been working hard to try and get into the industry, now I'm hearing it may never happen. I can relate to this.

Bro you make Cool Cat Undertale Brainrot

@@doopiss Bro, shit i post on this youtube channel isn't what I send to studios for applications. chill.

@@PikaPeteyendlessly making parodies in a style that isn’t unique is the real reason why your job is threatened by AI lets be real. That’s why a computer is able to do your job

That’s gone be the biggest middle finger to the big corporate companies and I can’t wait to see it.

The Oscars are the corporate version of prestigious honoring without the express permission of true visionaries

That would require every major studio to not release a movie that year unfortunately

Who cares about the Oscars nowadays

@@SkyRocket159 hahahahah true XD

Not the best advice. ( and I worked as a professor as well as a supervisor in various departments ) It's true that once in a while someone comes along that is both an artist AND a good business entrepreneur ( Guillermo comes to mind ) but if you have both in abundance you have a chance. Otherwise....get in and learn the work first .

That only works until everyone else does the same. When there is suddenly 50,000 new animation studios, you'll be back to the same situation unfortunately.

​@@blinkx1070I doubt even 1% of those new 50k studio will survive more than 3 years. The truly talented, either in art or business, or even better in both, are always going to come on top, so if someone's a good enough judge of their capabilities and believe that they objectively stand a chance, they should go for it. It does suck for the rest of us though.

@@why.do.I.even.try. .....That's what I was getting at.....there are a select few who can do it. My advice is rather than spend money on renting a studio space......spend it on finishing a great short film that attracts attention . IP is always worth something.....money wasted on renting a space you end up leaving anyway is just wasted money .

@@skidfrog Yepp I agree with everything you've said. I'll also get a day job to support my art so I'll be able to freely work on my pilot episode. I have no issues working long hours, so long as I enjoy what I do. I'm in it for the long run, and above all for my own enjoyment!

This is the way, creator owned first

Disney was a creative led indie studio in the first half of the 20th century that differed from Warner Brothers and MGM in that they were executive led studios. Disney was the last hold out on unionization which led to the historic 1941 strike. Executives are not the bad guys. They often provide the necessary means to make sure what artists do is profitable (Even Disney, who prized art over the welfare of his artists had a business minded brother who prevented him from bankrupting the studio many times). Any leader of a studio, creative or not that doesn't have respect for their workers and their craft is the problem. Sure a creative led studio with 8 people, yeah the boss is probably friends with all of them, and will look out for them, but will they look out for their employees when it's a 100 people, 200 people? We need to hold studio owners accountable for their workers and also realize unionization is our right to stand as equals with our employer, not a burden or mistrust of the studio. We should not worry about whether studio leaders are artists or not.

Makes sense it seems like they can’t compete against TikTok. It sounds like they are giving up on making scripted tv shows. They want toy sales in the 80s

The CEOs' job isn't to foster creativity, but generate revenue for shareholders

@@SpoopySquid I know but AI isn’t even profitable it’s not making a profit and once the bill comes in the AI companies will jack up prices

no, they will say: "Only that? I have been trapped in my shitty job for 40 years and i need 20 more to be able to retire, oh wait, oopsie doopsie i dont have a retirement plan, i shouldn't have voted for a world of free market and conservatives, what a life, huh?" i am sorry. i shouldn't have done this.

Japanese animators are also horribly overworked and underpaid as well.

The corporate suit and the artist are complete and total opposites.

Look up Atrocity Guide's video on The Overcoat if you want to see the ultimate extreme end of this. The video specifically is called "The Animators Who've Spent 40 Years on a Single Film". The amount of passion is insane.

I literally vision people in business suits as greedy and corrupt people

Art doesn't deserve respect. Not any more respect than say the cheeseburger a cook makes. Art is just a product to be sold to the masses. Otherwise they can keep that shit to themselves.

​@@MamaMOB there is def truth in treating your art like a product. However comments like this read less like a reality check and more like self righteous bitterness. Artists have been absolutely pissed on by literally everyone at this point - be it out of jealousy, greed etc. People will do literally everything to avoid fairly compensating artists for their work (and dont get it twisted art IS work). All the while companies want to gaslight us into being happy of being exploited because art is our passion after all, so we should be lucky right? Im fed up with this shit and other people being so damn tone deaf about it ^^

@@MamaMOByou are pathetic

​@@MamaMOBJust admit that you're shit at drawing if you're going to resort to insulting art as a medium of self-expression and as the cornerstone of all global culture.

