Thread 150016005

>A vast majority of animators can’t find jobs in our industry and are being fucked over by higher ups.
>All shows are being forced to look like cheap shit (e.g. beanmouth or Family Guy ripoffs) by increasingly stingier executives who refuse a higher budget for those shows.
>Executives are focusing on what’s more profitable, such as reboots and revivals, rather than supporting original IPs. Many original shows are poorly advertised and canned after one or two seasons.
>Streaming services are gradually replacing cable, streaming in general is an unstable environment. Many cartoons are getting pulled off of streaming and cartoons released exclusively onto streaming are more likely to fail.

Maybe the better question is when will this end?

You know what will, no one here likes the answer because it requires upping the game and taking even more pay cuts for more labor hours spent anyway.

>>150016005 (OP)
When people stop putting dollar sniffing boomers in charge of our entertainment

>>150016384
The Millennials and Zoomers just keep making diet anime like that new Superman cartoon and the Fight Girl thing, and Steven Universe/Adventure Time inspired slop.

Total implosion. Like video game crash of 83 levels of shit. The industry needs to contract so severely that the companies producing shit now either die out or abandon the industry. From the ashes something better may come, but there's no salvaging what we have now.

>>150016005 (OP)
Assuming there is an end to it it'll probably be a steady buildup of talent resulting in a major studio starting to take more risks with animation again like what happened starting in the mid-80s and came into full force at the end of that decade. Otherwise a crash where the entire market goes to total shit and there basically just aren't animated shows being made, followed by the inevitable bounceback as some cartoon comes out that "saves" animation.

There was a time when no one thought pulps or Vaudeville or radio drama would ever die. Hollywood is not exempt.

>>150016427
*millenials

Zoomers aren’t making cartoons, it’s still millennials only who are flooding the industry with their shit ideas, I can’t name one cartoon made by a zoomer this decade that’s not an indie cartoon.

>>150016005 (OP)
I won't make a prediction, just aim for making successful original projects by artists who completely reject the industry mentality.

>>150016427
>>150016573
>Millennials make shitty TV, cartoons, comics, movies, and music that pales in comparison to the stuff they grew up with
>Gen Z doesn't make much of anything at all and what little they do make is the most industry-processed basic plastic bullshit thinkable
Why did everything go so horrifically wrong after Gen X

I'm one of those industry animators (no longer working in it). Doing niche furry porn for good money now, using ai to make it faster. Other people i know also do porn on the side or have changed jobs altogether to another industry. Thing is, even when we had shit pay, we still did it because we loved animating. Now it's just making the most awful dogshit using vector animation in toonboom/flash, and nothing else. If I had to animate another ORANGE MAN "joke" again i'd kill myself.

>>150016495
You know what they say, the further you push the pendulum the quicker it’ll swing back. Should probably also be noted that indie animation is currently thriving rn, seeing that animators in our industry are unable to find jobs its far easier for them to get gigs on smaller independent projects.

I’m curious, are there any historical records of what animators in the 70’s or 80’s predicted will end that animation dark age?

>>150016618
Why is it that millennials grew up on the best cartoons but grew up to make the worst cartoons?

>>150016981
Millennials basically grew up in a universal media golden age and seeing their actual output as adults is some real whiplash shit. I always thought they'd end up striving to live up to the heights of the 80s and 90s but no, it's not even close.

t. Millennial

>>150017034
I feel like executives are also to blame as to why most millennial media these days is shit. Wanna cash in on the success of Rick & Morty? Make all adult cartoons like like Rick & Morty. Wanna cash in on the success of Steven Universe? Make all kids cartoons look like Steven Universe.

Writings also too oversanitized these days.

>>150016005 (OP)
There will be no recovery for western animation as we know it.
What's going to happen is once executives realize they can offshore not just the in-between work but form international teams of boarders and proper animators, your going to see the vast majority of animation having a American or Canadian director, the rest will be various South Americans who can be paid peanuts and one or two other American or Canadians on the team who will have the support to get away with being paid the same.
>>150017034
Millenials saw the best time in history, materially speaking, and rejected it because they found it spiritually/in regards to fulfilment lacking.

