Perhaps I'm just being ignorant here but if these people are really this concerned, let them know that there are plenty of art-driven jobs such as industrial and graphic design with low entry requirements which have too many intricacies to be "replaced" by machines (except for maybe those globalized corporate illustrations, but that's beside the point). Sure, most people don't have the academics of an architect, nor the patience to work in a semi-restricted, team-based creative environment but at least you can still muck about in your own time rut-free weather that'd be animating/ drawing R34 degenerate crap or otherwise. I'm not trying to discourage people from working as full time artists/ animators to instead peruse a meaningful career (I don't know this thread's consensus on that) over some code but, in my opinion, it sounds delusional to claim that your skill has gone entirely to waste when there are plenty of other things that can benefit from it greatly.