I don't believe I heard you come in.
If you've read all of my posts up till this point, you might guess that I have a deeply-rooted passion for animation. Perhaps you might have deduced that I aim to make a career out of animation, if you are so clever. So, as I heard from a great leader I had the pleasure to be under while I was in the Army, "Professionals read professional things." As such, I try to keep my thumb on what's going on in the animation industry - for better or, usually, for much much worse.
This is usually what I end up doing when I
read about that dark, confusing place.
I mentioned in my SCAD retrospective post that I've pretty much came to the conclusion that if I'm going to make animation a career in a fashion that won't make me hate my life 25 hours a day, I'm going to have to go independent. Why? Well, a lot of reasons, but one of the main, telling reasons for my conclusion comes... well, I'll let you listen for yourself. I credit this Cartoon Brew article as where I had originally found this video.
5:28 - 5:54
For the uninitiated, the talented woman speaking in this video is Lauren Faust of Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, most recently My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and nearest and dearest to my heart, Cats Don't Dance fame. Here, she is making a point about the pitching practice that the mainstream television studios are, and probably have been, using. If you missed it, I will quote: "(studios) will really like the stories and really like the characters, but than tell me, 'We don't want shows for girls.' They were attributing the poor performance of the shows to the gender of the target audience instead of the quality of the shows." Hm... maybe this is why most people in their 20's and up will say "Cartoons were better when I was a kid."
Pictured: The creative process studios use to churn out animation.
If you read the original argument, the debate it fires up is the uphill battle for girl-centric animation. To be perfectly honest, I am representing Team Switzerland in that particular fight, because I believe that if you have a good story with good characters, it shouldn't matter if it's girl-centric or boy-centric. Now I know what you're thinking - "But Matt, why than are you inserting your thoughts on this video?" That's a very good question, boys and girls.
The quote I referenced brings up a highly frustrating fact of life if you are a person who wants to bring your animated ideas to the big, small, or mobile screen: you have to march into a big, gray room and throw yourself, and your concept, at the mercy of a board of executives who are less interested in filling their timeslots with entertaining animation that brings something for every viewer to enjoy, and more interested in selling product or filling a demographic need. I don't remember exactly where or when I read this, but I actually read that one of the big studios actually brings in a representative from the merchandise department who can shoot down an idea because it won't sell enough T-shirts or stuffed animals or whatever the hell else.
0:24 - Couldn't have put it better myself, Yogurt.
To sum up my frustrations, what we have here is what's supposed to be an inherently creative industry, full of suits who are more interested in making a buck and satisfying either demographics or advertisers... maybe both... than actually making good, quality animated entertainment. I think that this is part of the reason that many famous figures within the industry have taken to IndieGoGo and Kickstarter with their ideas. After all, on the Internet there aren't any suits standing between them and the people who actually want to see creative work. And personally, I don't want to work myself up the ranks in a studio where I'd be involved with a bunch of films that nobody really wants to make just to have my ideas shot down because they don't match the piece of pie they want to fill their charts with. I don't have the time, money, or patience to do that.
That's about the jist of this post, though, without beating the dead horse for too long. I think I might make this into a "series" of sorts, speaking my mind about the ups and downs of the animation industry in my perspective. Definitely feel free to comment on what you think, I'd love to get some conversation going about this, and I think for the next post, I'll discuss a movement in animation that I'm looking forward to seeing progress, titled "Hullabaloo." Until than! :>
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Give me your thinks about this. But be warned - I read all of the posts before I let them pass :o