El problema es al capitalismo
Nov. 30th, 2025 05:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingFor the past twenty years, two things have been happening in 2D animation. First, American studios have been offshoring in-between frames to Asia (as was the case in Adventure Time and Steven Universe). Second, Japanese studios have started to do the same thing after being accused of literally killing young people in their own industry by forcing them to create in-between frames under grueling conditions. I've linked to and excerpted two articles under the cut.
California, Once a Mecca for Animation Work, Is Rapidly Losing Ground, Report Claims
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/california-animation-work-suffering-outsourcing-concerns-1236206301/
It’s become fairly standard for development to take place in-state while other components of the work are increasingly sent elsewhere. “Production phases are already largely outsourced, and pre- and post-production are seeing increasing movement — putting the entire production chain at risk,” the report claims.
This statewide decline is playing out against a larger backdrop of global animation optimism. While the COVID-19 pandemic played a notable role in boosting production — given that animation work can largely be done remotely, as opposed to live-action — the genre has nonetheless continued to thrive since. The report finds that the number of animated projects commissioned globally rose from 558 in 2019 to 828 in 2022 to 860 in 2024, accounting for an increase of 54 percent.
In other words, even as both the demand for and the profit from animation is growing, the animation industry is no longer a viable career for American artists. Meanwhile, in Japan:
Anime's money problem: Anime is blowing up. It's also facing an existential crisis.
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/animes-money-problem
If demand continues skyrocketing for anime abroad, and Japanese studios can’t keep up, others will step in to fill the gap with “anime,” scare quotes intended. And it doesn’t help that the anime industry is fundamentally broken in many ways: overwhelmed with animators who are overworked, and, as the UN notes, also almost criminally underpaid to boot. These issues need fixing. But I’d like to see Japanese fix them themselves, rather than vulture capitalists and private equity that inevitably accompany Wall Street setting its sights on the Next Big Thing.
As Alt notes, if even the United Nations is publishing papers on how bad working conditions are in the Japanese animation industry, then: (a) anime is bringing in tons of money, and (b) those working conditions are very, very bad for the majority of artists, who are slaving over in-between frames for 12 hours a day while making truly pitiful wages.
To me, the antidote to the "line must always go up" issue with larger studios seems to be smaller studios that are largely independent from such concerns. The problem is that, especially for 2D animation, production is extremely labor-intensive, mainly because of the necessity of creating in-between frames. If you're a manic college student whose body still works, maybe you can do this labor, and you can do it with joy. Back before everyone deleted their accounts, however, Twitter was filled with comics drawn by indie animators in their late 20s explaining why they were quitting: working that hard fucks you up both physically and psychologically. The labor is literally disabling.
Based on the foundation of work pioneered by 3D animation, the generation of in-between frames by AI could be a good and useful application for the technology as a labor-saving tool. It has so much potential, and I hate that it's being used against artists, specifically with the aim of eliminating them entirely. The technology has an amazing potential to solve critical problems that have persisted in the animation industry for decades; but, instead of empowering artists, it's become an existential threat. This is dystopian, and I hate it.
California, Once a Mecca for Animation Work, Is Rapidly Losing Ground, Report Claims
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/california-animation-work-suffering-outsourcing-concerns-1236206301/
It’s become fairly standard for development to take place in-state while other components of the work are increasingly sent elsewhere. “Production phases are already largely outsourced, and pre- and post-production are seeing increasing movement — putting the entire production chain at risk,” the report claims.
This statewide decline is playing out against a larger backdrop of global animation optimism. While the COVID-19 pandemic played a notable role in boosting production — given that animation work can largely be done remotely, as opposed to live-action — the genre has nonetheless continued to thrive since. The report finds that the number of animated projects commissioned globally rose from 558 in 2019 to 828 in 2022 to 860 in 2024, accounting for an increase of 54 percent.
In other words, even as both the demand for and the profit from animation is growing, the animation industry is no longer a viable career for American artists. Meanwhile, in Japan:
Anime's money problem: Anime is blowing up. It's also facing an existential crisis.
https://blog.pureinventionbook.com/p/animes-money-problem
If demand continues skyrocketing for anime abroad, and Japanese studios can’t keep up, others will step in to fill the gap with “anime,” scare quotes intended. And it doesn’t help that the anime industry is fundamentally broken in many ways: overwhelmed with animators who are overworked, and, as the UN notes, also almost criminally underpaid to boot. These issues need fixing. But I’d like to see Japanese fix them themselves, rather than vulture capitalists and private equity that inevitably accompany Wall Street setting its sights on the Next Big Thing.
As Alt notes, if even the United Nations is publishing papers on how bad working conditions are in the Japanese animation industry, then: (a) anime is bringing in tons of money, and (b) those working conditions are very, very bad for the majority of artists, who are slaving over in-between frames for 12 hours a day while making truly pitiful wages.
To me, the antidote to the "line must always go up" issue with larger studios seems to be smaller studios that are largely independent from such concerns. The problem is that, especially for 2D animation, production is extremely labor-intensive, mainly because of the necessity of creating in-between frames. If you're a manic college student whose body still works, maybe you can do this labor, and you can do it with joy. Back before everyone deleted their accounts, however, Twitter was filled with comics drawn by indie animators in their late 20s explaining why they were quitting: working that hard fucks you up both physically and psychologically. The labor is literally disabling.
Based on the foundation of work pioneered by 3D animation, the generation of in-between frames by AI could be a good and useful application for the technology as a labor-saving tool. It has so much potential, and I hate that it's being used against artists, specifically with the aim of eliminating them entirely. The technology has an amazing potential to solve critical problems that have persisted in the animation industry for decades; but, instead of empowering artists, it's become an existential threat. This is dystopian, and I hate it.