Animation doesn't get the recognition it deserves largely because since the '60's animation was consumed by the public as cartoons for kids on TV (which was mainly a vehicle for advertising) which were mostly adaptations of sitcoms (The Flinstones was modelled after The Honeymooners, Top Cat was modelled after The Phil Silvers Show etc). In the US cartoons and comic books were seen as "kid stuff," as opposed to the higher regard of such in Europe, and not taken seriously with the age old "I don't want it done well, I want it done Thursday!" ...

True, facts facts facts

🫰🫰🫰

time to go to the indie animation movies

i hear you people always complain about corporate greed corporate greed.. but you dont realize its UNION GREED that is ruining everything

@@DavidWheeler85 conclusion, capitalism is ruining everything

If what you say were true, that the fault lies with "the corporations" then.....where corporations do not exist everything should work perfectly...right?....under this logic indie productions should be the most popular in the world...after all, indie productions go directly from the artist to the public....right?....na.....at the end of the day the market rules, demand rules, indies would be popular If people paid to see them and this doesn't happen... in the end it is always the public that decides.

​@@mcruz4571 It's not like the audience has control over what gets created though. The decisions about what content is greenlit are ultimately still made by publishers. The only exceptions being of course the independents, when some of those have gotten popular as of late, which could suggest the public may actually be compelled to seek out better quality, if anything.

​@@mcruz4571False dichotomy, corportations can be a problem without being the only problem. Also do we want to talk about the sheer amount of money dedicated to a matketing budget that can sometimes outstrip the entire production budget that these corporations have that indie studios do not? Your points are fake and so are your jordans.

greed is killing e-ve-ry-thing

I have so much love for animation, and I really respect you for sticking with it for so long. Thank you for your contributions to animation

Thanks for your service, are you fully retired or are you doing a different career?

Omg that's so cool

is there any hope for 2d?

Yeah, art theft sucks, but it's worth the risk, IMO. How else will anyone see your work if you don't put it out there?

exactly

And/or feed it to AI :/

@@cyberblueangelthats what data scraping is

And that's why I Glaze/Nightshade all artwork I publish on social media these days. Might not be the best thing against AI grifters but it's the best we've got so far.

pelo menos voltamos a ter editais

If you get a projector/portable movie screen you could play indie projects on it, but you would still have to find places to play them

Eu sou um animador iniciante, espero que as coisas fiquem melhores pra gente aqui, o Brasil é um país bem criativo, quem sabe daqui uns anos a gente não ultrapasse as grandes empresas

I mean, Ghibli is the exception to the rule. They still operate by the rules of corpo shenanigans, they make ads, shorts, music videos, heck, Ghibli was under Tokuma Shoten ownership for te majority of its existence, which was a major communication conglomerate well deep into schemes, probably yakuza involvement and financial wars. Ghibli today is the property of one of the biggest TV channels in Japan and I don't know if this channel is owned by another conglomerate. They aren't as independent or non-commercial as they seem.

Disney is scum now, and I have not bought any of their stuff in years

I hope you can stick with indie...

​@kootunesscrewy working on indie? That is hilarious. What people outside of the Animation industry doesn't understand is that it takes a minimum $120,000/year salary to survive in California. NAME ONE INDIE STUDIO WHO CAN PAY THAT MUCH. and don't even try to say "then move out of california". Everywhere else in america is literal redneck cities.

Honestly, gaming has proven indie works, bout time for animation & film/production

I'm Blew Sky myself, wishing you the best.

Unfortunately to give them what they want would cost money, which is their least favorite thing to do

@@NoTheRobot Fact

They won't make a comeback with 2d animation.

@@NoTheRobotit’s because private equity

I don't think they even KNOW what their customers want tbh. All they really seem to understand is that sequels and spectacle draws crowds more reliably. But they don't know why people get attached to characters and stories, or how to honor them in a way that doesn't piss off their audience.

You saw Cats Don't Dance:The greatest animated film of all time is Iron Giant done by Turner Studios rigt after that. I bet you didn't get to see that film as a kid. Warner Bros. killed its distribution when it bought Turner Animation. If you haven't seen it, go get a copy to watch, now. Also, a strike will do nothing. It didn't stop work from going overseas in the late 80's; it will not stop AI from coming.

