How in trouble is western animation?
How in trouble is western animation?
It's over but I don't care, most of the modern output was garbage anyway. If there isn't enough demand for animated shows then that's the way it is, shouldn't have made animation as a career.
This wouldn’t have happened if Petey was more aggressively sexual.
Fairly.
They're not "in trouble", you're just nostalgic
Holy fucking based
What statistic does this graph measure?
Not DVD sales
I literally had no idea Dog Man exists.
oh no, i dont fucking care!
Must... make everything as inoffensive as possible... must not offend.... must make investors happy... must make money....
Yeah it seems like a failure of communication. They said only make safe movies, and it got interpreted as "write stories with zero tension or stakes" instead of "only make guaranteed hits"
huh? that's weird, I mean the movie was a flop with 129 million dollars at the box office but the budget was just 40.
this is a solid shitpost but i gotta step in and defend my boys Apple & Onion. first season is a bit gratingly inoffensive, but season 2 is fucking hilarious
Hollywood artists are completely blind to the fact that all their artstyles look exactly the same. Canadians have the same problem with their style blindness, meanwhile the average person can just look at a show and instantly tell it was created in Toronto.
I remember when it came out the general format of that kind of show was overplayed shitty and sickening and I only saw one filler episode and wrote the whole thing off, so it was surreal to end up laughing at a fucking youtube short of this show I thought was just slop, I might look at season 2
It's over but I don't care, most of the modern output was garbage anyway.
This. When the modern icons of western animation is shit like Adventure Time and The Retarded Minions from illumination that speaks volumes. The western animation industry is hopeless shit. Being successful doesn't mean its good.
And shit man do I really need to explain the shittiness of Rick and Morty or Helluva Boss? No. Western animation has been rotting for decades and anime won. I don't like anime but it won starting with having visually pleasing art styles. May western animation die. And may normies die hideous deaths for enjoying shit like The Retarded Minions.
Looking the same is not the issue but the character designs looking stupid or worse ugly is the problem. Not every ugly art style will become a success like Despicable and Minions.
I had written A&O off because the pilot was so dull, but then I caught an episode that had an actually clever joke in it and it got a laugh out of me.
I like Apple & Onion. Even the first season. Waiting for Anon Babble to finally come around on it.
They can fire and replace all the retards and bring animation back, or they can go bankrupt and get replaced by companies that aren't retarded. Either way, animation will make a comeback.
Everything's in fucking trouble
Artists and art-based industries only flourish when the economy is stable and basic necessities are reasonably affordable to a point where the general public can afford to drop money on entertainment.
That is currently not the case right now. Economy sucks, and it doesn't look like it's going to improve any time soon. Most people right now just barely break even spending their whole paycheck on food and housing with little money for anything else, and I wish that was an exaggeration. Nobody has the money to be dropping on frivolous things like animation, games, comics, or movies. It's (one reason) why so many things are flopping and why animation studios are putting out so many layoffs, if not closing outright.
The entertainment industry as a whole is in shambles right now, and it will be for the next several years until the economy unfucks itself. In the meantime, get comfy with mediocre output from the small handful of big name studios that only care about meeting a financial quota rather than putting out quality content. Times like these make me wish there was a Steam equivalent for indie animators, but because YouTube has a stranglehold on viewership and is more anti-consumer than ever I don't see that ever happening.
go woke go broke
Meanwhile, the Asian industry lines its pockets with our money and prospers.
Asian industry lines its pockets with our money
Wrong, the west has basically zero influence on the success of media in the east because we aren't the primary target (which is a good thing). Any time a eastern company panders to west (that isn't video games) there's a good chance it'll flop or be meh.
All of civilization is collapsing, that's why cartoons targeted at 6-12 year olds have declining viewership numbers and low ratings.
you forget shit like big mouth or:
We've finally achieved preschooler-tier!. Hurray for "adult animation"!.
Let's be real, most newer CN shows aren't even bad at their core, it's just that they're the exact opposite of what you'd make to sell to the profitable demographic (7th grade boys writing Christmas lists) and more for extremely nostalgic adults who dream about living a saccharine childhood.
