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The disappearance of Japan's animators
51–60 of 167 posts
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
AI image generation is just not there yet. Say what you want about Luddites and whatnot, but the quality is just not good - the amount of effort given compensation that (especially Japanese) artists put into anime styled imagery makes too little sense that AI can't compete, even in generation time if time for retakes are accounted for.
>AI image generation is just not there yet. A Japanese Animator shared this recently. Seedance output over simple 3d models https://www.reddit.com/r/accelerate/comments/1ue6uf2/japanes...
That's just texturing over a labor intensive 3D animation that doesn't seem like a production quality one. IIUC, geometrically correct 3D animations are basically worthless. You're already lost if you need perfect 3D renders as the reference.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#53Just today I saw this on Twitter a good example of how AI should be used for animation.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#54Not everything is bleak. The ending sequence for Frieren season 2 was entirely hand drawn with colored pencils[0] and the new Ghost in the Shell (coming out next month) is also hand drawn[1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4Bx2qtkRM [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnRcKC4Rgsc
How much of this is actually drawn in Japan though? A lot of the drawing ends up being outsourced to places with cheaper labor like the Philippines.
At least the Frieren one was drawn by a single Japanese artist https://x.com/aoumemimei/status/2012695958824407124
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#55Not everything is bleak. The ending sequence for Frieren season 2 was entirely hand drawn with colored pencils[0] and the new Ghost in the Shell (coming out next month) is also hand drawn[1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4Bx2qtkRM [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnRcKC4Rgsc
It feels like GITS made a stylistic choice because they were criticized for going too much the other way in recent productions (lots of crap 3d/CG).
It's actually a stance against the use of AI in the industry: "We want to express that this is a hand-drawn show made by humans to highlight the humanity in the story"
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, that was already true in 2006. It's the thing people keep saying, and yet anime keeps coming out. Right now they're stuck in the whole "ten shows from the same budget, each run by their own 'committee' and each competing for cash that runs out well before the show's over, and the poor performance very quickly get less per episode". Great for networks, shit for shows. Even worse for animators who need to get pa…
A cursory glance of anime tv shows released in 2006 and there's a lot of good things I'd watch again: Honey & Clover, Kemonozume, Ergo Proxy, Code Geass, Haruhi Suzumiya, etc. In 2026 the only thing that has captivated me, so far, was the Chainsaw Man movie and Dorohedoro S2.
Is Dorohedoro S2 out? Wa wa wee wa!
Kidding aside, did you pick those 2006 releases at the time they were being released or are you picking them up from a list after years of refinement and discovery? It's completely possible that 2026 will be as fruitful from a 2046 perspective.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#57After reading this article, I got curious whether there was a similar article from Japan, and there actually is. The average monthly income in the animation industry is 200,000 yen (about $1,300 USD), but the median working hours are 2,745 hours per year. That comes out to 225 hours per month, or 52 hours per week [1][2]. Considering that animators' work is essentially drawing labor, that's an insane amount of work.…
So basically they get paid peanuts and are overworked and so no one wants to do it. Also seems like something AI could really cut into. You could have a master animator doing much of important thoughtful work and AI filling in the obvious as well as doing tweening (sound similar to programming) Really, who needs a studio if you have the creative talent and ability to leverage AI for the grunt work. Or have a couple g…
If AI is making our anime anyway, why do we need an anime industry? Let's just get rid of it and we'll all generate our own shows to watch. Why should I pay a platform for someone else's slop when I can make my own?
Business leaders and AI chuds seem to be forgetting that if AI can meet the needs of their business, then we no longer need the business.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Noob Question: There is a famous parlor trick with generative networks(I think it was GANs but it might be some kind of diffusion based network.), you start with a canvas and draw a stick figure of what you want and the generative network draws the rest of it. Do AI platform companies actually pre-train networks to do the same for hand drawn artists? Related question: If they do train them to do that, are there any t…
re: parlor trick Are you referring to: https://github.com/lllyasviel/controlnet ?
Heh, that user’s handle is a reference to the visual novel Fate/Stay Night (which has been adapted into several animes). A cute coincidence.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#59Not everything is bleak. The ending sequence for Frieren season 2 was entirely hand drawn with colored pencils[0] and the new Ghost in the Shell (coming out next month) is also hand drawn[1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4Bx2qtkRM [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnRcKC4Rgsc
[deleted]
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
So basically they get paid peanuts and are overworked and so no one wants to do it. Also seems like something AI could really cut into. You could have a master animator doing much of important thoughtful work and AI filling in the obvious as well as doing tweening (sound similar to programming) Really, who needs a studio if you have the creative talent and ability to leverage AI for the grunt work. Or have a couple g…
You're not wrong. But there is a common perception that we value things made by humans more. The problem is that grunt work actually serves as a pipeline for industrial training. Even with AI, the distribution of value doesn't get resolved automatically. Of course, I think it would be great if grunt work disappeared, but I believe skilled workers ultimately need grunt work. It's like saying that since AI automates ev…
We do not value things made by humans.
Hand-made anything tends to be a Veblen good, which means it's there to signal status, which means it's expensive.
But expensive doesn't work in mass-media. So a hand-drawn anime isn't going to be more profitable than an AI-animated one.
As for education - possibly, but this is the end of a process that started with digitalisation. I'm a huge fan of hand-drawn pre-Illustrator graphic design, especially 1960s-80s. I think it has a liveliness and freshness that post-Adobe design is missing.
But I'm not the usual audience, almost no trained designers can hand-draw lettering today, and neither the industry nor buyers/consumers seem to care.
Likely the same thing will happen with AI. It will just become the new normal, with skills to match.