Oh, I LOVE that movie! It's one of my favorites! I resonate highly with Danny. He's like me in a way: optimistic, ambitious, determined to fulfill your dream. Even when everyone else quit, he didn't. He kept on going, despite what everyone said. He fought hard to do what he loved, and I plan to do the very same! Even now, I'm fighting to save Disney from ruin and also save the animation industry from collapsing. I know it's almost impossible to fulfill such a Herculean task, but Walt Disney once said, "It's kind of fun to do the impossible".

@@llynhunter First of all, I have seen the Iron Giant. I didn't see it in theaters because it didn't initially catch my eye. But I agree that the movie is great. Just because I prefer a movie that came before it doesn't make me any lower than the average movie watcher. You know, I expect this level of pessimism to come from an edgy teenager. But after checking your work, I guess something must have happened in your life that result in every bit of hope you used to have being drained.

@@annien.1727 Personally, I think Walt would be more impressed with the rise of independent animators. I KNOW he hated the idea of unions and probably planned to bankrupt UPA at some point (this is just a theory, mind you), BUT I rarely hear stories about him talking shit about his competitors (WB, Walter Lantz, and Fleischer). While a lot of people tend to give it the side-eye, indie animation is definitely making the rounds on the internet and inspiring others to make their own cartoons, myself included. If you want to help save Disney, that's fine. Just know that they are playing a hand on why we're striking in the first place.

Cats Dont Dance was one of my biggest inspo as a kid wanting to dapple into animated movies as a dream job because i love drawing cartoon characters present day, though right now im just left with "Well what now" feeling because college/mentorship feels pointless to me and i have no experience in Indie projects either but on a small plus side i am just doing that rn, drawing cartoons for myself and Warcraft commissions that put a smile on people's faces and art charity auctions to quote a meme "Its Not Much but its Honest work"

You said it yourself, Canada only had an animation industry because it cost less while being nearby. This means that production in the USA, with their idiotic unions and salaries was simply TOO EXPENSIVE. Which means the stupidest thing Canadians can do is.... demand a union and higher salaries! Yet that's exactly what every idiot in our industry is peddling, feeling entitled to it just because they want it. Getting paid per frame is brilliant, it means the ceiling of your earning is your own ability, it also removes the trash from your team. If you can't make a living working per frame, you simply aren't good enough, and if we pay you a salary it only means you'll be dead weight for the rest of the team to carry. Canadians are way too attached to progressive woke ideals and never once think of working harder.

​​@@user-iu1ru1qz7u Imagine that single frame takes you 10 or more hours only for $25 Taking it as an example, I'm not sure how much they pay per frame in Canada) There's some things that are complicated, even for more skilled folks

I heard that the US was starting to outsource to Canada because of American unions. Hmm, I wonder if if they can coordinate to improve North American animation overall

@@skitterly not starting, it's been that way for a long time. Costing less is blessing for Canada, and just about the only reason work gets sent here(while being nearby, and time zones and language).

@@skitterly Unions should be worldwide.

that actually makes sense, I feel like the main thing that people like to watch and look at movies and art is because there is actually emotion pored into it, I don't think AI could ever give off that human emotion.

Such useless cope, as AI can't understand human emotion? No problem, just get one human that directs it to display that emotion, in the end the solution is too simple if the AI is powerful enough to create whatever output.

@@yansakuya1 Its funny that every pro ai argument is just endless cope about how ai is going to magically improve infinitely. Its just asserting garbage based on nothing

​@yansakuya1 That wasn't their point. They were saying that most people likely won't feel any draw to watching a show they know wasn't made by another person. Once the novelty of AI has faded, once the excitement of emerging technology dissipates, people are going to reject it. We don't just watch to be entertained, we watch because we are participating in one of humanity's oldest passtimes: storytelling. The point they are making is that without the human element of that most human activity, there will be no pleasur, only blind consumption even further beyond what we have now. People will be knowingly sold to, and people will feel it; they will recognize the sheer capitalism in the experience even more so than today. In that, we will abandon the activity, for it has lost the entire reason we came to see it in the first place: expression. We tell stories because we want to express ourselves, our creativity, our lessons, our passions, etc. The whole reason there's been so much backlash against Marvel these last several years is because it has felt so much like a soulless, corporate, pandering commercial. Remove the human element, and that's all that's left. It won't be storytelling anymore; it'll be content. AI, even if it could perfectly mimic human love and creativity, would not be used for it; it is not the priority. When the priority is acquiring capital, the experience with AI will feel even more like a transaction. People watch because they want to; it's not an obligation. People will leave if they feel like they're paying for a commercial. The industry will either die or rehire animators, and with the industry so focused on profit, dying is not an option.

