Please share / hit the like button on this video so we can spread the word! 🙏 This video took me a long time to put together to get my facts & sources as accurate as possible. That being said, I'm only human (despite what my username might suggest) and I recognize that this situation is more nuanced than can be discussed in a single, 25 minute video. Things are changing rapidly, especially with the unions in negotiations as of posting this video. There can be a bright future ahead for animation, but only if we collectively push towards that future. *Regarding AI:* Frankly, this topic requires its own dedicated video because there's a lot of misinformation when it comes to what "AI" actually means and what it really does. I'll start writing that video, but in the meantime let me know what your thoughts are on AI / Machine Learning / Diffusion Models below!

I spent the greater part of a decade of my life learning the very difficult craft to be an animator..... only to get slapped in the face

I honestly can't wait to see a Indie animation studio win a Oscar

My professor has been trying to tell us to make our own companies instead of being an employee for those big companies

Corporate suits will never understand artists. I patiently waited a decade for The Boy and The Heron. It was worth every minute. If you say to the average American, “I’m going to work on this project for the next decade.” They’ll look at you like you’re crazy.

I hate how animation (and art in general) is NEVER treated with the respect it deserves, throughout history there's been nothing but disrespect. I will take great pleasure in watching all of these future AI animated movies flopping once they realize that people hate AI. We'll be able to tell, and people will not like it.

Many of these big Hollywood studios don't have creative people at the top, which doesn't make any sense for a creative business. It's like if Van Gogh was managed by a muppet. My hope is that indie animators, like myself, can form the animation studios of the future and allow human creativity/happiness to thrive while still being a profitable business. I think Cartoon Saloon is a good example of a studio already doing this.

Dang, it is beyond depressing how animators still continue to struggle in the face of corporate greed even to this day... Animated films have always been pretty much my favorite art form my entire life, with its capability to tell stories without the limitations of our comparatively boring real life world... Movies like Wall-E, How To Train Your Dragon or The Fantastic Mr. Fox moved me as a kid, and still do so as an adult... I don't want to imagine a world without animated films created by humans passionate about their craft, just because some guys in suits feel like having another private jet.

I retired from the industry last year, questioning whether I was doing it prematurely. Your video helps me relax and trust I made the right choice. I started in 1980, back in the days of hand-drawn cel animation, and survived the transition to CGI back in the 90s. I’ve worked just contract-to-contract since 2006, just trying to hang on as long as I could. Very grateful to have made it this far, and I’m continually blown away by the magnitude of the talent filling the industry today, which far exceeds mine.

There’s a big problem now with the whole concept of sharing your work because you never know who’s gonna see it. Now you also never know who’s gonna scrape it and steal it.

Here in Brazil, all the studios are like "Indie Studios." There is no animation industry, so we fight every day for every single production we can achieve. There is no budget, even considering Brazil is the second biggest market for streaming and TV business. But Netflix canceled the Kids and Family business here, and all other TV and VOD did the same. We only have productions of True Crime, Reality Shows and "Novelas". But we kept doing what we could. We produce animated promos, bibbles, and full development of shows, and travel around the world to sell the content and get financing to produce here. But like every place right now (besides Canada), we are struggling to find money to produce our content. And it's looking harder and harder ...

These big Studios can't see their problem. They are thinking their problem is cost and make things more effective and faster, but the real problem with them that they don't listen to what their customers WANT.

I'm ex-Blue Sky, we could tell things were changing long before the official acquisition and then shutdown... Its just sad disney went that route... Doesn't change the fact this has been a ripple moving through animation studios since before rhythm and hues went bankrupt. Ai on top of all this now is a complete mess, because they are still going to need people to fix it if its used as an entire "production" team, When it should just be prepping and processing tools, we were cutting all the corners we could pre- and post-sim for shots (by making automated pipeline tools)

Corporate greed is killing animation. It's not the fans, it's not the artists. It's the greedy CEOs and shareholders. I hope that supporting indie artists (like super popular ones: Ramshackle, Lackadaisy, and The Amazing Digital Circus) will help the animation industry, and I hope the animators guild strike helps them win against the big companies

This is why Miyazaki still makes movies at 80. He created his own thing. That's the way you beat the suits. Especially the modern CEOs who only care about bonuses and stock prices. No job is safe.

