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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.10 - JANUARY 2001
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Debris from Dot Com Crash Hits Animators
The Bright Side Feinberg also sees a bright side to the dot com crash. "So far my income has not gone down. In fact, a lot of dot coms are now outsourcing more production. So I'm the model for what they want to do. I really think the Internet is still an amazing opportunity for animators. In the medium and long term view, I'm still very excited about it." In fact in recent moves both Icebox and Wirebreak have laid off staff siting this new business model of outsourcing their productions. Some Internet players like UrbanEntertainment have never held animators on staff and have outsourced since day one. The door is not entirely closed to new talent, either. "The number of companies and Websites that will air that content has gone down," says Philo Northrup, director of content acquisition for Mondo Media. "And the bar has gotten higher as to what is considered viable content, as far as production values, writing, art direction and music. But there's still an audience for good ideas well executed. We're constantly looking at new shows."
Another site that is still acquiring online entertainment is shockwave.com. Possibly the most popular entertainment site on the Net, Shockwave is by no means limited to animated shorts. They have games, music, puzzles and interactive greeting cards. However, they're still soliciting animations, as well. Here's an optimistic forecast for animation on the Net: * Technology continues to improve. In particular, bandwidth increases dramatically, so download times become negligible. * Audience continues to increase, so that sales numbers become more attractive. * A "micro-payment" infrastructure is developed that allows users to pay small amounts (in the range of a few cents per viewing) conveniently on the Net. "The potential for self-distribution is vast on the Internet," says independent animator Corky Quakenbush. "The biggest impact will be when we as artists can reach our audience directly, without the filter of a gauntlet of executives who want to shape our material to their perceptions of what's good or sellable." Quakenbush believes that will come about through micro-payments, probably within two to three years. "Then we will be able to deliver to our fans exactly what we want to give them and get paid for our work," says Quakenbush. Then, he adds, success will relate more directly to artistic skill than to the ability to schmooze the right people. "Not that marketing will be nonexistent, but it will not be the 95% of the game that it is today in moving image art forms."
Despite the dot com crash, some animators and entertainment sites will continue to flourish, says Quakenbush. That includes companies like AtomFilms. Even more importantly, it includes "little sites that are simple and creatively free, started and run by artists for no other reason than to work in a new medium. I think that they represent the reason the boom took place. Investors saw unrestrained creativity exhibited along with the disenfranchised populace who have turned off their TVs and booted up. It was the attempt to fit anarchy into a corporate structure which doomed the first phase of the revolution to failure." Quakenbush also states, "I see the ability to deliver streaming media on high speed connections and the availabilty of that technology to the general public coming about in two to three years. I see micro-payment models lagging a bit behind, unfortunately. I hope I'm wrong there... It remains to be seen how the corporate mentality will evolve to accommodate the new outlet as well as how the new outlet will embrace the evolving art forms." Take Note! Michael Hurwicz believes in fairy tales, cartoons, music, trees and chocolate.
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