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Your opinion.

Guys I saw this and thought you might like this as well.

1. What do you think are the current trends in animation?
2. What do you think the Animation industry will be like in 10 years?
3. Do you think there is a market for animation geared towards adults?
4. Who do you think is the audience for adult animation/anime?
5. What does this audience want to see in their animation?
6. Who are the major players that are making adult animation?
7. What are their strengths?
8. Their weaknesses?
9. How has the animation industry developed in the last five years?
10. What is the size of Animation’s share in the entertainment market?
11. How do International partnerships and government regulations impact the industry?
12. What are the profit margins? What is a fair mark-up for service work in animation?

Guys I saw this and thought you might like this as well.

1. What do you think are the current trends in animation?
2. What do you think the Animation industry will be like in 10 years?
3. Do you think there is a market for animation geared towards adults?
4. Who do you think is the audience for adult animation/anime?
5. What does this audience want to see in their animation?
6. Who are the major players that are making adult animation?
7. What are their strengths?
8. Their weaknesses?
9. How has the animation industry developed in the last five years?
10. What is the size of Animation?s share in the entertainment market?
11. How do International partnerships and government regulations impact the industry?
12. What are the profit margins? What is a fair mark-up for service work in animation?

1) FLASH animation and CGI.
2) much the same it is right now and has been for the past 20 years--that is to say, cyclic. Many of the jobs and tasks will be the same, but the end product might be a bit different.
3) Minimal if any.
4) Teenagers
5) Gratituous sex and violence. Uusually in a action or fantasy oriented theme.
6) Whoever its been in the past decade--usually Japan.
7) The fact that they have been making it for the past while.
8) That their audience is teenage--thus under the age of majority or consent. Given the conservative tide in the west, and particularily with governments this does not bode well for this material. One blinded beaureacrat and the imports of adult animation will cease. For western sourced animation it depends soley on the mores of any given network.
9) Its been sacked by corporate politics. Its actually DE-volved somewhat in the past 5 years. But its showing signs of re-gaining its footing.
10) 10% or less.
11) Without such arrangements, many productions would never see the light of day.
Want the real health of the industry here? If funding sources have to come from OUTSIDE the country then home-grown animation is not doing too well.
12) 10% or less--the people making money off this biz are very small. Its simply not spread around all that much. Ancilliary products attached to animation have a better shot at a increased profit potential, but not by much.
The mark-up for service work is about the same--if you mark-up too high the job goes to the next lowest bidder, mark-up too low and you lose your sustainability margin pretty quick.

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

Goddamn, too many questions.

1. 3D, animated sitcoms, gradually more mainstream adult animation

2. uh...more advanced 3D. hopefully 2D will reinvent itself yet again.

3. of course. There always has been.

4. teenagers, adults

5. angst, suspense

6. Mike Judge, Miyazaki

7. respect for their audience

8. awful financiers, distributors, narrow-minded audiences

9. 3D

10. 8.5879%, including video games

11. next question

12. The profit margins vary, obviously. Animators should be paid more. :p

This is for the US, since that's where I live. It would be interesting to see the responses to these questions from other parts of the world.

1. What do you think are the current trends in animation?
I think for features, there is a trend toward "edgy" "hip" movies. Like Shreks 1 and 2. With a push toward 3D movies. For TV, there is a growing trend toward US/anime type shows like "Teen Titans" and "Xiaolin Showdown." Another trend lately is the growing primetime cartoons out with more adult themes, Like "Family Guy" and "American Dad." Also there seems to be a sudden rash of shows that cable networks are airing that are non-traditional in themes like "This just In," "Kid Notorious" and "Shorties watching Shorties." Oddly enough, these show always seem to be animated with Flash. Not that thats good or bad, just interesting.

2. What do you think the Animation industry will be like in 10 years?
I think there will me a nice mix of both traditional and 3D movies out to choose from. There is going to be such a glut of 3D movies from good to bad, that people, and more importantly the studios will realize (I hope) that the medium doesn't matter, but it's a good story and interesting characters. There will also be several live action movies out with photo realistic humans as lead characters that will be indistinguishable from real humans acting with them side by side. Also there will be more independent animation studios producing animated features as well as foreign studios breaking into the US market.