Sometimes the execs have never heard of the IP that they get assigned to work on

if you worked in the industry you'd understand......companies own the IP....but individual execs often suddenly think THEY are the creative geniuses and fire the original creative geniuses

@@NoTheRobota lot of executives seem to hate animation. A lot of them are trying to get out of animation and get into live action. They never wanted to work in animation and wanted to be in live action.

Shareholders............they have to answer to them first.

@@andrewgrant6612 yeah and a lot of these shareholders don’t invest in industry they flip houses and they want to sell the stock when it’s high to invest in different stock. It’s basically private equity

I'm thinking of working for Flying Bark Studios. They've started working on 2d animations and they're the most amazing animations I've seen. Their main inpirations are apparently mappa and trigger. Although they arent as popular or well known, I want to be a part of that.

@@owl9130 yeah. The Flying Bark Studios. The Studio behind Rise of the TMNT, Glitch Techs and Marvel's Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Yeah, that's a Great Animation Studio when it comes to 2D Animation.

It’s scary for sure, but keep sharing your own work online - that’s your best defense right now!

Real, my Anim professor said they were teaching right now because they’re frustrated with the industry

Me an animation animator: 💀💀💀💀

Same! Watched all these job posting shrink and fast over the last couple of months.

@@NoTheRobot the fact that someone is telling you this, is by itself a signal of concern (for all of us, of course) already. We keep learning and sharing 🤞💪

Yes! Like I said, the animation industry will survive but we need to take decisive action now

Good luck with that. I spent forty years of my life trying to be a cartoonist and ultimately learned it's not worth it. Dreams don't come true, the average person hates cartoons and the people who make them, and there's no point in fighting the masses. I gave up on everything and now my only goal is staying alive while making another dime-a-dozen crappy RU-vid show. There's no hope, there's just what the masses want. It's depressing, it's miserable, but it's life. What more can I say? Just accept defeat. It's easier that way.

@@PlayStonkersWith an attitude like that, it’s not surprising you’ve found yourself in this position. I’m sorry to say it, but a huge part of one’s prospects and aspirations is their attitude. The real issue with cartoons is typically the writing above all else, not the animation. And when you have shows like Bluey showcasing what good writing and good animation can do when brought together, it’s clear to see they’re not hated. At the end of the day you have to ask yourself, “Do I concede, or overcome the obstacles in my path?”

As long as these shows don’t go the route of The Simpsons and have too many seasons, you’re right. And yes, definitely show David Zaslav the door.

@@Swampert384 I was on the other side. I was in the world where I believed there was no way to fail and was convinced I would show the world that I could make it no matter how much they all said it was stupid. It wasn't so much an issue of mindset, but just not the right person, place, or time.

Appreciate the comment & boost!

Good! I'm with you!!! I love doing this too much to give up now! It's going to be us who are willing to stick it out even when it seems impossible

Same here.

sage advice

Indie is the future of animation.

Let's do it together!

When the corpos say jump, politicians ask how high. Not gonna happen.

@@solarydays Sorry, I think I wasn't clear enough. I only wanted to be a programmer. I didn't really get deep into coding just yet, I'm still in high school.

Programming is not going to go away.. Sure, AI can make code, but who's going to tell it what to write? A company that has no idea what their system is run on are going to have problems... It's why firing leading developers usually cause chaos as the higher-ups find out just how much work was actually done. Keep up learning programming. It's a good way to get in the animation/film industry and allows you to switch careers much easier than an artist would have if things go to hell.

Just dont speak if yall know nothing you clearly cant program if you think thats happening soon or if you think product owners will be able to magically code shit, ai will speed shit up and up the workload

Tbh I don't think anybody should be worried about Ai, even digital artists and I'm an artist my self. Of course it would take alot of jobs obviously but artists would adapt. My perspective is if you're already good at drawing or animation or coding it would make your job faster where instead of spending weeks on a project you're just spending a couple days at best tweaking the ideas of the Ai. Think of it like Jarvis and Tony stark Jarvis was Ai but Tony was still solving the problems tho using his help

@@solarydays lol before you get emotional on me like I said it assists cos I'm pretty good at drawing myself but no matter how descriptive I get it sometimes lacks some stuff like positioning or whatever so I have to go in and fix it myself or sometimes just use Ai as a tool to brainstorm and recreate whatever it gives me in my own way. Now I'm not saying it won't take jobs I'm just saying artists can also make use of this tool cos like it or not it's here to stay

Well said.

