Cartoon Industry thread - Showcasing the Spergery of the Animation Industry

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Cleverbot said:
Other than that, I'm still not sold. I'm still waiting to see the benefits outweigh the consequences. The more I'm told the promise of AI making the jobs of artists easier only to see it being used to churn out crap, the more I think I'm being gaslit by lazy fucks, /pol/tarded artists who suck up to AI to own the libs, and egotistical sub-human tech cattle who genuinely hate artists. I feel like we're getting closer to the things we want to do getting automated and the shitty jobs we don't want to do staying the same. Who knows? All I can do is wait and see.
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Colon capital V said:
I should've linked this video in my post about it since it is an actual creative, good use of AI for a music video.
But yes, obviously we're still not at the point of AI having much practical use for animating outside of uses like above and your video. But eventually there will come a point where this tool will be more practical and useful to an artist, we'd just have to wait and see until something proves fruitful. Until then, it's just more AI sloppa of characters getting their orifices pounded all 7 ways from gooners.
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This isn't the AI thread, but I genuinely think that AI is a boondoggle being pushed by tech firms because they invented this brand shiny new gizmo without having a market for it and are now scrambling to recoup costs. It all reminds me of the Dot Com Bubble and 2017 Bitcoin, frankly. Yes, you can say those eventually developed use cases, but I don't see that being anytime soon for AI. The data input generates diminishing returns over time, and we aren't seeing major jumps in image fidelity. Finally, it's use in animation or game projects reminds me of something else; those godawful 2000's webcomics where the guy couldn't draw so he'd import lazy 3d assets to try and make a comic and it'd just look like ass.

Even if AI does become a viable piece of kit in the future, I really don't see it being soon. Not with any sort of quality.

Just my 2 cents don't @ me.
 
RazorBackBacon said:
Finally, it's use in animation or game projects reminds me of something else; those godawful 2000's webcomics where the guy couldn't draw so he'd import lazy 3d assets to try and make a comic and it'd just look like ass.
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Sadly, some things just can't replace good old-fashioned WORK and EFFORT.

"We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better."
 
I've never understood artists who think they'll be able to make a living off of their art. Unless you work for a big studio, you probably won't get paid at all.

The phrase "starving artist" exists for a reason. Unless you can manage a job and your art, you won't get anywhere.
 
With all the posts about "you'll never make a living off of your art and you should just let it be a hobby and have a real job" in this thread it's starting to feel like some kind of artist-centric blackpill doomthread.
 
Chromeo said:
With all the posts about "you'll never make a living off of your art and you should just let it be a hobby and have a real job" in this thread it's starting to feel like some kind of artist-centric blackpill doomthread.
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A bit, yeah.

I know a couple artists who work full time. In every single case, they started out doing something else to pay the bills (one was an electrician, a couple worked in the service industry) and only really moved on to working in art full time once they could actually earn enough to keep going like that. Of course, it took them a long time but none of them actually went to art school and accrued the associated student loan for it so they weren't in a hurry. And if they ever have to stop working in art due to an industry downturn or something happening to their equipment, they at least have other professional skills to fall back on for income.

Meanwhile, most of the animators screencapped in this thread paid through the nose for formal education and are now getting shafted because they have no off-ramp from the industry.
 
Corn Flakes said:
Meanwhile, most of the animators screencapped in this thread paid through the nose for formal education and are now getting shafted because they have no off-ramp from the industry.
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I think a lot of this comes from the push for Millennials to go to college. I'm not old enough to remember if this has to do with No Child Left Behind, but throughout my life as a Millennial that was THE ONE GOAL throughout all of public education, was !!!!OMG COLLEGE!!!! Everything was about gearing your education towards college, about what would look good on college applications, about looking at colleges for whatever you wanted to study then working to go to said college, and scholarships for college, and college college college. The only other option pushed even remotely as hard was joining the military, and that's only because I went to a public school with lots of poor people.
I think if maybe kids were given a more solid understanding that college doesn't guarantee you financial success, and that just because you go and graduate it doesn't mean you'll find a job in that field/be rich and pay off your student loans, we wouldn't have so many animators and artists and other liberal arts degree types realizing it 10 years out from graduating and posting GoFundMes.
 
