[RobKohr]

So basically they get paid peanuts and are overworked and so no one wants to do it.

Also seems like something AI could really cut into. You could have a master animator doing much of important thoughtful work and AI filling in the obvious as well as doing tweening (sound similar to programming)

Really, who needs a studio if you have the creative talent and ability to leverage AI for the grunt work. Or have a couple grunt work humans paid these rates to manage the tedious work of leveraging the AI to make it look seamless.

[ejj28]

I really despise this kind of thinking, this "optimization" that only serves to benefit the people at the top who hoard the fruits of other people's labour.

Why is your solution to underpaid/overworked animators to just eliminate them entirely, instead of just treating them fairly?

People DO want to do these things. They're overworked and underpaid, but they still do it, because they're passionate about it. Not just about the end result or the money, but about creating things.

I continually see AI proponents fail to recognize this across all art forms, for example the Suno AI idiot: "I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music." [0]

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/ai-music-boss-says-musicians...

[jdw64]

You're not wrong. But there is a common perception that we value things made by humans more. The problem is that grunt work actually serves as a pipeline for industrial training. Even with AI, the distribution of value doesn't get resolved automatically.

Of course, I think it would be great if grunt work disappeared, but I believe skilled workers ultimately need grunt work. It's like saying that since AI automates everything, programmers don't need to know how to write methods. The core issue here is that grunt work, which AI excels at, plays an educational role in our society.

Of course, I admit my thinking is quite old-fashioned. This educational model could change. But I'm not sure whether that would be good in the long run. It could be beneficial in the long term. Humans evolve, after all.

I'll reserve judgment on that part.

[TheOtherHobbes]

We do not value things made by humans.

Hand-made anything tends to be a Veblen good, which means it's there to signal status, which means it's expensive.

But expensive doesn't work in mass-media. So a hand-drawn anime isn't going to be more profitable than an AI-animated one.

As for education - possibly, but this is the end of a process that started with digitalisation. I'm a huge fan of hand-drawn pre-Illustrator graphic design, especially 1960s-80s. I think it has a liveliness and freshness that post-Adobe design is missing.

But I'm not the usual audience, almost no trained designers can hand-draw lettering today, and neither the industry nor buyers/consumers seem to care.

Likely the same thing will happen with AI. It will just become the new normal, with skills to match.

[mschuster91]

> Of course, I think it would be great if grunt work disappeared, but I believe skilled workers ultimately need grunt work. It's like saying that since AI automates everything, programmers don't need to know how to write methods. The core issue here is that grunt work, which AI excels at, plays an educational role in our society.

It's not just educational. The more thinking you offload to AI, the more your own skills degrade [1] - and it makes sense, intuitively. If you repeat tasks, you gain experience and get good at it... but if you cease that repetition, eventually your skills break down.

[1] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6

[numpad0]

AI image generation is just not there yet. Say what you want about Luddites and whatnot, but the quality is just not good - the amount of effort given compensation that (especially Japanese) artists put into anime styled imagery makes too little sense that AI can't compete, even in generation time if time for retakes are accounted for.

[famouswaffles]

>AI image generation is just not there yet.

A Japanese Animator shared this recently. Seedance output over simple 3d models

https://www.reddit.com/r/accelerate/comments/1ue6uf2/japanes...

[numpad0]

That's just texturing over a labor intensive 3D animation that doesn't seem like a production quality one. IIUC, geometrically correct 3D animations are basically worthless. You're already lost if you need perfect 3D renders as the reference.

[vintermann]

My impression is that a lot, if not most, anime was always cheap. Lots of stills, few frames, and CGI as soon as it got remotely good enough (and often before). Like Hanna-Barbera cheap. That was my impression when I used to be moderately "into" it 25-ish years ago, but judging from youtube channels like Mother's Basement, it hasn't gotten better.

It makes sense that they would be the first to use AI for whatever they can get away with.

[thesuitonym]

If AI is making our anime anyway, why do we need an anime industry? Let's just get rid of it and we'll all generate our own shows to watch. Why should I pay a platform for someone else's slop when I can make my own?

Business leaders and AI chuds seem to be forgetting that if AI can meet the needs of their business, then we no longer need the business.