That’s what people don’t get. They think AI is this brand new thing that’s independent of humanity when it’s just a parasite.

@@Window4503 I hope the fad passes over like NFTs.

It’s hard to say since it’s touching every industry and field except for purely physical crafts/sciences. What’s in our favor is that 1. The people creating it don’t understand the intricacies of each field/craft and don’t care to learn, they’d rather just rip work than make sure the output is masterful. 2. AI doesn’t understand meaning at all and can’t assign meaning to things to create novel ideas without help. 3. These are still companies. Meaning that should said companies get heavily politicized, people may leave them to regain control of their own voice should any censorship happen (like not being allowed to use certain keywords or getting biased writings about an event).

No technology is good or evil, what matters is the people who use it and what they choose to do with it that matters

Well said. 💯👌 I made a video addressing this AI legal aspect on my channel, but I hope this topic will pick up among popular channels/creators

> When you use an AI art generator, it doesn't just use your computer's local resources to do what it does, it sends your prompts to a server the AI company owns where it draws from all the art on the entire internet to create an image, then send it back to you That's sadly not how AIs work actually. Well, non-cloud-based ones, anyway. The way they work is that you spend computing days and weeks of compressing those terabytes of stolen images into a single multi-GB file, basically one giant equation, that stores probabilistic relations between words and pixel arrangements, and the AI engine uses _that_ to generate its images. The AI itself doesn't plagiarize any art, but it was created using stolen content none the less. But everything can and does run off a single machine w\o internet access. But there's a silver lining: US court deemed that you can't copyright AI-generated content. Meaning that companies might avoid employing AIs since they can't hold content made with in their money-making hostage.

if u use stable diffusion it can run locally on your own computer.

Yes it is!

Yes if you live in mom's basement.

@@AsylumLunatic-ig5jh what are you talking about

@@SmollRuby You have to have funding otherwise you will live in moms basement, making animation for RU-vid. Am I clear now?

@@AsylumLunatic-ig5jh oh that makes a bit more sense.

​@@AsylumLunatic-ig5jhIndie videogames are generally better than AAA videogames and have been for like a decade. Often they run on patreon crowd funding during development. Low budget yet still better. Perhaps we need an adaptation of that business model for animations.

Where they used ai in spiderverse can u tell? in which scenes

@@Mr.Mirage_YT for the angle of camera. AI was used as a tool for the animators.

ai cannot be used without affecting animators.

@@ithurtsbecauseitstrue1922 the "ai" (really just an algorhythm trained on data created by the animators themselves) was used to predict where to place sketch lines and such on 3D models, it automates a process the animators themselves wanted automated, one of the few ethical uses of AI in animation

@@Dappis oh, cause you’re okay with THIS area of theft and replacement its okay and no one should have a problem with it. Instead of drawing - they use an algorithm. yeah - i can have a problem with that - and should - if i like 2d animation. Lets help them whittle us down, surely nothing will go wrong. You dehumanize something like a hand drawn line - and you’ve already lost. Is it so bad to hire a few more 2d artists to do the 2d part? Excuses excuses. Let ai in just a little bit. Just a little. Im sure its appetite isnt for the whole.

Yeah it’s because of the accessory baby trend that they dump them in front of iPad because they only wanted instagram baby

i have only done a couple boards for “the industry.” rates are way way way too low. Not worth it

I meant to say they are dumping kids on RU-vid slop because they don’t care and never wanted kids they wanted a accessory baby for instagram likes and picture time. And the rest of the time they dump on iPads since they don’t care

lol! RU-vid kidslop is such a great term. Question for you: How do you purchase individual episodes?

Just like with manufacturing, outsourcing is a very short term decision. Chinese manufacturers actually can be pretty high quality, if you are ready to pay. Try to link up with fellow animators and form a studio. It might be a painful few years, but as American talent is hollowed out, that will only leave you guys, if companies do not want to deal with Chinese studios

Producers are untrustworthy...