As a Canadian 2D artist who was laid off (and most of my fellow Canadians I know in the industry who have been laid off for almost 1-2 years now, some seeking alternative careers), it’s not going great here. There is no work here either right now. The reason we are huge as service studios is also because the Canadian dollar is worse than the US dollar, same time zones and same language. However, Canadians have started to stick up for ourselves and demand more pay, which has made Canadian studios more expensive. A lot of animation 2D industry workers here in Canada didn’t make a living wage until 2020 due to being paid by frame instead of salary. People in the Canadian animation industry have a fear of unionizing because of fear of becoming less desirable to big studios in the US, because we cannot support a Canadian led industry because we don’t have the same kind of financial investment as the big US studios. We are even seeing more work that would typically go to Canada go to other cheaper countries. So it’s a weird situation to be in here also. I wish that there was more work available for everyone. Sucks that animation is so tough right now across the globe. I wish we had more animation investments that weren’t driven solely by the big US companies

The pandemic has taught me many things: - Creative labor is so valuable, people will do literally anything they can to not fairly compensate the creators for it. - Employers, execs, c-suite, etc abosolutely *DISPISE* the fact that they have to comepnsate you *AT ALL* for your labor. - The people at the top making the decisions are in a endless race-to-the-bottom to give thesmelves/investors/c-suite as much profit as possible before jumping out with their golden parachute and leaving cleaning up their bad decisions someone else's job. - Despite how much they comically hoarde wealth like dragons the execs, c-suite, investors, and other monied groups treat money/resources like its fake Monopoly money. And the big one: - The harder a company/industry pushes against unionizing, the more you have to gain and they have to lose if you form a union.

"All I want to do is the thing I love, doesn't everybody?" That line is from Cat's Don't Dance. One of my favorite movies, as a child the only thing that came to my mind whenever I'd watch it is "HAHAHA Funny Aminals!" I was 5 when that movie initially came out. As an adult, I look back on this movie and see a bit of myself in it and how I just want to do something that makes me happy for a living. Looking at all this news from the mainstream animation industry puts a tear to my eye, I can only hope we go through with this strike and send those three-piece suit wearing assholes a message.

This is my belief, AI art will become so good, and so powerful that animators will become irrelevant and be replaced by it. But, people will realize how fucking boring it is to watch a machine that has in no way made an accomplishment. People will watch the movies and realize how it never improves, nothing looks alive, nothing looks different, it’s all the same words told in a different order. None of the characters seem real because they’re not. AI can’t realize a mistake and people will start hiring artists and animators again because they realize how bad it looks to see this high rendered uncanny valley person move around screen that just feels so inhuman.

Sidenote : i love how beautiful and creative the 1940s animators strike signs are

Me an animation major: 💀💀💀💀

I've always wondered why it seems as though fans of an IP know more about how to handle said IP than the actual companies owning it😅

It is not the end of the animation! We need to keep fighting and showing it support until it gets the better treatment it deserves! Parts of this include unionizing the animation guild, finally firing David Zaslav, bring back all the animated content he cancelled and shelved, possibly get Cartoon Network a new studio building, and making Disney have their cartoon shows (especially Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur) last much longer than 3 or 4 seasons.

As an aspiring Animation Artist and Part of the creative collective, I know it's hard to say that the Animation Industry is on a brink of Collapsing, but I think it's high time to support the Indie Projects and support the Strikes by IATSE and The Animation Guild and the Animation Artists every way possible. Because, if we can't act now, the animation as an artistic media will die from suffering by capitalism. It's now or never. Thanks for explaining this. We have the power and voice to change this whole matter. Let's do this. We're all in this, Together.

Animation is more than escapism. Quality storytelling has offered humanity a profound opportunity to reflect on who we are. Solid vid. 💙

I am commenting to help the algorithm. I don't usually comment but as an artist I feel like this is really important.

AI is not a tool. It's a replacement that uses the work of every scraped artwork. This needs to become illegal. GenAI isn't being used as a tool.

We seriously need laws protecting against the misuse of AI.

I've always wanted to be a programmer. I also loved AI for the last year. Until this month. I realised how serious this was getting. I have four years until i graduate. AI can easily take over coding till then, as you said. Same with the animation industry. I don't want to watch AI generated stuff. Behind all the movies, there's love and passion. AI can't replicate that. I don't want millions of people losing their jobs that they love. This problem is no joke, and we must take action. Thanks for making this video, I'll share it and do my best for it to reach out to more people. I hope this gets seen by many more.