Apple & Onion was doomed from the pre-release interview with the creator where he couldn't articulate any way to talk about the show. He already looked checked out and uncaring before the first episode aired.
The advertising for this film was actually pretty meager unless you were actively looking around for upcoming movies. I didn’t even know that Dog Man was going to be a film until I saw a billboard ad at universal studios about 10 days prior to its theatrical release ffs. Even with that as said the movie has made nearly 130 mil and it truly is a wonderful adaptation of Dog Man overall. Serious when I say this animation studio did all they could to make the film look amazing too. I hope they all find their way through this terrible circumstance.
Shut up trannies
you honestly deserve this
I hope all of it collapses irreparably
TV channel viewership rankings
Nickelodeon - 73rd place
Disney - 79th place
Cartoon Network - 104th place
every industry is slowly decaying and will collpase alongside the united states
Yes they are. They're shows about nothing.
How the fuck does this happen?
And is this a "the industry is actually falling" crisis or a "we are not making more money for investors and money not made = money lost " crisis?
Both
CN has zero new shows and just reruns their 2010s cartoons
Kids don't watch tv anymore
They forgot to make a new fandom show that'd lure in a new crop of kids. They all expected the B-list fanfic toons to carry the channel.
Kill the Industry
Save the art form
Agree
The reality is that everything is boring now
They stopped making good shows.
Just your opinion
The Emmys gave "Best Animated Short Program" to robot chicken twice because no kids channel was making anything of note and didn't even give one out in 2023 because not a single show was worth nomination
It's actually kinda funny how many awards RC has won (6)
OH NO NO NO NO
guys you told me dog man was a best seller! That random infograph on Anon Babble said so!!!
retard
Since no one is smart enough to research here, this company was also a VFX company, which is probably a big reason why it cited rising costs for shutting down
This would've been avoided of TMS got Animaniacs back instead of being forced to do Tower of God and Shenmue: The Animation against their will.
They deserved what they go for backstabbing the original Animaniacs crew.
Looks like it's going the way of music where the big special shows are long gone, no one has any idea how in the hell to monetize anything anymore and all that really exists are indy people making shit in their bedrooms. All the studios care about are endlessly repeating what happened in the 80s.
They moved to a format of airing just one show for 10-20 hours a day, every day back in 2014. Then maintained that for a decade. They bled all viewership until no one could stand that shit any longer and everyone gave up on cable in general since majority of the channels were doing that.
The second one, which eventually led to the first one. Now it's both. But also every major studio steered everyone into moving to streaming back in 2020 so everyone collectively left cable.
Ehh, the cord-cutting has been happening with cable for years now, long before 2020.
Even my parents stopped paying for cable around 2014, and I've literally never had it.
Want me to watch your cartoon? Make. Me. Coom.
I fucking told you guys this was going to happen, the fucking canary said it before getting shot. I'm not a fucking lunatic, you shitposters finally get what you deserve.
You know miners would make little coffins for their canaries?
Pic unrelated btw
pic EXTREMELY related fagit
um... so yeah, i kiiinda just accidentally posted a dumb gif i had saved of lois griffin and it completely ruined what i was trying to say. i can't find my arcane gif right now but i meant to post arcane. NOT lois griffin. lol
Yeah, one side of this era was like
Shows are getting worse
And the other side was like
Nuh uh, nothing bad is happening, it's only up from here. New golden age!
And here we are. 8 years later. Infinity Train came and went.
FPWP as always with these threads
Industry guy here. It’s bad. I know more people who are out of work than people who are working. Many businesses won’t hire people in the entertainment industry because they worry we will leave when a film or TV job arises. It’s been two years since I’ve worked on any cartoon, and my other job pays just enough to cover expenses.
Disney, WB, and Nick have been using European studios for a while now, and I don't see that changing. We are repeating the ‘70s and ‘80s when animation was shipped to Japan and the Philippines.