>>150017724
>>150017034
>>150016981
I'm not saying you guys are wrong, it's a subjective opinion, but isn't this was John K said about Boomers (who made a lot of said cartoons millennials watched)

>>150016005 (OP)
AI animation tools. Think about what game engines like GameMaker, Flash, and Unity did for gaming. It made it possible to make actually interesting and successful games on a small budget. The same thing is about to happen with animation. People think of AI and think of prompting and getting an instant slop result, but it's already becoming more than that. Adobe just put out a beta on their feature that lets you rotate a character in any dimension from a single image.
https://youtu.be/gfct0aH2COw?t=110
It looked too good to be true in the original, but the beta is showing it's legit.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0CEw5tBEhGo
https://youtu.be/y4vvVmFSHj8?t=201
Within the next few years it'll be creating full character rigs, allow prompting for any poses for keyframes, then generate good looking tweens.

>>150017888
The difference is that the Boomers had an "Existential Enemy" to shape culture and provide meaning even among their excess, by the 90s all you had in front of you was an endless sea of culturally sterile office cubicles, this was the entire anxiety that was expressed by films like Office Space and Fight Club.

>>150018018
Anon the AI bubble just burst because GPT-5 his its resource cap and Sam Altman was a fucking idiot and called it a bubble. Expect business to start pulling away from AI soon and AI development fade into the background for 5-10 years until the tech become Apple tier easy.

>>150018018
>but it's already becoming more than that
Yep. Case in point, I asked ChatGPT to give me animated-style Ghostbusters that matched the actors. Here's what it came up with. Not bad at all. Things are gonna get weird.

>>150018427
>The difference is that the Boomers had an "Existential Enemy" to shape culture and provide meaning even among their excess,
You mean the Reds?
I suppose it's one school of thought, if a bit pessimistic, that peace would make life seem boring

>>150016005 (OP)
Youtube stops being free, allowing studios to charge for content without any big competition and they can invest in things again.

>>150016224
I'm all for paying animators even less than they are being paid right now.

>>150018653
But it is just copying the traits of existing characters designed by someone else. Seems more like "monkey see, monkey do" than using creative energy, if you ask me.

>>150018736
>Seems more like "monkey see, monkey do" than using creative energy
Won't matter, because it will be available to everyone.

>>150018718
based…
When they appreciate what they had (and work on restoring the medium) they can get it back

>>150016005 (OP)
Increasing labor + excepting huge pay cuts

>>150018475
Nah the AI bubble probably won't pop until sometime next year if previous bubbles are any model to go off of. We're in the "canary in the coal mine" phase where people in the industry are starting to sound the alarm and it's causing a minor selloff, but the actual bubble bursting usually happens ~6 - 12 months later.

Cuyc gi g8cy9ct9

>>150016005 (OP)
On January 20th 2029 at 12:00 pm, political news stations will run out of things to talk about and cable will go belly up, and since Paramount and Warner lose money on everything else they own, they'll just collapse.

Western animation dying out is just one symptom of a much larger issue, pajeets, arabs and niggers (latinos too probably) are incapable of basic human things let alone making good art. Other industries that are vital are going to suffer and are currently suffering as the west declines so youre probably never going to see western animation recover.

>>150019594
But all the recent Disney movies were made by white people and asians and they're still terrible

>>150016005 (OP)
https://youtu.be/JC9R7JbFY08?t=43

>>150016005 (OP)
An AI that can streamline the animation process and put out a consistent result or AI that can manage independent animators to work as consistently as professionals.

You may not like it but that is how it will be. The biggest challenge will always be how to make it cheaper with the same quality.

>>150016005 (OP)
Nothing

>>150020794
It'll just be like 3D rendering software except for inbetweens. So instead of doing everything you do the keys and then it'll render what you want in real time with a toggle system to adjust like the rendering software in Maya. Anything more will be too sterile because the computer can't get exactly what you want and anything less will be too expensive with too many man hours. It'll be something in the middle, once execs find out people won't just watch generated slop, which is already happening right now in theaters but with actual man made, pipeline franchise sludge.

