The future for animators

[cartoonchaos]

Where do you think the brightest future lies for animators nowadays? Our industry has grown by leaps and bounds, but what's your opinion on the best future?

Is it in movies? The movie industry has been declining lately, and that might mean a decline in jobs in that arena. I personally don't think its the movies themselves, but the THEATERS need to come up with a product or experience that we the consumer can't get at home (home theaters, flat screens). I think they're trying with IMAX and the new digital theaters coming out. Is this still a good home for us?

Is it in videogames? Videogames are starting to look more like movies. What's the potential here?

Is it in television? There are more television channels out there than you can honestly keep up with, and a lot of them seem to be starving for content, especially that G4 Videogame channel. Is there potential for growth?

Is it in online content? With movies and such now able to be seen on IPODS and cell phones, is there a home for animators there?

What do you think? Sound off.

[Ken Davis]

All three.

The trends and declines are "seasonal" and cyclic in that they have their peaks and valleys in prominence. At this point in time, the gaming industry is probably king in terms of its definite growth potential because the steady advances in in processing power and resultant resolutions and detailed visuals in game play mean that the game genres likely will see some innovation.
There's a reason explosion of new ideas waiting to burst out of the gate in games and animators and visualists will be needed to create them.

TV is facing a similar potential. The OLD standard of limited production times might fall by the wayside when Lucas brings Star Wars to TV as a series. With a longer lead time before broadcast that means more time to establish better production values, and with that more opportunities for bigger scale stories and series concepts. It might be slow to happen, it may NOT happen but I'm expecting it too.
Entertainment is a perennial industry, people NEED a respite from the doom and gloom, or at least the mundane happenings of everyday life.
Escapist entertainment has always been popular and I think we'll see even more of it in the future. Obviously, if its fantasy-based material, they'll need animators to create the fantastic.
Movies will remain with us, but I think the emphasis will change in movies. A redefined TV approach, like i mentioned above, could steal some of the thunder from movies OR is could be used in concert with a TV/Theatrical release method.
Release the pilot film in the theatres to stoke the audience and hype, and then go to the series for the rest of the blitz.

A franchise like X-men is a good candidate for this as it has lots of interesting characters and stories in its pocket, and three films cannot possibly cover it all.

So, again imo, there's opportunities in all three mediums for animators and likely will be for quite some time yet.

[Harvey Human]

Online animation wasn't as successful as some hoped. There is too much competition on the web to make expensive online content viable.

Movies and television are remaining steady. There was a boom in those fields in the 1990s, but not much movement recently.

Video games are animation's biggest recent success story.
Although the rate at which new games are released isn't growing, the production required for each game has been dramatically increasing, requiring larger staffs of artists. This trend will likely continue as higher-capacity storage media continue to be introduced. The larger worlds they create will have wider appeal. (A game like Grand Theft Auto - which has a huge world that players can freely move in - is a good example of this.)

If western animation producers want a jump in popularity, they need to create involved stories infused with great dramatic acting (rather than the traditional hammy theater of smug and childish Disney-fied fare) which appeal to females and adults.
Western producers could learn a few lessons from Japanese producers in this regard.

[ScatteredLogical]

Originally Posted by Harvey Human

If western animation producers want a jump in popularity, they need to create involved stories infused with great dramatic acting (rather than the traditional hammy theater of smug and childish Disney-fied fare) which appeal to females and adults.
Western producers could learn a few lessons from Japanese producers in this regard.

Ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseoh......*ahem* Yah, that'd be nice.

[skinnylizard]

i think its all about your objectives as an animator/creator/producer. if you are coming at it purely from a working animators perspective then its def getting a harder and harder to be just a traditional animator without 3d or computer skills. i think it will be a hybrid animator who wants to move up to the director level who will win out. Same time i think there will be a great deal of importance to technical animators, people who know diff softwares and can put things together. Simply being an animator it seems will become a lower level of the foodchain than it used to be.

[Larry L.]

Hello.

I think animation for mobile phones will be the largest growth area- not just in rentals- I feel the boom will spread into the production areas as well.

Thanks,

Larry

[DSB]

I think the future lies in the expanding demand for animation in non-traditional venues. TV, movies, games, and online will still exist, but other areas will open up as well. E-learning, for example, or forensic animation will become bigger markets as the use of these technologies becomes more commonplace. Animation in support of other content is also a big growth area.

We need to look beyond the traditional uses of our skills and find (or pioneer) ways to use them in new mediums and new ways.

[kdiddy13]

There's very likely to be a boom in demand for short topics. Like in the 20 minutes of awful crap before a movie starts, they're starting to play short animations. I just saw an awful one that was a series (broken up by commercials) before King Kong. I won't name it to keep from insulting someone here who might have worked on it, but it really made me think that there's going to be a real demand for short subjects (30 seconds or less) that can be used to fill up time on the billions of video screens we're about to see plastered and painted everywhere.

But I do believe that if they want the current glut of animation (3D in particular) to succeed, then Harvey is right. They are going to need to clean house in the writing department and start looking for people (including producers) who aren't afraid of putting quality material on the screen that isn't Disney-fied or spelled out like the current fare.

I just had an enlightening chat with some relatives and friends over wings and beer. They basically said that they were really fed up with the current string of 'no-hit' wonders going to the big screen. They are completely disinterested in 3D and the PDI/Dreamworks and Disney quantity over quality business model.

What was enlightening was that this was coming for a group that up until recently had been eating Shrek, et al up as fast as they could shovel the crap out on the screen.

Hollywood over the past few years has been asking itself why fewer and fewer people are going to see their stuff, and are quick to blame video games. WAKE UP HOLLYWOOD! YOUR SCRIPTS SUCK EGGS AND WE'RE ALL BORED! My apologies to everyone else for yelling.

Right now, it seems that if you want creative and interesting stories, television is doing some pretty ground breaking, but just as importantly, entertaining stuff.

[motionmilitia]

I think wireless media is going to start opening some more doors for more viral content as well. Mondo Media has already jumped on the wireless wagon. That's a company who's looking ahead to our near future.

-MM

[Spoooze!]

I think games will still continue to be the biggest animation industry next to TV and movies.
I doubt animated movies will die out because there's still enough people out who have a love for making animated movies.

James