Earlier quoted context omitted.
The phrase 'production committee' appears only once in OP, with no discussion of the implications or how they work or how they change things compared to TV network monoposonies. Disappointingly superficial. It just repeats a lot of random salary or wage or working hour statistics and anecdotes without ever - puzzling for a piece in the Economist! - asking how this market operates, why it keeps going like this, and wh…
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The disappearance of Japan's animators
111–120 of 167 posts
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#112Hey, hi, yoohoo whistles . Everyone gather 'round and reread this part: Lacking proper training and a viable salary, many young animators don’t feel they can keep going. The Japan Research Institute estimated that a quarter of them quit the industry within four years, and two-thirds in eight years. This retention problem has often been viewed as a form of natural selection. “I think this way of thinking is misguided,…
> As ever, if you want to know where much of the expertise has gone, look to China (and South Korea) Good news! You don't need to worry about that anymore! I can guarantee you, as the article implies, money from big tech is being funneled to people perfecting models for in-betweeners as we speak. /s I think we may be entering an era where we really have to start thinking about how to organize work at a fundamental le…
If you accept global competition, then expecting there to be hundreds of millions of job positions with meaningful protection from competition seems literally futile.
Even tens of millions would be a huge stretch. So probably not even a full 1% of 8+ billion people could attain that.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#113Earlier 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.
I mean, you are twenty years older, if you didn't watch those anime in 2006 and tried to watch them now, you probably wouldn't watch most of them. It's not really any different than the people that say "oh, the best music came out in my formative years".
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big chain stores have their profit margins at below 5%.
But they do it by squeezing businesses upstream, who end up with even lower margins.
I've done tech projects for supermarkets and I've done tech projects for movie studios.
The thing I noticed about Disney is that they have an entire 'suite' of products. Basically, they can afford to lose money on a movie release if it drives toy sales, or drives attendance at Disneyland or Disneyworld.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#115Earlier 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…
My impression is that a lot, if not most, anime was always cheap. Lots of stills, few frames, and CGI as soon as it got remotely good enough (and often before). Like Hanna-Barbera cheap. That was my impression when I used to be moderately "into" it 25-ish years ago, but judging from youtube channels like Mother's Basement, it hasn't gotten better. It makes sense that they would be the first to use AI for whatever the…
Individual frames of anime, they generally had a lot more 'packed into' the frame. This is part of the reason the motion wasn't great; they were spending most of their time budget of big flashy frames.
Disney, when they made animation, was more focused on hyper stylized characters that moved in a very specific way. There's an entire book on how to make animation 'The Disney Way." Some friends of mine ended up working in animation, and that's how I learned about this.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As ever, if you want to know where much of the expertise has gone, look to China (and South Korea) Good news! You don't need to worry about that anymore! I can guarantee you, as the article implies, money from big tech is being funneled to people perfecting models for in-betweeners as we speak. /s I think we may be entering an era where we really have to start thinking about how to organize work at a fundamental le…
A lot of "us" thought quite thoroughly and, you might say, even correctly, about "how to organize work at a fundamental level". News flash: the truly influential people that hold most of the capital on the planet don't want those ways of organizing work at a fundamental level. They want serfs and -- if possible -- slaves. Get to work enacting a change. Most of us are busy surviving and feeding families. You know wher…
At least in the US, it's questionable as to whether "people" (writ large) really want change deep down inside.
As Kurt Vonnegut wrote:
"America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves."
This quote helped me explain why and how average working-class and poor Americans vote for people who think of them as subhuman.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of "us" thought quite thoroughly and, you might say, even correctly, about "how to organize work at a fundamental level". News flash: the truly influential people that hold most of the capital on the planet don't want those ways of organizing work at a fundamental level. They want serfs and -- if possible -- slaves. Get to work enacting a change. Most of us are busy surviving and feeding families. You know wher…
> Get to work enacting a change. At least in the US, it's questionable as to whether "people" (writ large) really want change deep down inside. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime f…
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#118Not 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
So for new Ghost in the Shell is it a good idea to watch previous ones before watching the new one? If so, it what order? Is movie worth watching at all?
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Get to work enacting a change. At least in the US, it's questionable as to whether "people" (writ large) really want change deep down inside. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime f…
Very good quote, thank you. And it seems like propaganda worked on these people.
But I would add that at this point I'm not sure this is really "propaganda". In my mind, it's more "the culture."
America is a highly individualistic society and always has been. By some measurements, it's the most individualistic society in the world and perhaps the most individualistic nation-state in history.
If you're American, you're basically taught from an early age that anything is possible and that the sky is the limit. You could be born poor and still become one of the world's richest people. Technically, some of these beliefs are true. But they're exaggerated and the end result is that you have a ton of people who devalue things (like, say, universal healthcare) that they come to see as a threat to the lottery ticket they were born with.
To put it in blunt terms, this is how you end up with a poor redneck in West Virginia voting for a foul-mouthed socialite billionaire from New York City. The latter thinks the former is trash; the former thinks under the right circumstances he could have become the latter.
Re: The disappearance of Japan's animators
#120Earlier 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…
It would be like saying it is financially unviable for professionals to write their own methods.