Ten years from now you'll say "Hey Google, create a new 12 episode adventure cartoon", and instead of watching it you'll say "hey Google, create a 10 minute ClownfishTV video explaining how it's woke trash", and listen to it while you play video games, and you'll cry and reminisce on how good you had it in 2025

>>150019594
>Latinos
We made Villanous, Glitch techs, Book of life, El Tigre, INVADER ZIM?, and have many people that have become Disney animators over the years. I don't wanna see any Mexican slander on here.

Things may simply not get better. Everyone under 40 is moving away and won't be able to do union work. Everyone over 40 got in while it was still possible to buy a house and have a family in California on a regular person's paycheck. There's basically nobody under 30 with a steady career in the past 2-3 years.
Also a lot of blaming millennials for making shit cartoons when it's the restrictive and schizophrenic attitudes of executives and CEOs inserting their soulless ideas and influence. True creator led shows ended in the 2000s. Adventure Time was probably the last. Maybe SU but I think SU had the advantage of being exactly what was culturally acceptable at the time
>>150016681
>If I had to animate another ORANGE MAN "joke" again i'd kill myself.
name one

They should make more rankin bass Christmas movies

>>150016005 (OP)
Forget the industry.

>>150016005 (OP)
It will never end, it will either grow worse until traditional corporate media grinds to a halt (which we're already seeing as is) or push more existing talent to blaze their own paths online to varying degrees of success. For as much as I resent the deluge of samey ""indie"" toons people endlessly fellate now, that is unironically where the future is headed. If you ignore all the poster child examples there are even some gems in the mix, granted none of it will ever hold a candle to the kinds of cartoons we got between the 90s and late 2000's, but it will be the only option most have.

>>150018736
>>150018018
the chinese gov is already planning to use a bunch of this shit to remake a bunch of nationalized classic chinese/HK films. AI will undoubtedly shoulder the vast majority of the burden for hollywood going forward. the traditional meams of making a cartoon will become a dying art much in the same way traditional animation, stop motion, and c9mics have become. There will be an ever shrinking talent pool who dedicate themselves to the craft and they'll keep that torch lit as long as they can, but everything else will be computer vomit.

The current animation slump will end when the current slump for most Entertainment in general will end.

Companies need to learn to stop being so stingy and to take more risks but unfortunately I can’t see that happening anytime soon.

>>150025167
Here you go, worked on this dumpster fire.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7689460/

>>150026066
Trump jokes aside those kinds of adult cartoons just don’t look fun to work on at all, they’re so stiff as shit, zero unique expressions or anything. You’re just moving around a rig for scenes that don’t stand out at all.

We need more cartoons like NuSpongeBob or Paul Rudish Mickey that actually look fun to work on with their expressive animation and shit

>>150026125
Pretty much they all want rigid on model everything because they think it makes an IP "identity" that people will recognize and buy merch off. It doesn't actually work that way but the retard execs do and point to simpsons/family guy and that their shows are "rigid", failing to understand that those were made in a different time and when there weren't a billion clones of them. Higher detail and lower framerate was something they would be unwilling to do, because anime was seen as not desirable or watchable by the "general" audience.

>>150026221
Simpsons wasn’t always so stiff all the time, the earlier seasons looked much more lively, look at the fucking old intro compared to the updated one if you wanna see an example of this.

The animator who worked on the new intro even stated how he animated Marge in this part much more lively and wasn’t aware of how much they were gonna tone it down.

No adult animation looks visually appealing these days, which is why I feel like this board was too harsh on Fixed, we need more cartoonist driven adult animated projects like that.

>>150026402
They were yeah, and then once the execs stepped in alongside groeing it became more and more rigid and model till where it is now.

>>150016005 (OP)
Bad morning..

My advice for any anons getting into the industry:

Always have a backup plan, you can utilize your talents somewhere else, advertising, game design, illustration, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

>>150016005 (OP)
An entirely new generation. There's no hope with the current ones.

>>150024153
>Villanous
Una mierda sobrevalorada

>>150026402
>this board was too harsh on Fixed, we need more cartoonist driven adult animated projects like that.
Animation is pointless if the writing is shit. That is why saying nuSpongebob is good is fucking stupid.