This is an existential nightmare that's persisted for about a year now. Whether or not I'm being irrational or reasonable, I am incapable of giving up even if I wanted to. As much as it sucks to trudge along not knowing whether it'll all be in vain, I'll stick around.

I saw Cartoon Network shut down and dismantled from the inside and it was heartbreaking. 😿

Even if the animation industry is like this right now, I can’t give up as a creator yet. I will continue to draw and make my own stuff and make good animations. I hope one day, the animation industry will rise from the ashes. To all creators out there, please, I implore you, don’t give up.

One silver lining a lot of people aren't talking about is the way that generative AI works is very problematic legally, especially on large scale film and television production with massive legal departments. Not only is the art it's trained on stolen (which is a legal grey area already (and legal departments of film and television production companies tend to avoid legal grey areas)), but there's also the way AI art generators work. 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. So if any film/television production uses AI art generators to make, say, backgrounds for a show, then all of those pieces of production art will also just...exist, on the server of a rival tech company. Everyone that works on a show has to sign an NDA saying they won't show or talk about whatever they're working on. These Gen AI companies aren't signing an NDA. If anything, it probably says in their terms and service that they can use any art that's generated using their software however they see fit. That's an IP nightmare for any production. I know some CEO's are licking their lips thinking about how much money they're going to save, but when the lawyers start looking into it, its going to be a lot more problematic than they realize

As someone who works in the Canadian animation industry I really appreciate you adding to this conversation in such a meaningful way.

Animation industry isn't collapsing. Hollywood is and this is a good thing. With technology advancing and people growing tired of garbage from big name studios, a smaller team of animators and film makers will be able create the same projects that take a thousand people. While Hollywood is collapsing, places like Austin and Utah are growing.

i guess when big cooperations won't do anymore then indie is the only way

Every part of the entertainment industry is collapsing right before I'm prepared to join in... it's really scary but it makes me really determined to fight against wrong practices from day one.

indie is the future

Honestly, as a lifelong animation fan who wants to create animated projects someday, this is horrifying. These corporations just don’t care about the artistic integrity of animation and only care about profit. As evident with the massive layoffs, over reliance on popular IP, outsourcing as a to cut costs and using AI to make things easier for them (but would only end up making future projects feel soulless). Ya, these problems NEED to be call out. And I’m also a bit worried about the future of DreamWorks, their my personal favorite animation studio and they’ve been Disney’s longest rivals in the industry, so it would REALLY suck that Comcast could potentially shut them down purely because their studio is not as successful as their own studio Illumination.

Absolutely FANTASTIC video man! As an aspiring animator who’s going to university to learn it this September, I’m definitely concerned about the future of the art, but I just KNOW that with people like you at the helm of this movement, we’re gonna make our mark and keep our places in this space. That’s why I’m so excited about indie animation from people such as Glitch Productions. I personally want to get into the indie space now and I’m so excited to see where it goes. The harder we get pushed out, the harder we push back 💪

AI will get worse at hollywood. When we will see animated movies with AI, I will be out. I refuse to watch animated movies with AI. Sony animation used AI for Spider-man across the spiderverse without affecting animators etc.. Will dreamworks use AI badly it concern me ?

Canadian animator here: Yeah, working conditions for your favorite shows are paying animators and artists appallingly low prices, even with the tax credits provided. It doesn't help that we also have no unions, and any attempts to unionize have been met with *aggressive* opposition funded and supported by big client studios. (Aka Disney, WB, Univerals, etc.) There's a common expectation that, out of all the young animators that start up in the business over here in Canada land, only a third of them stay in the industry. What's sad is, the lowest paid workers are working on scenes that get immortalized and talked about for years to come, and yet the people that worked on them are just barely able to afford rent. And here's the kick in the mouth: the decisions that make x shows suck are overwhelming cause by Low buget, no time to polish off writing or boards, and corporate appeal to selling the most homogenised content to as many people as quick as possible. If you want to see better content at this rate, purchase individual episodes/series/movies and related merch. Don't waste your money subscribing or letting data analytics gather info on your dumbass parents playing youtube kidslop like coco melon for eight hours to entertain the children they clearly hate.

Laying off a bunch of people to start hiring again next year should be fucking illegal, corps are truly despicable.