Corn Flakes said:
I know a couple artists who work full time. In every single case, they started out doing something else to pay the bills (one was an electrician, a couple worked in the service industry) and only really moved on to working in art full time once they could actually earn enough to keep going like that. Of course, it took them a long time but none of them actually went to art school and accrued the associated student loan for it so they weren't in a hurry. And if they ever have to stop working in art due to an industry downturn or something happening to their equipment, they at least have other professional skills to fall back on for income.
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If I may ask, what kind of art do they do and how do they make a living off it?

Because there are many ways to make a living as an artist, not just as an animator. But since this is the cartoon sperge thread, we're focusing on the animation industry and the particular issues with making a living there.
 
S@credC said:
If I may ask, what kind of art do they do and how do they make a living off it?

Because there are many ways to make a living as an artist, not just as an animator. But since this is the cartoon sperge thread, we're focusing on the animation industry and the particular issues with making a living there.
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One of them does animations on the side but none of them are professional animators, no.

The problem with animators, with relation to the points I made on my previous post, is that they invested a lot of time and effort in an industry that's always been niche at best, and one that has been steadily outsourced to Asia since the fucking 80s. So while I'm sure it can be a fun and fulfilling hobby, expecting to make it your career without some other professional skill to keep you afloat when things go south is wishful thinking at best these days. Particularly with how animation studios seem to operate like some game studios, hiring grunts for pennies for projects rather than holding on to them and allowing them to earn seniority in the company.
 
Chromeo said:
With all the posts about "you'll never make a living off of your art and you should just let it be a hobby and have a real job" in this thread it's starting to feel like some kind of artist-centric blackpill doomthread.
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Disney animators back then got paid like $500-$900 per week animating (in 1940s money), now you have to wonder why anyone would work in the industry at all given the workload and shitty pay among other fantabulous perks like selling off your IP to probably never be used again once the plug is pulled.

I'm a firm believer of being an independent creative and making things on your own and you can certainly make a living off of it (merch, patreon, live donos, etc), but that requires you to have an audience in the first place, and you should really weigh the amount of what you can reasonably do compared to the output rate of your work.

I think the introduction of TikTok/YTShorts have actually been a very helpful boon in getting artists' brands out there while only animating a short amount of content; as that is what's expected on those platforms.
This video below is a compilation of shorts from a channel with 3.7 Million subscribers, and that's pretty much all they've been making in order to rack up views and clout.

Making it as an artist online is doable, but you should always remember the Internet has the attention span of a goldfish and is always hungry for more, so always weigh your options, churn out whatever you can and strike when the iron is hot. Speed really is key, which is why nu-artists opt to draw on tablets than traditional pen and paper (and why the more successful artists are always open-minded about any new breakthroughs in tech to further help with outputting their work at a lower timeframe, but I'll stop sperging about automated work until it actually proves useful to the individual).
 
Corn Flakes said:
The problem with animators, with relation to the points I made on my previous post, is that they invested a lot of time and effort in an industry that's always been niche at best, and one that has been steadily outsourced to Asia since the fucking 80s. So while I'm sure it can be a fun and fulfilling hobby, expecting to make it your career without some other professional skill to keep you afloat when things go south is wishful thinking at best these days.
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From what I've seen, the jobs that aren't outsourced are things like character design, storyboards, backgrounds...everything but the actual animating. So there is a shrinking number of "Animation" jobs, as far as the actual animating goes.

Like I said, you can make a living doing art or something creative. But if you have to supplement your income by starting GoFundMes, maybe consider—at the very least—finding another job, maybe OUTSIDE of animation.
 
S@credC said:
From what I've seen, the jobs that aren't outsourced are things like character design, storyboards, backgrounds...everything but the actual animating. So there is a shrinking number of "Animation" jobs, as far as the actual animating goes.
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It gets worse, because in order to do those jobs properly (well, perhaps not necessarily backgrounds) you need to have pretty extensive experience in animation. But the gruntwork jobs that would give you that kind of experience (in-betweening, then keyframing, etc) aren't available anymore. So it looks like the industry is picking up people fresh of college, squeezing them dry, then throwing them away. The only people who get to have that sort of experience are indies working on their own, and I suspect a lot of them aren't interested in the corporate grind even if it makes them more money than posting an animation to tiktok every week.