>>150027641
Your idea of good writing is probably “its about what I want it to be about”

Anons like you exhibit no higher literacy, no familiarity with classics, just an urge to tell others what to do

>>150027671
>Tripfag thinks his "opinion" matters

>>150016005 (OP)
Here's what I'm thinking: Disney Plus already started this and other streaming services can capitalize on this by following suit: turn streaming into cable. OTT conrent isn't dying any time soon because that's what consumers want now. But overwhelming choice also means that consumers retreat into safety and never find anything new anymore. Turn your services into self-masturbatory advertising platforms with streaming-exclusive channels that air content in rotation with commercials. Disney can afford to make all the channels they want without the stress of FCC regulations and cable packages. Premiere exclusive, first-run content on the streaming channels before shuffling it to the streaming service a week later. Get people excited: air promotions for upcoming shows and movies, air exclusive interviews. Create bumpers, create interstitials. Literally just do TV without TV.

For the rest of the industry, I think licensing and acquiring student short films is a HUGE missed opportunity. Animation festivals have been dead for a while and there are an OVERWHELMING amount of art colleges and talent just waiting to be discovered: not talking about unprofessional stuff either, talking about the feature-quality shorts you see from Savannah and Goeblins and wherever else. There needs to be a fixed-revenue model where artists make residuals from their shorts while studios (or schools!) make money from airing and releasing those shorts in perpetuity, in film festivals, and so on.

Last but not least, the industry needs to get away from California, but stay in America. Start opening up studios in other states, start opening up advertising firms and make animation ESSENTIAL, not just a commodity. Make big-budget porn. Sell out. Sell out and use that money to fund passion projects that will sell to the rest of the world. Stop importing other countries' stuff and start exporting our own stuff. We should be competing with our own states, not with the world.

>>150019594
Most woke slop is made by white soi males

>>150027641
NuBob isn’t that bad on its own, the issue is just that it feels like a completely different show now.

Honestly it kinda sucks how it’s the only show these days where young artists derived from WB or Spumco can showcase their talents, and your lucky to even be an artist who gets to be on a fun-to-work-on show like that. In the small chance that you do get an industry job it’ll probably be on some Bento Box slop or something.

>>150016005 (OP)
We predict nothing! That's the best we can do.

>>150016005 (OP)
It will never end. They had 20 years to prevent their downfall, but decided that simping for blacks and trannies was more important. Now their audience is watching something else that doesn't insult them for being white.

Keep whining about Trump though. That worked so well these last 10 years.

>>150016690
>>150025309
Honestly an indie animation renaissance is closer than we think, I’m not too big on Helluva Boss and Digital Circus but those shows making it to mainstream streaming platforms feels like a massive accomplishment. Maybe soon mainstream platforms will start recognizing lesser known indie projects and start giving support to them.

>>150027702
Confirmed, you just seek some way to dominate others with contrived opinions that have no substance to them. Stop masturbating.
>>150027926
Feeling different is a good thing, so you have new things instead of reliving the past.

I want a fully animated 100% accurate adaptation of unsounded. It'll take 50 years to be produced, require the deaths of hundreds of enslaved Asian animators, and the GDP of a small country but by God It'll save animation.

>>150016005 (OP)
>Maybe the better question is when will this end?

Titmouse is trying to do a direct to consumer thing but not enough people are on board

>>150029975
You missed my (NG poster) point. The industry, including streaming, is crumbling, and it's no more "valid" that a cartoon is streaming on Netflix as it is on Newgrounds or YouTube or Archive.org. If you want it on TV, use an HDMI cable.

>>150017724
>the rest will be various South Americans who can be paid peanuts
Wouldnt they just make their own IPs if theyre being paid penuts? Why do the grunt work for someone else when you can DIY? Their cost of living is way lower and things like patreon are international.

>>150031443
>Strawman Netflix argument

>>150033242
Indie animation really does seem like the direction animation is currently going in, stuff like Hazbin and Glitch’s stuff have been more popular than pretty much any new cartoon this decade, the only popular cartoon from the industry that I can think of from this decade is Smiling Friends, and even that show is pretty Newgrounds like.

Now that I think of it, it kinda does feel like that, unless the industry improves sometime soon, we’re witnessing the birth of a new era for animation, cause technically we’re still in the creator-driven era of cartoons that started in the 90’s, and the even the term "creator-driven" feels very loose now cause every cartoon since the mid-2010’s felt gradually more executive-controlled.

>>150027598
and more with patreon paywall