It's cooked. I graduated a few months ago, there are no jobs and there are too many graduates. No one wants to talk about this for some reason. I already had a very good job so I haven't even bothered applying to any of the limited positions, it would be crazy to throw away my current role for a few months of employment. FYI I am one of those people in the top percentage of students who are likely to get a job, my lecturers said I likely would and really pushed me to apply places (you know, it makes the college look good lol), studios reviewing my portfolio have said the same. But it doesn't make financial sense to do so. If you read any industry vets online they don't think it will get better and this is a market correction, not a slump.
Anyone else in this position? Right now my plan is to ride it out and work on personal projects until things (maybe?) stabilize in a few years and likely go in to marketing/motion graphics/games.
In the long term though I don't see how this problem with cartoons can be solved. Kids aren't watching this shit and it's not bringing in any money. Kids like video games, streamers, tiktok and anime. Cartoons are not free, easily accessible or appealing to their age demographic like it's competitors are and the reality is it can't compete.
Cost is the big problem, and animation is extremely work intensive requiring lots of people animating, character designing, background painting, color coordinating, storyboarding, storyboard revising, etc. And they all pay $2K-2500 a week before we get around to the directors that make twice that.
The bigger solution to this is move that shit out of Burbank and the general Los Angeles area completely. Animation studios need to move somewhere cheap and affordable like Cleveland Ohio where they can pay their crews $60-70K a year and that's still an affordable livable wage where they can actually own homes and hire more than trust fund kids from Glendale. Just find any cheap nothing midwestern town where rent is low. Seasons are not a problem for people that remain indoors and draw all day long, they don't need to be in southern California for that.
Even when disney had the Orlando studio, it is WAAAAAYY cheaper to live in the South Orlando/Kissimmee area than any LA ghetto. And significantly nicer too.
sorry about the porn addiction, anon.
More like $2K-2.5K a MONTH, no studio pays that weekly, the most is Toei who pays twice that a month isn't 8K-10K a month as only a few producers get that amount.
desuarchive.org
My porn addiction is what the western animation economy is held up by.
I mean, it factually is.
It's just telling that the absolute best case scenario for American comics still isn't a success by the metric of other mediums.
Cable is really not just dead weight but actively pulling it back
Kids are DESPERATE for cartoons, even the worst most slop shit on YouTube gets shit tons of views
Meanwhile Monster Hunter Wilds has numbers in the fucking millions.
People forget that Dog Man sales include sales to schools and book fairs.
Just because kids buy and read it at school book fairs doesn't mean it's something they'll want to engage with in their free time.
Hell, I read the newspaper comics every day when I was in middle school because it was easy to hide them in my books, but outside of that the only other time I read them was on the shitter.
And that was pre-smartphones, I can't imagine what it's like nowadays for all the gen As who are addicted to their phones by 2nd grade, chances are the only time they read this stuff is when they can't use their phones, which means at school.
The same thing is happening in EU as well and animators are getting paid practically minimum wage, try 2500 a month rather than a week. What you're proposing will not fix anything.
Besides which, no one is making 120k California money anymore, it will never come back.
You're not allowed to have a job because for the past decade the industry has had a bunch of martyrs to protect the poor executives' feelings from criticism, so instead of changing anything they just kept making worse and worse projects and killed the industry.
My nephew loves the books and has no interest in the movie. Wonder why.
Bro I graduated five years ago and have been doing any amount of animation/illustrative work so sparingly I eventually had to settle on wagecuckoldry. there's no point, the industry is cooked. kids are not watching or reading this shit, and even if they were, CEOs can just replace us with robots. make art for yourself, when you can squeeze it in. its important to keep your soul alive, and make things you care about, but the jobs we imagined having as kids are looong gone.
But I thought dog cop was popular more so than every anime ever???
That's uhh... Somewhat less than my crappy blue collar job.. and they're in California? Fuck!
If you asked literally anyone at my job they would assume animations make significantly more than they do
MH offers a lot of value
Stop believing numbers. They aren't even for you, they are for corporate investors.
That graph show a complete shift of Adult protagonists to Kids. There arent cartoons with adult protagonists outside of Homer Simpson
How the fuck do these people survive? I'm living a pretty meager single life and I'm still worried about shit like my mom's increasing need for mental care suddenly destroying my finances with no hope for recovery, and I make more than that.
comicsbeat.com
The beginning of this article for 2020 comic book revenue explains that Dog Man still topped sales WITHOUT tracking it from schools and book fairs as you said.