No wonder the industry is in shambles.
 
Chromeo said:
With all the posts about "you'll never make a living off of your art and you should just let it be a hobby and have a real job" in this thread it's starting to feel like some kind of artist-centric blackpill doomthread.
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The real blackpill for any artist is finding out that most animators were nepo babies or came from parents with a lot of money.
 
Chromeo said:
I think a lot of this comes from the push for Millennials to go to college. I'm not old enough to remember if this has to do with No Child Left Behind, but throughout my life as a Millennial that was THE ONE GOAL throughout all of public education, was !!!!OMG COLLEGE!!!! Everything was about gearing your education towards college, about what would look good on college applications, about looking at colleges for whatever you wanted to study then working to go to said college, and scholarships for college, and college college college. The only other option pushed even remotely as hard was joining the military, and that's only because I went to a public school with lots of poor people.
I think if maybe kids were given a more solid understanding that college doesn't guarantee you financial success, and that just because you go and graduate it doesn't mean you'll find a job in that field/be rich and pay off your student loans, we wouldn't have so many animators and artists and other liberal arts degree types realizing it 10 years out from graduating and posting GoFundMes.
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NCLB is mostly about tying school funding to standards performance. There may be something in there about college acceptance data but I don't recall. The big push for college occured when NCLB wast just a thought, and is based on data that shows the income disparity between those with only a high school diploma and those with a degree. In a move that puts the cart before the horse, schools shifted their focus from producing well rounded functional citizens to producing academics under the impression that if you simply place a person on a college campus they will magically become a high earner regardless of supply and demand and any other complex factors. They still trot out this data to districts, schools, and teachers to remind everyone of the goal, usually right before some new stupid initiative or instructional strategy is pushed.
Its hard not to come up with conspiracies involving college deans and governments going all-in on college-for-all, especially when an entire generation was completely sold out and ruined. However the public themselves are also at fault for their greed and selfishness. They bought into the magical thinking too, that if they (or their children) could just go to college, then they could get a cushy, callous free job while maintaining a lifestyle equal or better than their parents. We have seen what has followed on. A generation in debt yet also purportedly (because I keep hearing this as an excuse for "infinite beaners" ) completely unwilling to do the work that slave labor will do.
So no, I do not want to pay off your (whoever you are) student debt even though most likely you got completely hornswoggled into accruing it in the first place. Feels bad. Get your hands dirty.
 
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LavenderMenace said:
The real blackpill for any artist is finding out that most animators were nepo babies or came from parents with a lot of money.
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thats the majority of all college students, ivy league or not. the odds of any regular person getting into a college are pretty slim and youre gonna be dealing with a serious debt in the process UNLESS your family already happened to be rich in the first place to get you in and not have to worry about that
 
DeadwastePrime said:
thats the majority of all college students, ivy league or not. the odds of any regular person getting into a college are pretty slim and youre gonna be dealing with a serious debt in the process UNLESS your family already happened to be rich in the first place to get you in and not have to worry about that
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Isn't that shit normal in western world in general? Even when i live is somewhat similar.
 
DeadwastePrime said:
thats the majority of all college students, ivy league or not. the odds of any regular person getting into a college are pretty slim and youre gonna be dealing with a serious debt in the process UNLESS your family already happened to be rich in the first place to get you in and not have to worry about that
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I dunno if you're in the US, but in America, ANYONE can go to college. Loans are the most common way people "pay" for college courses. That's why everyone's in college debt because the usual deal with college was to get a good job when done with college to help pay off loan debts. The difference with nepo babies is that they can afford to goto expensive art schools like CalArts and get a position due to their parent's status or making friends with the professors at CalArts.
 
I don't believe there's anything we can do legally to save the animation industry in America. The best option for creators is to go indie or collaborate with other independent animators to establish their own streaming platform exclusively for animation fans. Sometimes, reviving American animation in the West means finding like-minded individuals who are dissatisfied with corporations and focusing on the indie side of the industry.

It's also surprising that there isn't an indie union movement for independent game companies. Indie animation studios need to collaborate for a greater cause, or they risk facing the same fate as their larger corporate counterparts like Warner Bros. or Walt Disney Animation Studios. In my view, the situation could deteriorate further in the coming years.
 
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