3. Do you think there is a market for animation geared towards adults?
Yes.
4. Who do you think is the audience for adult animation/anime?
Umm.. adults? :D
5. What does this audience want to see in their animation?
I think adult animation will/has start off as comedies. Then they will evolve into more riskier plots and story lines. Riskier meaning things like dramas, or something, not riskier as in nudity. Althoug I'm sure that will be there too.

6. Who are the major players that are making adult animation?
Japan, Europe, South America. Ahhh hell, every place but the US. lol. I think the cable networks are pushing the TV adult animation market. Networks like Spike, Comedy Central and the like. As for Features? I'd say Dreamworks is the only big studio that comes close to adult movies. Maybe Fox.

7. What are their strengths?
They have the fart joke crowd.
8. Their weaknesses?
They have the fart joke crowd.
9. How has the animation industry developed in the last five years?
I think it has un-developed away from the big, executive studios, to the smaller more agile studios that can adapt quicker.

10. What is the size of Animation’s share in the entertainment market?
Don't know, but not very big. It's all in the merchandizing.
11. How do International partnerships and government regulations impact the
industry?
That is huge right now. The reason a lot of american studios farm their work out to studios in Canada, is because they get government subsudies, I'm not sure if that is the right term. So when they bid on a project, they can under bid something like 25% of what it would really cost to produce, because the Canadian govnernment will reemburse them the 25%. A lot of companies just bypass that and have contracts with overseas studios, read Korea, Phillipines, India, etc. So there will be contracts with these companies for "X" amount of episodes of a particular show, with rights to produce so many new shows the US studio developes. In return, the over seas studios get the licence to these shows and boadcast them in their respective countries.

12. What are the profit margins? What is a fair mark-up for service work in animation?
That I don't know, but I'm sure they are pretty slim.

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

The reason a lot of american studios farm their work out to studios in Canada, is because they get government subsudies, I'm not sure if that is the right term. So when they bid on a project, they can under bid something like 25% of what it would really cost to produce, because the Canadian govnernment will reemburse them the 25%.

This is untrue.

Its a popular urban myth that gets passed around, and its just plain wrong.

What the Canadian government offers is a TAX CREDIT--that is assigned AFTER the fact--after all production costs have been payed and is "reimbiursed" via the tax return.
What it means is that the production simply pays less tax than it would without the the credit.
There's no actual money changing hands all, it is is a slice taken off the back end of the costs. All the production costs remain the same, the only value that changes is what's owed to the government come tax-time.

Its gives Canadian productions NO advantage over any other production, what DOES work in our favour ( that allows under-bidding) is our devalued dollar.
If our dollar is only worth 75 cents to the USA One Dollar, then a $75,000 US bid is worth $100,000 Cdn. This means that the money that comes up here just goes further, but is off-set by higher taxes etc. The exchange rate is often the only thing making a Canadian service job from the USA viable for anyone to work on it.
This cheaper dollar is the incentive for sending productions up our way, and that is soley the discretion of US production houses.
If anything, when the math is done, the wages come out to the same OR LOWER than in the USA.

So, to repeat there are NO subsidies given to Canadian productions from the Canadian government. It would be nice to see this fact passed around more often than the myth.

--Ken

"We all grow older, we do not have to grow up"--Archie Goodwin ( 1937-1998)

What Ken has offered is absolutely true, but one other thing that Canadian studios offer is work without the hassles of animation unions. It costs a great deal less to produce up here due to the fact that our salaries are considerably lower, and we have no unions to argue with over higher salaries and unpaid overtime (unfortunate about the overtime, but c'est la vie). Group that with our Canadian tax credits (which have in fact been cut back on, I might add, over the last couple years, due to Telefilm restructuring), and our dollar being 3/4 that of the US dollar, and we are an affordable means of producing animation for American producers. We are also privy to co-production money (investment) from other studios in other countries, due to co-production treaties that are in place (between Canada, and many other countries i.e. Korea, the Philippines, China, India, and many others), where the U.S. has no such treaties to make this possible, while still getting tax credits from the gov't. Jeez... What a mouthfull... Did I word that correctly?

Not to mention our talent pool being VERY large in Canada, in comparison to other countries...

Cheers

"Don't want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard" - Paul Simon

I'm going to start a new thread about the Canadian studios so I don't highjack this thread too much.

The Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

Ape and everyone thanks. I wanted to build my company in Canada being that I am moving there and that is the headquarters of my comic book publishing company.

I know Canada had several things geared for animation and publishing but I did not know this. It is funny being they do the same thing for publishers as well.

Thanks again guys. I owe you.