Top Ten is dominated by Dog Man
I know this was 5 years ago but good lord it really is insane on how much of a phenomenon it is. This is probably what dreamworks expected for the film to be a smash hit and make 10x its budget or something. Ebin
The majority of TV viewers are not children.
Good news, everyone!
Europe (as well as Japan but Japan is another story) needs their own C11 bill to ban outsourcing to the continent as well as deporting all of the African, Indian and Islamic migrant workers that are flooding the continent so much that America is taking advantage of it (it's why Illumination was founded in the first place).
They work 2 to 3 jobs.
And Peter Griffin.
And SpongeBob.
It got rejected by congress, also Japan makes far too much money off of lolicon to ban it in their own country.
Can somebody, ANYONE tell me why one guy in his garage can do that kind of shit when big studios have nothing to show for all their millions and dei hires?
even America hates American cartoons
Drawings are not real.
It's in a pretty bad death spiral. I guess at the end of the day, the studioes are making products that are just not resonating with anyone.
They've over-indulged the liberal losers behind the scenes because they were cheap "true believers" who wouldn't ask for more money, and were probably already wealthy from their parents bankrolling their existence. Liberal losers don't make good content that actually appeals to people, they make content as a means of virtue signalling to their little buddies and as a way to play house hiring/firing people.
It's a process we've seen happen many times in many different industries and they always end up the same. Crappy, pretentious, lacking in technical ability and just a bunch of wasted money.
You don't know what you are talking about at all.
Animation Union has minimums that union studios must comply with.
animationguild.org
It's not livable because those jobs last only 5-10 weeks and then it's back to joblessness. Some only have 1-2 gigs a year.
It got rejected by congress
sauce?
Former animation anon here
Yes that is weekly pay for TVA storyboarders. Animators were getting around 1800 a week. Most jobs were in the 1500 to 2200 a week. I worked at Nickelodeon a few years back, the studio that is the most notorious for being the lowest payer of them all in Burbank, and I pulled in about $1950 a week there. I have no idea what it looks like now since they unionized last year.
Animation jobs are not calculated annually at all. They are temporary contract gigs that wok by weekly pay. No one ever works the full year, usually in the area of a few weeks to about five months on average. So yes they are getting a couple thousand a week but only for a few weeks so that their annual pay looks like they make $35-40K a year for a single job. The trick is having at least three gigs within a year to maintain the life while doing a lot of freelance in between.
You joke by Banks are trying their darnest to stop the Japanese from making sexy characters.
That twitter based blame the Bad People for any element of negative criticism or sales really hurt the whole industry overall. Now the corporate guys have perfect excuses for bad behavior, bad decisions, etc. Two or three really shit movies that are critical and financial failures will not result in cleaning house or changing the methodology at all. Now they can say it was all the racist chuds faulty and keep the same bad writers in the same studios for years until they all go bankrupt.
I suppose its the same issue as why films based on tv shows are generally not successful or why the MCU didn’t lead to more interest in the comics (but the video games do): the material a viewer is first exposed to is so satisfying there’s no need for an adaptation.
But aren't all the recent awful Disney movies breaking records or something? (unfortunately)
I'm in the same boat.
I got a fairly decent permanent job right now that pay mid level at a very small game studio. So I stopped even trying to apply or look up what cooler higher paying temp jobs there are on things that I definitely would have been more interested in. I would definitely rather be making a cartoon for Disney or Cartoon Network, but that's just not happening any longer and I would be stupid to give up my salaried job to chase that right now. At the absolute best of times it would mean working a couple months on a dream and then jobless with no real hope after that.
And my company keeps hiring a lot of older guys who are way more connected than anyone I know who keep telling me that this is a better place, stay put, there is nothing out there. It's depressing to think about.
The only ones that have done well post-No Way Home are Inside Out 2 and Moana 2.
Everything else has been varying degrees of disappointing, with Snow White just recently flopping horribly.
It's actually bad when Stephen Silver, the historic positive voice in all things industry that always gave daily uplifting and positive advice has changed his tune in the last few months. Even he is on Linkedin these days telling people to go do something else, animation is dead.
