Western Animation - Discuss American, Canadian, and European cartoons here (or just bitch about wokeshit, I guess)

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harmy.kook said:
Like what?

-Animation not even being done in-house and shipped overseas to be done in what basically a sweatshop?
-Hand-drawn animation being killed off for decades now in a open attempt of chasing margins?
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i'm very aware those are huge issues too, your latter point part of what i was talking about. in regards to outsourcing, i hate to say this, but i'll have to throw a bone to some of those sweatshop korean studios: they are, in a sense, keeping traditional paper animation alive, even in an 'on life support' kind of way. dunno how much longer that'll last though...
 
Edgeymcedgename said:
So you've heard of the baby socks posts on Instagram?
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The fact he ran off and became a citizen of another country back when their was a chance we were going to see Israel's unredacted blackmail list told me all I needed to know.

Also as much as I liked Pixar as a kid it destroyed western animation. Now everything is an ugly CGI comedy aimed at children with post modern humor.
 
BubbaRobot887 said:
Also as much as I liked Pixar as a kid it destroyed western animation. Now everything is an ugly CGI comedy aimed at children with post modern humor.
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i liked og incredibles and wall-e, though i was never the biggest pixarfag otherwise. them helping to kill theatrical paper animation in america only strengthened the 'disdain' half of my ambivalence towards them.
 
God of Nothing said:
>negress wearing black queen summer shirt
>negresses in general
disgusting
true white boy summer can only be achieved with women of reputable racial standards
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You lack the conquistador spirit, shameful.
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BubbaRobot887 said:
Also as much as I liked Pixar as a kid it destroyed western animation. Now everything is an ugly CGI comedy aimed at children with post modern humor.
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Pixar used to be an event. People wanted to know what kind of insane things could be done with CGI next, and Pixar was leading the way to an innovative future of... realistic hair. Of which even Disney wrote their own code for Tangled using Pixar's model as a base to work with.🤷‍♀️

Look, I honestly don't blame Pixar or even DreamWorks for the state of animated films these days, they actually gave a shit. Then the new people started coming in, and they were the ones who just wanted to push an agenda, so they chased everyone worth a damn out. That's what that sharp drop in quality around the 2010s was, on top of Jennifer Lee being a nepo-hire and then getting hold of the reins herself at Disney. Meanwhile DreamWorks looked like they were actually approving, but they couldn't dig themselves out of the financial hole Steve Jobs' death left them in, and so ended up getting bought out by Universal/Comcast to the point they might as well be Illumination Lite. It's a sad fate.

The golden age of Pixar is still worth it. You could tell they were just telling stories to their kids through a medium they were passionate about. There's still magic to be had with CGI, least how it was implemented back then. WALL-E still amazes me in how they rendered space and rigged the robots; at some point in time, that movie was simultaneously being worked on right as Industrial Light & Magic was producing the first Michael Bay Transformers in working with those complex models. It's nuts to me.
 
Despite technological advancements, the animation industry didn't experience any increase in labor productivity. If you want to make an animated movie, you still need as many people working on it and as much time to produce it as decades ago. And because of the Baumol effect, animation also got more expensive as time went on.

AI, in theory, should be the major breakthrough for increasing productivity, thus decreasing the cost of production. The problem is that we still haven't figured out a standard for using it in practice effectively; we're still just experimenting with it.


This video is a rare example of how AI can be used effectively for animation. Current AI models are great at mass production but struggle with consistency, composition, logic, etc. In this example, they still used a variety of competent artists, but AI technology allowed them to get rid of most of the busy work. I believe AI is used best when it complements human work. I wouldn't be surprised if techniques like this get more popular in the future.

AI slop is still a problem, though. Seeing the same styles thousands of times gets boring real fast, and the people making them don't give a crap about quality.

BubbaRobot887 said:
Also as much as I liked Pixar as a kid it destroyed western animation. Now everything is an ugly CGI comedy aimed at children with post modern humor.
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Chasing profits at all costs is what's killing the industry; ugly CGI comedies for children are just a symptom of it. 2D animation is still often cheaper than 3D at high production levels, but 3D is more popular with the masses, so they continue making 3D. Comedy is one of the safest genres out there, and the US in particular sees animation as something that's exclusively made for kids, so family-friendly comedy is what most of them are going to be.

I also dislike how in the West, almost every animation made for adults is essentially just a bad comedy. Most adult comedies are either pretentious or immature, usually both. Sadly, this is what gets greenlighted nowadays because the higher-ups consider them safe.

While Adult Swim is still somewhat scummy, at least they give a chance for less conventional Western animations to shine. With the creators of Smiling Friends launching their own animation studio, I hope we get more opportunities to see stuff that we otherwise couldn't.

Animators also could just go indie, but then they are going to need to appeal to a bunch of autists, who will be their biggest source of income. If your work isn't autistic enough, you'll stay broke.
 
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