How to Train Your Dragon is by far my favorite western animated movie (if I started talking about Japanese animation I'd never stop). Everything about it is beautiful; the animation, the voice acting, the score, the editing, the writing, the story, the themes, the character models, the *animation.* The film came out when I was 2 years old, so I literally grew up with it and I still have the dvd to this day. As a neurodivergent person, Hiccup's story resonated with me on such a deep level since I was little, even if I didn't really know why. I love the movie so much that I could write an entire essay about it.

Producers are very key players in this mix. They are the mediators of the business between Execs and Artists. We must implore them to uphold integrity and not sabotage the creative arm of the animation industry!

Entertainment on the whole is suffering from poor executive decisions, from bad economics to sociopolitical agendas to poor writing. These were avoidable problems, but decision makers simply won't pay attention to the market. It will definitely be interesting to see how it all settles out. AI is the monkeywrench in the system, to be sure, and it's not really even helping indie productions either. Maybe some computer assistance is useful, like the physics system in Cascadeur, but ful-on generative SORA-style stuff isn't really going to be controllable (or ethical) enough to be usable.

"We need to ask ourselves what kind of sad world do we live into, where the automatization of jobs is a threat to the livelyhood of those who can't afford to lose it, instead of a tool to reduce the burden of work for everybody to benefit from?" - A quote I've seen when this whole AI mess begun in 2022.

I would recommend making a short talking about IATSE having protections against AI in writing so it’s easier to share around. Among all of the topics you brought up, I personally feel like that, by far, is the most important to share.

thank you for shouting out production workers. we’re often the first to arrive last to leave, and often get ignored in discussions of workers’ rights.

The corporate greed is unreal. I find it weird that the word "business" is typically paired with "People fired" "at the end of the day all they care about is money" "greed". I agree we are going to see more amazing indie movies.

This is a great video. I’m an artist myself I specialize in digital art, animation and just recently I started doing 3D modeling. At first when I saw the rise of A.I. I was kinda mad at it and I felt I had to prove myself worthy, but now I’m not even worried about it anymore. I know my worth this is a good thing this is going to push creatives to push out more original ideas/content and with ai on the rise I will say this to artist our value just shot up tremendously. After a while the general public is going to get tired of seeing ai. Pretty soon these big companies are going to be coming to us for something new and fresh.

The lockdown on portfolio material, because the company killed a production, is such a huge crime. This is why I find that its important to try and keep copies of your work, even if the company policy says not to do that.

if everyone uses ai, people will notice and stop consuming movies, they will see profit at first but this train will die very quick, but corporations cant seem to think about the long term

It’s not just animation. I’ve worked in vfx for 20 years and have barely worked for the past year.

As someone who is wanting to become an animator... thank you for helping keep aware of these issues. Its a tough world out there, but I always appreciate my seniors for keeping me informated of things I don't even know that I don't know. I wanna stay in the best position possible to keep the magic alive.

VFX workers and Game workers are facing the same issue. It’s time for the creatives to stand up for themselves.

2019 really was the best year for corporations and the new start of the worst years for workers. Not just the animation industry, but every entertainment industry including videogames and any employee with disabilities (as working from home was something many got to experience for a brief moment only for it to be ripped away from them). 😞

Im an international 3D animation student here in Vancouver, Canada. And I graduate in a few months, getting my post graduate work permit as well that only lasts 3 years… I’m super worried about how this will affect me getting a job that will allow me to apply for residency here. And it breaks my heart as well because I have many mentors who are super talented who are also stuck in this situation. I already suffer with my confidence in my own work and seeing so many lay offs and so many people jobless is making me panic and loose sleep trying to grind my animations… it’s gotten to the point where I don’t really enjoy animating as much as I did before. I feel like no matter what I do, I will still get replaced. I don’t find working for these companies alluring neither. I am hoping that by the time I graduate or by the half part of my 1st year on my work permit ,everything will be okay and that I’ll be able to have fun with the grind again. I love this art, I don’t see myself doing anything else….

as an artist myself I must admit I have spent a great deal of time worrying about this. Luckily, these corporations are seeing the loss of interest from viewers from the lack of innovation they have been showing. people do value art created with love by humans. Art is human expression and that's what makes it connect with people. I'm very sad for the artists having their dreams ripped away from them but I'm hopeful that new indie studios will rise up and help take the power away from these greedy companies. I'm pretty sure nobody wants to watch empty content made by AI. Animators need to fight this and keep their hope up. artists will find a way to succeed in doing what they love. People value things made by people even if the ai is good at it. vote with your dollar people!

