This blog covers many topics, sometimes about faith, but usually about art. Today's post is provoked by a recent post within a patron exclusive backroom belonging to a twitter mutual, Brian Niemeier. Quick plug, if you want to be a part of a community that aspires to further their written storytelling craft, you should sign up via Brian's Patreon or SubscribeStar. Now off to the meat and potatoes of tonight's topic.
Seems a fellow by the name of Sam Hyde has decided to attack the art and profession of animation by saying it's a waste of time. Watching the full video puts what I'm about to say more into perspective.
Right out the gate, Sam starts blasting unspecified creatives implying if you aren't popular or are making small financial compensation for your work, you're a lousy artist. He mocks the starting out small artist. Meanwhile he himself admits it took him 10 years before he made any money from his craft which is checks notes "comedian" - oh joy, quite a promising profession to be occupying while brow beating creatives outside of your realm of expertise. Moving on.
I'll give him credit, this pseudo intellectual did say something which creatives should heed - if you make something genuine to your style, unique to your voice, then it will have a greater chance of gaining traction and being sellable to an audience. Though let's forget about the part earlier in the video where he dunks on artists who make art for themselves and "have to convince others why they should buy it." Fun fact, you can make art for yourself or for a target market and you still have equal opportunities to be successful. It's all about your creative end goals. People who buy the art you made for you do it because they have shared interests as you. Those who buy your art because it fits in that target market do it because it's part of that market. There's no be all end all to success.
Sam's professional opinion is that animation is a waste of time because consumers (consoomers) won't support any form of video content unless it's free. How does he support his case? If you forwent watching the video to humor my typed words, please revisit the video above and skip to time stamp 6:00. . . If this is what he considers animation I've got news for you, it's not, it's what we in the business call motion graphics, it's not the same. If Sam wants to label these guys as "busy idiots" for pumping out this garbage and fooling is overly developed mind into thinking that is animation, that just makes Sam a plain ol' idiot.
Animation is what we see in cinematic shorts, features, and videogames. It's not in photobashing images together and making them move across a screen. Sam makes the conjecture that animation is high cost with low yield as in you'll put all this time into making an animation with little to no return. "No one is buying tickets to see movies" he says, "people only will watch your animation if it's free". Won't argue that fact, movie theatres are struggling, but he forgets there are other distribution channels like streaming services that place animations in front of millions of viewers. The low yield he speaks of is only true depending on where you're at in the food chain, the higher up you go, the more you earn from the industry (more on that later).
So what's Sam's expert advice to correct course if one is pursuing animation (like myself)? Go make a comic or graphic novel. Yep. That's it. Go do it. If you make one of those, it'll get made into a film. That's just how this game works. . . lol.
In one hand, we discourage artists from pursuing animation and with the other, we encourage the production of comics/GNs with the promise of a film adaptation. See a hole in logic here? Anime has taken the world by storm. There's a huge market that thirsts for things like comics or GNs to be adapted into an animation. If anything, it'd be expected. The earliest cartoons in American history were adapted from comic strips. That set the expectation moving forward for everyone worldwide. No animators means no animated film adaptations, simple as. The other option is live action, but with the image comic cinema has created itself in recent times, do you really want that? Will your comic truly shine with the limitations of human actors and fake looking CG for special effects which break the immersion of the visual experience? I mean, it's your funeral if you want it.
There's a saying my uncle instilled in me when I lived with him a few years back: "Money talks and bullshit walks." Sam Hyde would have you believe animation is a waste of time and that going to comics is a far more lucrative and financially safer bet. Ok, let's look at the figures since Sam has been basing his arguments strictly from a financial standpoint.
This was pulled from fortune business insights. That figure of 16.05 billion is nothing to shake a stick at. I wish I had that kind of money, but that's a story for another time. Let's take a look at the global industrial value of animation. . .
This was pulled from Statista. Now, last I checked (both speaking in billions of dollars here) 411.04 is a larger number than 16.05, roughly 26x's larger as a matter of fact. But let's not forget animation is a waste of time. Let's not forget animation is photobashing pictures together and moving them across a screen.
He then tries to make animation and being a graphic novelist as equal trades. Might makes right in his eyes because - as he puts it - an animator may only get five good ideas down if they grind away at their craft for five years, a graphic novelist may get out hundreds. Who cares? Animation is a far more precise craft, due to the production limitations, it focuses more on quality over quantity. Though for Sam, I suppose a monkey on a typewriter cranking out pages of nonsense every day makes it a far more valuable contributor to the creative industry than an animator.
What Sam seems to be bashing is the notion that animation has to draw its inspirational sources from written or statically drawn material. Who in their right mind thinks that's a bad thing? Sam gives the impression animation is worthless because it doesn't tell stories in the way he likes - words and static images. Animation in its strictest sense doesn't tell stories with words or images; animation tells story with motion and based on the data above, people can't get enough of it.
Some final points before I come to a close.
Sam seems to think an animator's only hope will be some big studio who can afford the expenses of an animation. That's not true. To start, we've been talking about this in Brian Neimeier's discord a lot lately, neopatronage is the way of the future. Creatives won't need to "make it" by having 200,000 raving fans, instead it's very real they'll only need a fraction of that - depending on their financial goals of course, and that's just to live a comfortable lifestyle.
Pro artists, authors, and musicians will live next door to lawyers and plumbers. Comfortable, not rich. - Brian Neimeier
Secondly, there have been plenty examples of huge successes (in the US) where a single person or small group made it big with nothing more than bubblegum and duck tape. Which is to say, you don't need to have an animation that meets the visual quality of a Disney production to make it big. As long as it's well produced and hits other checkboxes like storytelling, people will easily forgive a lower looking art quality - which is another thing lay people misconstrue: art style and art quality isn't animation. Animation is the movement, not the art being moved. With modern technology, plenty of animators can produce AAA studio level animations from the comforts of their own home.
If we truly believe in the neopatronage idea, then what Sam Hyde is saying is complete nonsense. I already know it's nonsense because of the points I presented already but also his criticisms of animation when spoken aloud targeted the creator's audio or motion graphics. None of that deals with real animation, but it's enough for him to say it's a waste of time.
Even if what Sam says is true and the average consumer only wants free content, if we truly believe in the future of neopatronage, then who cares? Animators will get their fill of support. Sam Hyde is speaking like a guy in the old guard. There could also be a hint of jealousy because it took him ten years to make his first $1000 meanwhile some of the artists he's ridiculing probably made their first $1000 in half the time. *
*side note, using his numbers and frame, if you were an artist who charged $45 for their monthly gig, you'd hit $1000 by year two.
Consumers who want free content will have to pay for it one way or another. If they want animations, someone will have to find a way to pay for it to meet that demand. It's a fundamental law of economics. The industry is too big and too popular to sustain itself on people who just want free content. The market has shown it WILL pay for animation, animators moving forward, like myself, just have to figure out how to navigate this new economy.
That and Sam Hyde fails the physiognomy check hard, so why should anyone listen to this guy anyway?