The only ones that have done well post-No Way Home are Inside Out 2 and Moana 2.
And pic rel
Oh yea, that too.
And I think the Mufasa movie also ended up making money.
What's stopping them from animating porn of FotM characters on twitter and starting a subscribestar?
the studioes are making products that are just not resonating with anyone.
That's a big one, and an issue with the current crop of animators, storyboarders, and directors. They are not making content for any target audience, or even bothering to look and see what the target audience is or wants or is into. They are making content for themselves and their close circle of friends only. And then really wishing that was a larger demographic.
Some of them are so closed up in their little ideological silos that they view anyone who does not think exactly like them and like exactly what they like as evil, bad, and on the wrong side of history and then get to work condemning anyone who disliked their content. And then double down on making more because fuck the evil wrong chuds who do not think exactly like them. When it was all over a kids cartoon for a kids channel. It never needed ideology in the first place.
King of the Hill time-skip will save Anon Babble.
They are very much paid weekly since all the jobs are five week to six month temp gigs. What the fuck are you even getting this?
This was Reynold's Icarus moment. Everything was going too well
Now it's all crashing down with his retard wife and the lawsuit
That's what he gets for being Canadian.
Read the link.
desuarchive.org
Also C11 for banning Canadian outsourcing.
2,000 euros a month in a place like Spain would be above average numbers. I personally know an experienced animator who was earning 1,500 euros monthly just last year.
First that says nothing about american animators pay or how often they are paid
Second that's another Anon Babble post so it hinges on Trust me Bro!
Third, anons have posted union pay charts in this same thread from the union site.
Faggot
animationguild.org
quora.com
animationguild.org
Most animators are not paid per project; the majority of animators work in a studio for a weekly salary (which can range from around $1200 to $2000 a week in the US, or more, depending on experience, at least that was the going rate in my studio days).
If you’re in the Los Angeles union it varies from $31 an hour to $59 an hour ($1250 to $2,000 per week). A lot depends on which studio (different rates for Disney, Sony, Warner, etc.) and what your job position is.
You're talking about Japan, this is about CALIFORNIA.
That was the original topic. Anon stated animators in Cali make 2K a week. Anon said nuh uh
First anon posted proofs
Now you're shifting goalposts.
The desuarchive link was about Japan, did you even see the Anon Babble in the link which means anime.
We have only talked about Japan and how much animators make at Toei anon, either join the convo or fuck off.
Yeah and they made big tunnel-sized coffins for themselves lmao. Should have gone with nuclear or solar power from the start.
We are repeating the ‘70s and ‘80s when animation was shipped to Japan and the Philippines.
Wish we repeated the trend from past decades where "cartoons" were mostly comprised of dubbed anime.
No one wants to talk about this for some reason.
Because the problem solves itself.
retard pays no attention to how entertainment media is in freefall
gets a worthless degree
realizes no one is hiring
retard is forced to get a real job instead
The system works.
Dubbing is going to be dying out soon as well since companies will realize that it's way cheaper to just use AI dubbing and 99% of dubfags won't be able to tell the difference anyways because they have no standards.
What am I supposed to be mad at here?
Man, unions really do ruin everything good.
Big if true
You do know that Americans like Tom Ruegger, Sherri Stoner and Paul Rugg (Jymn Magon and Tad Stones if you're Disney) were still involved with those shows right?
People are going to have to realize that eventually it is all going to be AI. They can accept that now, or they can accept that in a decade. But that's the plain reality.
Hand drawn and voice acted will just be small time for fun non profit shit on youtube only.
Sonic bros told me mufasa was cooked
It never needed ideology in the first place.
Computer, simulate my favorite Steven Universe characters telling me how not to be a racist chud piece of shit.
ctrl+f "cooked"
3 results
Hand drawn and voice acted will just be small time for fun non profit shit on youtube only.
Finally, western media will be good again.
Like I said, this happens a lot. This weird mentality that crops up in creative industries where they think that there's something wrong with creating something people enjoy, and that it's more important to create as a means of posturing amongst their peers.