It's no coincidence that there are mass layoffs just before upcoming basic agreement negotiations -- a strategy to weaken union leverage to strike.

Well, first show of Disney Animation Vancouver, called "Iwaju", was animated by Cinesite. Don't be surprised if their next show "Moana 2" also have significant portions of animation provided by external vendrors, like Cinesite.

I’ve been interested in animation my whole life but had struggled with mental health for so long that I could never make much progress with simple still images, let alone a lengthy animated feature. I’m getting to a much better place mentally and don’t feel the same intense strain I used to when I draw, and I’m hoping to keep it going so I can actually make animation as a career. Learning about the current state of the animation industry is disheartening for sure, but knowing that there are people out there who deeply care about preserving human jobs like you does help. Thank you for informing me about this, and keep up the good fight.

3D Animator from Vancouver here, and I can say that its just as bad in Van right now as the rest of the world. Majority of artists have been unemployed for months and many for over a year. Older veterans have been forced to leave the craft they've worked their whole life to master and try finding work in another industry, while fresh graduates look lost and hopeless thinking they've made the wrong decision to follow their dreams of becoming animators. The lucky few who have been hired to work on a project are being underpaid (as the studios are aware of how many people are starving for a job) and are only given 3 month contracts with no guarantees. They've also developed anxiety from feeling "rusty" after months or a year of not being able to work in production and not given any leeway to get adjusted to the pipeline again. They dread coming to work knowing they could be replaced at anytime if they are underperforming no matter how valid the reasons are. Don't believe the hype of work being outsourced to Canada. It's bad here right now and it'll keep getting worse based on how things are shaping up. The world will be lucky if the current VFX and Animation industry is still around 10 years from now.

There was a Hanna Barbara strike in the early 80s and it resulted in Animation going to Korea. Recent history has shown that the studios are gonna do what they can to cut artists out. This is a very scary time to work in Animation. My big fear is most of the Animation industry is now made up of artists that entered the industry post 2008 and they are not aware of the bigger picture that is the highs and lows of our business.

Crazy while this is happening, indie animation is growing Hazbin hotel, helluva boss, all of glitch productions (Digital circius, murder drones, ect.) And any others that idk about

When I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be a professional artist/animator, and now as an adult being a self-taught amateur seems like all I'll ever be. There's hope through Indie Animation but the big corporations ofc don't care about their workers or making something with real effort. Animators can be given a project that they'll pour weeks of work into only for some higher up to cut it with no justice to the people who worked on it. Now they're taking any chance they can to completely replace humans with AI all for the sake of cheap corner-cutting. It's so SO discouraging.. I hope that someday being an artist will be a livable long-term way to work. :(

Incredibly well captured state of the industry. This was informative, empathetic, and properly alarming. I've been a visual artist and designer my whole life, inspired by productions like Naruto, Samurai Champloo, Treasure Planet, Inside Out, Chowder, Spongebob, Aqua Teen, and Ghost in the Shell. Recent works that have captured my heart are Spider-Verse, Arcane, Rick & Morty, Midnight Gospel, Bravest Warriors, My Hero Academia, AoT, and literally anything Alberto Mielgo creates lol. That said, the range of depth, comedy, storytelling, and provocation that these titles achieved were ALL made by passionate artists. People with a skill and a dream. And like for many others, these stories inspired me to pursue a career in this unpredictable industry, to create and dare to leave my mark with my own art. So hearing how corporations are snuffing out the flame of creative to chase a dollar disheartening but also the very framework which allows for us creatives to dig deeper, to grow wiser, expand, and rise to create something beautiful. So again, thank you for sharing this news so eloquently. Situational awareness at a juncture like this is paramount (no pun intended haha).

This has been happening since 2012 when studios shifted work to Canada, New Zealand and the UK chasing tax subsidies. Offices were already opened in India and China to take advantage of the difference in currency. There are talented animation artists across the globe and COVID demonstrated that we can work together remotely. Independent artist run remote studios could keep the innovations in animation moving forward.

All the risk is on creatives and all rewards go to the executives. Artists need to get out of this brutal cycle, but how? Otherwise it's going to continue, like a series of abusive relationships.