Producers are the industry. Animators have nearly no control of their own industry. The word industry should be moved first. The Industry Animation. Real animation must move back to the artists, and yes - OUT of the industry

The outsourcing thing has been a problem for a long time now... The Simpsons' ink & paint has long been done in Korea.

Well I mean for big name animated film studios like DreamWorks to no longer fully animate in-house for the sake of cutting costs.

@@superstitch5618 In terms of theatrical releases, fair point. I was more or less thinking of the television/direct-to-video-and-or-streaming industry.

I know.

On one hand it's good, on the other hand if the big industry collapses, big projects will also go extinct. Studios have lots of bad stuff going about them, but the thing that sucks is that nobody else can provide you with quarter of a billion dollars to make your bombastic epic project either.

Facts

@@DarthBiomechwell it doesn’t bother me if there is no epic bombastic projects for a while either, most of them are crap nowadays. Indie will not hurt at all with new fresh ideas and with technology progress, few will be able to do the work of thousands.

@@miriades > most of them are crap nowadays. So is most of indie (No really, you didn't even heard of like 99% of indie animations, because for 90% of them they're known by like five people tops, the rest 9% are also unknown, but less fairly so), your point? Epic bombastic projects are crap because they're meddled with by the executives and producers, not because they're epic and expensive. It isn't "for a while", it's "never", if the major studios all will go away. What crowdfunding Kickstarter is going to collect 100 million dollars for an animation series?

We just need new indie studios. There was a heavy rise in the number of freelance/indie studios are the infamous 1941 Disney strike... I think, even with the bleak state, and GenAI and all, it's still possible to band together and make new indie studios.

Yup I'll be splitting this video up into shorter chunks for Shorts / TikTok / Instagram!

I agree. It's going to force a reevaluation of what we define as "art" which can only be a good thing. I have faith in people, and I really don't believe the potential with AI is as infinite as people think. That said, as someone who graduates in November with a Bachelor's in Character Animation, I'm a little worried that companies will move that direction for a few years, drying up the jobs... Hope I won't be paying student debt on what amounts to a hobby... 😂

see your value as greater. Ai is artificial first and theft second. Itll start eating seas of its own clipart and move itself to the flat boring center of the non-artists using it. Make new things. we dont adapt or fall behind, Adapting ai IS falling behind. And ai is not a tool.

i never saw it as a mess until this year with SoraAI, now i am aware of how bad things can be with this Tool being used in the wrong hands

They are so despicable indeed.

Agree

Not surprised honestly, most animated TV series outsource at least one part of their pipeline. Moana 2 is going to be a really interesting experiment for Disney to see if they can get away with lowering the quality of their animation even further for a theatrical release

If funny how western anime fans have repeatedly called out Japanese animation studios for their toxic work culture and how they're working animators to the death just to end up seeing American studios doing the same or sometimes worse to their own animators I guess capitalism works the same for all countries

I remember being required to attend a meeting where example company bragged that they were hiring 250 people a year. I asked did the size of the company grow in those years but they admitted the company was still exactly the same size . Like the Robot says......those jobs are short term contracts only and not a long term reality . I met one person who was hired away from Illumination and let go just one week later. Those are not jobs.....they're band-aids

EDIT: My reply here feels rude in hindsight and I’m sorry if it came across that way. Leaving it up for context though: My video is specifically focusing on the animation industry, so dismissing it by saying that other areas are also affected, while accurate, doesn’t help us in the animation industry. This is to advocate for the animation artists that get drowned out in the larger conversations regarding the film industry as a whole.

@@NoTheRobotweird response to someone saying they share your grief,

​@@NoTheRobotRichard isn't being dismissive, he's just pointing out that it's also happening in the VFX industry. You're assuming a lot.

@@NoTheRobot excuse me. Who’s dismissing? I’m saying we are also struggling and you’re telling me to fuck off. Lost a sub here dumbass.

Oh and I worked on spiderverse last year. So I’m also part of animation, dick.

3D artists and Animator from Ontario here, honestly...its fucking sad with what's happening with us Artists, both 2D and 3D, Digital and Traditional, i love this Job but its so sad how it is being treated by these Corps, its really sad...

Go watch work like R O Blechman and animate something

Just make sure that you continue to bolster your mental health, as the industry can be quite stressful from what I've heard. I believe in you :-)

🎯🎯🎯

@@NoTheRobot I think it’s important for people to recognize how animation is important

Well, outsourcing has been done for longer than that... Japanese and Korean subsidiaries have been around since the 60s.

