mineapple:

subatomicbetty:

mineapple:

mineapple:

problem with tv animation being so insulated and monopolised is that its turned into a snake eating its own tail- you gotta go to certain places to have any kind of in, and they have a certain style theyve declared to be a money maker, so you cater your art to fit that style, cartoons get more uniform, other styles get waylaid, then on and on you go, all the way down, until you start to lose any sense of uniqueness, and things end up…..extreme

basically it all turns kind of incest-y.

as someone who went to university for animation and realized too late that i had barely any chance of ‘making it’ because i wasnt born in california, its all pretty depressing to think about

the positive side effect of this incestuous ouroboros is that (much in the same way that any female lead movie is hailed as a victory for feminism), even the slightest difference in stylistic choices sets work apart from the rest. You may just be drawing and animating in your own style and be lorded as an innovative creator of your time. It may even help it gain traction as something appealing ‘but different’.

There are also a buttload of counter-arguments and branching topics in these points tho that occured to me while writing

how dare you bring positivity into my sulkfest

reductosshrinkgun replied to your post: problem with tv animation being so insulated and…

This is gonna sound weird… but as someone who watches a lot of animated shows (and has my entire life) I kinda wanna know more about this. I’m thinking about about how action animation has tended to look very similar for the past decade or so and is that the kind of thing? Just tell me to be quiet if I’m on the complete wrong track.

okay im not the best person to ask because i dont know the specifics of companies and their employment methods or which action animation youre specifically talking about but i can absolutely tell you that while calarts (the institute that is getting a lot of flack recently for its style) doesnt have complete monopoly on american animation, its pretty damn close

im gonna just throw a whole bunch of facts your way because they dont lie and from there you can make your own conclusions–

ill pull out a list of top animation studios worldwide- like this one. bear in mind that it doesnt specify exactly how it ranks these studios, but thats not particularly relevant here; we just need the names.

on this list of 50 well-known animation studios, 22 are based in the state of calfornia. the top ten has 6. this list is international. that is a huge amount of influence for such a small place area of the world. there are even other studios that are based in america, but talking about americas domination of popular media isnt the focus today…

were talking california-the ‘cal’ in calarts.

so, california has big boys like disney, nickelodeon, pixar, dreamworks, and all of these have a very strong, very close relationship to calarts to the point where its almost considered a pipeline, and have ever since, i believe, the 70s.

heres some notable calarts alumni that i remember off the top of my head-

butch hartman (fairly oddparents, danny phantom)
john lasseter (just…look him up, itll take less time)
brad bird (iron giant, incredibles, ratatouille)
craig mccracken (the powerpuff girls, fosters home, wander over yonder)
lauren faust (MLP:fim, PPG, foster’s home)
glen keane (little mermain, tarzan, tangled)

(the shows/movies next to them arent even the only ones they worked on, just the some popular ones or ones they produced.)

basically, if you look at a piece of american animation, its a safe bet that it was created, written, or produced by someone hailing from calarts. youre also very likely to find another one or two alumni elsewhere in its pipeline (like a said, its all a little incest-y)

how about some more recent stats- as of 2015, 4/6 of CN’s original cartoons were created by calarts alumni. for disney, it was 4/5- damn good odds if youre a betting soul.

so you can see, calarts and the major animation studios have a Very close relationship.

now- this isnt in itself a bad thing! a lot of great, classic shows and movies have come out of calarts alumni- theyve basically built up western animation from its infancy, and its good stuff. id absolutely take more of the level of quality weve been getting recently than nothing at all!

but…as youve said, similarities and trends start to grow, sometimes to the point of sameness. theyve all started from the same place, and over decades established their own styles, brands, and most efficient methods of getting products out there- and theyre the ones that have the money to do so. its happened before, itll happen again, but i do feel it limits what we can achieve and see in animation, which can be very disheartening if you dont draw like the big leaguers do, or, bottomline, dont have the opportunity to work there.

but of course you can make your own conclusions, and say for yourself whether its necessarily a bad thing or not.

(i realize that this was all rather fact-heavy and maybe too pessimistic for ones tastes, so for something more in-depth and optimistic, check out my fellow animation-graduate subatomicbetty’s response. you might learn a bit more about the industry and process!)

fun fact: ironically though, rebecca sugar, a creator people often criticise for having the classic ‘calarts face’ isnt actually a calarts alumni- but that does kind of make my point about its huge influence changing the industry as a whole, doesnt it?