Thanks for putting this together. I have been an animation student for some years now, about to wrap up my time at Animation Mentor. I've been seeing all this happen but it's great to see all the pieces put together like this, really helps bring clarity. To all other animators out there, we gotta stick together! We'll get through this storm- and hopefully there will be sunshine on the other side.

But… what if the union causes the studios to use AI more? - studio want movie out - animator angry and go away - studio shrugs it off and uses ai

AI is not going to replace performers, it's not even going to really make much of a dent in the programming industry. I know this because I've been using it to do software development and it creates a lot of garbage. In fact studies are finding that groups that use AI assistance to help write code are seeing a degradation in code quality. Companies will not be able to swallow that bitter pill when hackers say hey I can exploit that garbage code.

Indie studios like GLITCH and Lackadaisy among others are creating amazing work because they are artists not held back by the CEOs of big corps. If anyone here somehow hasnt checked out many indie shows u should definetly catch up theyre amazing! some of them that i recently watched were monkey wrench and ramshackled !

Good video! Great points! I'd just like to point out that the "animation industry" -which is a very real thing -is just a part of "animation production" in general. Folks who like animation as an art form might look beyond these studio products with a long history of exploiting the artists who make the work you love. There's a vibrant array of films being produced by artists here on KZfaq and for festivals throughout the world. Supporting your local film festival is just as important, if not more, than your Disney+ subscription for ensuring artists can continue to add to the archive of interesting work. These independent artists and studios have been hit even harder by the current corporate slowdown. Commercial work has dried up (not just for animators), TV series which often serve as 9-5 jobs for individuals and collectives are at a standstill, and independent film production on the whole is very slow -likely due to macro trends like interest rates. Be kind to artists, be ruthless to corporations.

This is why we have indie animation :)

So I am a Student in Animation right now. And i am not really scared when Animation Collapses. The Problem are often Managers with a short Vision. They only see the Money, but for me Animation is a Story in it self. You Craft it with your own hands, to Create something Beautiful, for others. The most Manager just see the Money and efficiency, the Talk about ai, but have no idea how to use it properly. The want to replace knowledge with Ai Halluzination, but i think a better way to use ai is for example for a more efficient Workflow in UV Mapping, or Retopology. For the most Time Consuming parts, of Animation. When Animation Collapses, it could be a Blessing for Animators, then maybe it gives Life to new Studios with better Work Conditions.

I prefer to look at this as the end of corporate animation and the rise of the indie animation renaissance. Lets put it this way, just because corporations are too greedy to fund projects, doesnt mean they wont get made. Cant rely on big name studios anymore, they dont care about you. Lets not forget big name studios were once small startups. I think we should stop acting like an entire medium is dying just because it doesnt work the old way anymore. Disney as a whole doesnt work anymore- theyre out of touch yet are scared to take risks. Artists will always create no matter what. Like you can have 1000 studio executives saying 'no' but at the end of the day the artist is the one who's going to say 'yes' and get their project done with or without them

More videos like this! We need more youtubers to talk about this, spread awareness, and hopefully get the public to save our industry and be with us on the path onwards!

The third point, outsourcing, is a hard thing for me to analyze. From the perspective of someone living in the US I understand that it is pretty bad. But in my case I'm from Spain, and Spain has started with the tax game in the animation industry. That means that more studios outside of Spain are opening headquarters and more Spanish studios are receiving more work (as they work in service instead of their own productions). I understand that from the perspective of someone in the States this sucks. And of course in Spain the payment is not as high as the one for animators in the US. But the thing is... The culture of the US has been spread around the globe. It's really influential and when people outside of the industry in Spain think about animation they think specifically about USA animation (Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks...). Sooner or later outsourcing was going to happen because other people in other countries want to work in animation too, and USA studios and companies are the biggest investors in this industry. But please understand, we want to make our own projects, not just to work for US projects, and we've been working on our own projects for years. Maybe the outsourcing game will change if people start actually supporting and watching more stuff than the one made in the US. But if the USA continues conolizing the animation market of every other country, the big productions will need workers from other countries as well. For example, in Spain we have Skydance Animation. They're in LA as well, but it is in Spain where most of the 3D artists and animators are working. I don't defend outsourcing and I'd rather see more original productions in my country and in other places. But the nature of the USA animation industry makes it harder.

Commenting to feed the algorithm, great video. As an animation student it brings me great despair watching the state of the industry right now, I myself have decided to die on this hill regardless fo the future, its what Ive been doing since I was little, animating in Pivot. Hope that if a strike forms it brings with it the necessary reforms to overcome this mountain, still have hope for indie studios.