True. 2D and Television has been outsourced for a long time. The big shift for 3D happened in 2012 but the signs were there around 2008 as studios began opening offices overseas. Part of this was the push for stereoscopic films coupled with VFX films going from 200 VFX shots to over 1000 VFX shots per film. It doubled workload in postproduction but client studios want more for less always. The straight bid process also contributes to razor thin profit margins and many studios going under or being consolidated. It is quite a mess

Exactly. I'm not optimistic on the potential strike. EVERY SINGLE strike by the modern guild (as founded in 1953) has been a failure. Heck, even the Disney strike didn't do much... as a little thing called "World War II" caused many of the striking animators to strike against... well... bigger foes.

The issue with indie animation is that it's by definition a small pond that will never fit in projects with the scope of an ocean. You just can't make something like "Arcane" or "into the spiderverse" on a shoestring budget. Even the most popular indie animation I can think of, Hasbin Hotel, had to sell the soul of their project to execs (who demanded to boot out all the VAs who worked on the pilot, by the way) in order to get enough money to actually get made. High quality indie animation shows _are_ possible, but with turnout of something around "a single new episode every 2 years or so"... yeah...

you really think indie will miraculously give everyone employment?

That’s a risk we’re gonna have to take.

AI scabs?

Well go indie. Who cares about studios anyway

Hey, I can exploit that garbage code! :3

The current model will only get better and get ready for your humiliation in 2030 when people will say aged liked milk

@@thatvexiol yeah whatever, one new technology after the other in the past has made people say things like this and it does mean you have to work hard to stay up to speed but people remain relevant. Already the bubble hype of AI is starting to tarnish and people are realizing that it sucks in many ways.

@@aaronbono4688could you elaborate on how it sucks?

@@flowerbloom5782 with images you have people with six fingers or things that are completely out of proportion and don't make sense, with video you have someone walking with their legs going through each other... All you have to do is Google search "why ai sucks" and you will see tons of articles about it. The real problem is how people are going to be complacent/lazy and use what AI spews out without going and doing their research to see what's right and what's wrong, something that's already a problem with our media.

Definitely don’t give up. AI will definitely take over if no one is willing to provide a better alternative. We need you.

@@Window4503 Thank you for this comment! It definitely brightened my day. I'll keep at it! Will do!✌

When we say “protections against AI,” what we specifically mean is protections against the HUMANS that will use AI as an excuse to displace their workers. I’m all for artists adopting AI / Machine Learning models into their workflows and taking advantage of emerging technology, and I agree with you that Hollywood is reaching a tipping point. But the same protections that the writers earned against greedy studio executives are merited here as well. We should be ENCOURAGING artists to try using AI tools (ethically) at these studios, not threatening to lay them off without fully understanding what the tools actually do.

Artists will be the first to go but eventually everyone will get replaced it is inevitable. I worked at a factory controlling the inventory, I knew I could automate most of my work so I moved to work on construction... Eventually blue collar workers will be replaced. If North America refuses to use AI others like China Will use it. Be optimistic we could live in a post-scarcity world.

Where are you?

@@JohnSmith-wg3pl Where Am I living? I live in Brazil

not sure about that. Every job Ive seen in the past 6 months has 400+ applicants for a single position. And tons of people i know have been looking for work…. for that whole 6 months. Ive seen people begging - openly begging for any job possible

@@LuizanimadoAhhh there it is. Lol dude getting a job in the US is really hard rn. I’m jealous

Yeah, but here's the thing, you don't need to work on US, there is a lot of studios hiring to work remotely, that's why I'm saying working as freelance can be better, I'm not a good example since I kinda have my own clients, but my friend for example, he works on many different studios, sometimes at the same time, from US, canada, Dubai, you know, different places. We have to get out of our bubble sometimes.

There was the Fleischer brothers studio in New York.

They go wherever there are tax credits.

I think it would. There is an entire half of a country that they are missing out on. How many talented animators are not working in studio because they can’t afford or don’t want to move all the way across the country.

And that's a side effect of the outsourcing pointer. I don't think the animation medium is on recession... just the mainstream stuff from LA and the Canadian studios... Overseas/indie animation is booming.

