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The disappearance of Japan's animators

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Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#61

Post by re-thc »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #19
hiccuphippo wrote: post #14

Not 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

Frieren is animated by Madhouse, though, which I feel like is one of the last bastions of high-quality Japanese animation.

> Frieren is animated by Madhouse, though, which I feel like is one of the last bastions of high-quality Japanese animation.

Not true. Madhouse isn't what it once was. Frieren had lots of freelancers.

Also, Kunihiko Hamada (whom worked on Frieren, is 1 of the lead animators, designers) left, citing disappointment.

Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#62

Post by jabroni_salad »

HaloZero wrote: post #15
world2vec wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Higurashi when they cry does the whole concept of time reset well (2006). Trigun sequel is coming out this year. 2026 titles have caught on that trend of a really long specific title though. “The Laid-Off Cheat-Granting Mage Enjoys a Second Lease on Life” I think anime is a big enough category that every year there’s always at least a few good ones but it’s hard to get good signal to noise. But the whole tiny girl th…

Those titles are a result of the webnovel -> lightnovel pipeline. Users won't click unless they like the concept so authors started to just put the tagline directly in the title.

Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#63

Post by re-thc »

Aunche wrote: post #39
hiccuphippo wrote: post #14

Not 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.

> How much of this is actually drawn in Japan though?

Often the key frames or "important" parts are done in-house with the "mechanical" or boring parts being outsourced.

Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#64

Post by bitwize »

re-thc wrote: post #63
Aunche wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> How much of this is actually drawn in Japan though? Often the key frames or "important" parts are done in-house with the "mechanical" or boring parts being outsourced.

I wonder why the use of AI to do in-between frames is not more embraced by artists and professionals. It sounds like a perfect use case for the technology: pure scutwork that would have been farmed out to sweatshops in a cheap-labor country anyway.

Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#65

Post by punkbit »

Sadly, some people believe that Generative AI output is the same; I find it very hard to watch and extremely cringe. I did see some good examples, but still not the same type of quality. For untrained eyes, all look the same, but I'm definitely not that type of person and very supportive of proper craftsmanship. You can see this same thing happening in software engineering and product design.

Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#66

Post by badpun »

toyg wrote: post #43
jdw64 wrote: post #4

After 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.…

You've just described Hollywood, the music business, but even the supermarket/distribution business. The middleman tends to accumulate all the profit.

Big chain stores have their profit margins at below 5%.

Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#68

Post by ejj28 »

RobKohr wrote: post #12
jdw64 wrote: post #4

After 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…

I really despise this kind of thinking, this "optimization" that only serves to benefit the people at the top who hoard the fruits of other people's labour. Why is your solution to underpaid/overworked animators to just eliminate them entirely, instead of just treating them fairly?

People DO want to do these things. They're overworked and underpaid, but they still do it, because they're passionate about it. Not just about the end result or the money, but about creating things.

I continually see AI proponents fail to recognize this across all art forms, for example the Suno AI idiot:

"I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music." [0]

It's ridiculous nonsense, and this widespread eagerness to throw away quality and human talent for convenient, soulless slop has made me increasingly disillusioned with the tech industry.

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/ai-music-boss-says-musicians...

Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#69

Post by LoganDark »

itissid wrote: post #29
hiccuphippo wrote: post #14

Not 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

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…

Pix2Pix! https://mitmedialab.github.io/GAN-play/

Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators

#70

Post by nkrisc »

michaelrpeskin wrote: post #50
john_strinlai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i love an apprenticeship model, i think most people would learn better and become competent at whatever position much quicker than straight book learning, for practically every job. however, where you say: " My [...] opinion is just the opposite [...] where you're not paid a bunch ", are you saying the opposite of a living wage? how would you expect someone to, well, live during their apprenticeship? someone starving…

I think the trouble is living wage means different things to different people. I look back to my time in grad school. My wife and I were lucky that we were able to get fellowships so we were able to focus directly on school and didn't have to do another job or teach. But it was _tight_! I remember keeping track of every cent in a spreadsheet and we generally were at around $100 extra to save every month (which would…

I don't think most people need or expect the glamorous instagram lifestyle, but want to have something fun they can do to make the work worth it. If there was a guaranteed payoff at the end, then it might be worth it, but for many people there is no guaranteed payoff, there's just work and sleep and then they die one day. I don't begrudge anyone for wanting more than that.
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