Artists should have been collabing instead of making fun of people wanting to work together.

This is 100% your most important video, I hope the negotiations go well this summer

My favorite animated movie is Iron Gaint. Made in 1999, the year I was born. The hand-drawn style of animation. And the 50s era it was set in is still beautiful to this day.

Thank you for this video. I'm a junior storyboard artist from Europe, and I am so scared. I do believe that the industry will survive, and as you said I do believe that many more indie studios will emerge and keep the craft safe! What scares me though is that for people who are moving now their first steps in the industry like me, it feels impossible to get in... and that, I fear, it's only going to get worse. Small studios don't need juniors, if they can have mid and seniors for the same price! Right? So I find myself completely frozen in front of my tablet, wondering if i should change career... to do what, I don't know. One thing I'd like to say though: the international animation community is amazing! Stay strong and beautiful, friends!

Thank you for this video! I studied art and animation in college and have graduated now facing this with questions and fears of the future. I’m grateful for the insights and perspective you give as well as the hope! Thank you!

4:11 'high quality content' proceeds to show the alta Netflix remake show

As a veteran 20 years in, I can report that the work I have been getting is managing and reviewing work that is outsourced to Eastern Europe, Asia and India. I don't see this changing as artists there work for rates about half of what they charge in Canada and the States. Animators would do well to develop their own properties and characters as content will always be needed. You may not be able to do a full length AI feature, but you may be use it to put together a decent pitch. Keep in mind that AI generated imagery can't be copyrighted, so AI should be used for material you don't want to retain the rights for.

I wonder if the animation industry would benefit going eastward across the US?

I spent 35 years in the art & design, there is no such industry, only occasional jobs.

For more intimate conversations on this topic I highly recommend listening to the Lackadaisy Shop Talks. Fable Siegle is the director for the Lackadaisy animations. Their first hand insights are inspiring.

I like how OpenAI just showed what Sora can do and decided to not release it yet. They essentially showed us what is possible and what we need to prepare for. What they created can be done by anyone with enough resources. I see OpenAI's move to show us Sora without releasing it as a heads up for us to prepare. Strikes and negotiations are proof of that we are starting to prepare. Imagine how harsh it would be if some company just releases Sora level animation tools suddenly without expectation. Everything would crumble in animation industry much faster. In my view it was a smart move to show us where is future heading and give us the time to prepare.

Wow, it's great to hear someone laying all this out in a big picture and your information is super comprehensive and accurate. I was at Sony briefly in 2011 when those layoffs had started to happen and the work was shifting to Vancouver. Thanks for covering the Paramount decree too - though I think the vertical integration would have happened even without it being repealed. Jeffrey - Quibi - ha!

You mean the huge corporations are collapsing. Indie animation is thriving right now.

He is right, a few weeks ago in Malaysia, There is an animation company I used to work call (I think this company owned an animation company name long time ago I used to work there) suddenly became the first stock-listed animation company in Malaysia, If I not remember wrong one months ago, a Malaysia politician mentioned on the local news that “animation and video game industry in Malaysia is booming”, same time as the Big brand animation and gaming company layoff news came out

Those antitrust laws were also being used in a manner where if a competing animating Studio wanted to get created and decided they could offer a better price the big companies that had way more lawyers could easily sue them out of existence with those antitrust laws saying they're just trying to gouge competition. When they're just a small company trying to get ahead

I feel the same way about AAA gaming. Want to make cheap slop with just your most valuable ip's? Alright, do it because it makes it easier to compete with them. You can't ignore the artform.

I work with animation for a few year now, I'm actually quite positive about the industry, I was talking to a friend of mine the other about that, me and him was expressing about how reasonably easy is to find work today. So I'm not very worried about animators finding work, even with layoffs, they will probably be fine as long they share their work pretty well, I think maybe studios will change a lot, I don't see a future where studios have regular workers, I think in the end animators will work only as Freelance, and that comes with thei advantages and disadvantages. One advice I would give for animators, make a name for yourself, your work is more important than working for a studio, and learn how to negotiate.

Not collapsing. Just changing.

Great video dude! I do hope for the best for our friends in the animation side of this industry.

Hazbin Hotel put indie animation on the map, Lackadaisy proved that indie developers can indeed bring back DCAU-level great animation