If you don't like it, then you're a philistine who isn't worthy of their brilliance. They don't care about the quality of their craft, that's an oppressive patriarchal mentality. They don't care if it makes money since that's capitalism. They ONLY care about jerking off with their buddies about it and nothing else.
Very selfish, spoiled and small-minded mentality.
No idea who they are but a crippled anime season still BTFOs most modern cartoons. I don't even prefer one over the other on principle but it's just a fact that Japan has a more robust animation culture. Netflix is actually trying with its adaptations, but those are also based on japanese shit and the writing is often questionable, but it's more than most cartoons are doing.
Nah, what will happen is that anything that aims for the lowest common denominator (kid's cartoons, dubs, the majority of anime, most theatrical 3D cartoons, most video games, pretty much all mobile games, and most TV/movies) will become mindless AI-generated shit without an ounce of the human touch, but anything that aims at smaller niche audiences will probably market based on the fact that it has "the human touch."
Anyone who wants AI slop will just generate their own anyways.
non profit shit
on youtube
Pick one and only one. Also youtube is complete garbo for animation despite seeming like it should be an animation mecca. >selfish, spoiled and small-minde
Explain why that's a bad thing without coming off as a complete hypocrite.
That's also a side effect of drawing almost entirely from trust fund nepo babies for the majority of industry employees.
People with an actual dream or work for what they have are not that weirdly hooked on philosophy or sticking to their friends circle above all else in their careers.
They're the guys (and woman in Sherri Stoner's case) who are the reason why Japan was so good back in the 80s and 90s.
So what media is even left here?
Books?
selfish, spoiled and small-minded
Explain why that's a bad thing
LOOK MA I'M A LIBERTARIAN
Oh, I also forgot the "adult cartoons," those will also be 100% AI-generated slop, they'll still be churning out AI-generated Simpsons episodes 50 years from now.
Thing is, corporations now have a means to do something for free instead of paying dozens to hundreds of employees to produce and they can pocket all the money it generates instead of paying employees. There is no fucking way they are not going to fight tooth and nail, and wedge any number of lobbyists and senators into however many chairs in DC to get that.
Not going to happen, Nintendo is making sure of it.
So what media is even left here?
The classics.
Please don't give famicom replies. He is like a bot.
Pity we're not Japan.
Thinking anyone who knows who those guys are is Famicom.
I wish I could feel worse about it but everyone I know in Burbank is a self-absorbed asshole so
Adult cartoons are embarrassing anyway so it's no loss.
Good, let them. The only way it will take off is if what's being made is actually enjoyable and many will boycott then flock to human creators based on a moralistic high horse.
newer
This show is from 2018, which was 7 years ago. CN's total lack of new shows in the last 2-3 years speaks volumes of how dead they are.
This is how:
2024 ratings:
Adult Swim (#47; 210,000; -3%)
Nick At Nite (#48; 208,000; -15%)
FXX (#66; 145,000; -29%)
Nickelodeon (#73; 131,000; -31%)
Disney Channel (#80; 110,000; -17%)
Disney Jr. (#93; 84,000; -37%)
Cartoon Network (74,000)
Nick Jr. (#102; 68,000; -39%)
Nicktoons (#112; 51,000; -12%)
Boomerang (#124; 34,000; -17%)
TeenNick (#133; 24,000; -53%)
Discovery Family (#135; 23,000; -18%)
Universal Kids (#139; 20,000; -5%)
Disney XD (#142; 18,000; -44%)
That ended up being debunked however.
Hollywood artists are completely blind to the fact that all their artstyles look exactly the same.
The only way to get hired if you aren't already besties with a showrunner is to have a portfolio filled with generic derivative slop because modern recruiters are too braindead to understand that having a unique style doesn't mean you're incapable of drawing in different ones. And that eventually people get sick of what's currently popular.
Innovation has been bred out of the industry. So now they can only change direction when an outsider does something new that blows up in views and revenue.
Really? Here are the original sources I found.
diversetechgeek.com
+
archive.is
Yea, they even admitted the numbers were fake as the site was lied to.
Do you have a source for that?
NTA, but source?