Layoff has been a recurring in the entertainment biz long before any of this a.i hoohah. I came from (indie) game environment, saw the early comics/manga portal(s) succumb, before the likes of Tapas or Line's Webtoon became huge in North America (and the rest of the internet), and… had the misfortune to venture into this shythole in Glomac square in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. cj & andrew are two sly fcks who are exactly part of the problem by normalizing the culture of staying late instead of genuinely coming up with something that may _actually_ help improve THEIR OWN employee retention rate, rather than telling everybody they simply ain't working hard enough. Cj in a closed meeting room saying shyt like "maybe it's part of your upbringing" as if I consented in my contract for him to say whatever garbage he felt like saying about my parents. I always heard the folks in production floor saying stuff about them, but it was only on my last days that I learned their real sick outlook on things. Pretty sure they are now very proud of their "hardwork" getting ipo deal and whatnot after benefitting on top of the broken backs of those artists who had to sleep onsite due to inhumane deadline. You think these two ARE successful? After they gloat about how much they hate their previous job as well before becoming -entrepreneurs- scheming ässhöles themselves. Just look at their Glassdoor rating. Not to mention their salary payment loophole scandals. I think most of people I ran into from my time there had left the animation altogether. I always loved the Malaysian experience with the food and everything else. But not this one.

Yes that is what all animators should do. Just team up and make a product and make money out of it.

that show is dogwater. We need better than sloppy low-rent animation with garbage characters and terrible scripts. One of the worst things my eyes and ears have ever had the misfortune of seeing. It shows you the power of a strong pre-existing audience to push junk out to on youtubes algorithm though

@@Rexorazorthey had a huge audience already. Their real job is building youtube numbers

​@@ithurtsbecauseitstrue1922 Digital Circus is no masterpiece, but criticizing the show with such bad faith is not gonna help anybody in the industry. I truly believe that RU-vid can become a home for new indie animations, and I think you should be more open about that. Instead of trying to shame people for liking different things that you may find of lesser value, you should encourage any and all animators and animations on RU-vid. It may seem other animations are competing for your potential audience's attention spans, but I can assure you nobody will watch your works because you've put down others. I know most animation in this platform isn't 'Into the Spiderverse' levels of quality, but that is okay. We first need to build a space for animation to thrive in online spaces. Aim for success, not perfection.

@@botkarma5753 And i hated Into The Spiderverse - so that is not what i am expecting from indie work. I made a feature for $10k one time. I appreciate microbudget work fine. Circus is not about art. It is about cheap-ez-youtube-audience-building. I can respect it as that. But if i love animation, i do not need to pretend like it was made with any care. Rough around the edges i can delight in. I like Bill Plympton after all. I like Ralph Bakshi and many of his films are very cut-corners in value, or even inept in direction. Circus is low bar, sloppy, and uninspired across the board. Both in quality, and in my stupid personal useless opinion. So no one would watch my work unless i hold ALLLLL animation work up as masterpieces? You just ranted against me. Does that place you in the same boat, because you didnt honor my position? if not, why do i have to honor theirs? or yours? The show was low brow, filthy, and inept. Its not my fault. I didnt go to their channel and blast it, and publicly make statements about it on a channel with sway or audience - i didnt try to sabotage or harm them. I responded to people lifting them up as a shining example. A masterpiece. If you’re going to hold it up - its open to criticism. I didnt kick them while they were down. They are riding high!! I cannot be a dissenter to such elevated praise?? I didnt try to destroy them or kick them or laugh at them during a failure or troubled time. Something you obviously ARE trying to do when you disparage me and my assessment. You ARE personally attacking me - and openly hoping for my failure and sabotage. So get off your ignorant arrogant high horse. I DID NOT put my work out there for criticism. I did NOT call my work a masterpiece. When someone is praising me and my work as genius masterpieces - your attacks might have a less hypocritical or bitter edge to them. Just shut up and like what you like. You have no idea the work that i do or the indie artists i support. Its not a masterpiece - nor is it quality animation or comedy. And simply CANNOT be seen as the high bar indie work should aspire to be.

I wish artists and designers could make higher ups feel the absurdity of limitless revisions by either having to watch each one in real time or being given an equivalent for their own jobs. I’m not even in animation and the number of times someone has “just a few more tweaks” while I’m swamped is ridiculous. The revisions don’t even improve anything!

source?

Canadian studios are beginning to get unionized wild brain is unionized