Of Animation And Its Discussion
Of Animation And Its Discussion:
A text discussing the critique of animation along with how people consume and discuss animation, alongside it connecting to the state of the animation industry and what we should do.
Written by Fatty’s Den (@fattysden.bsky.social)
Before the discussion of animation can start, there is something that has to be discussed regarding the person who made this text; me (Fatty’s Den aka Den-Chan). I know the big elephant in the room about who I am is probably going to be talked about. Yes, I am a fat kink artist; someone who draws erotic artwork of plus-sized characters alongside characters getting fatter. I know some detractors might snark at this and probably won't take this seriously because of this. As such, the question that should be answered is why? Why talk about this here? There are many reasons for this, some of which might lean on the absurd. I want to be honest with everyone here and give my reasoning on why I am doing this.
On the personal side of things, I have to admit to some of my own insecurities when it comes to this stuff. One of my fears is being talked down on or stigmatized due to the kink I have. I cannot control what sorts of things arouse me. You’d think the simple answer would be just to make an alternative account for this sort of thing, but my biggest concern with that is how people can pick up on my art style. It’s something that I really fear could happen, and I feel like being here with the community I reside in feels more… comforting. The chance of me getting my kinks “exposed” could happen and I am afraid of being chastised and made fun of over it, alongside my fear of others being creeped out about it. I prefer to be more open about it. I am talking about speaking with adults here, as minors should NEVER be interacting with kink content, as kinks are inherently sexual in nature. I just want to make this clear. If I see any minor ever come across this text on my post of it, it’s an instant block. Animation can be discussed by adults too.
I also feel like my perspective on things would provide a new perspective in the perception of animation as a medium and how we can help out on making the industry better. I may not work in the industry, but I have analyzed a lot of discourse surrounding it alongside how industry people act in the animation landscape. From what I have seen, I never saw people talk about the stuff I am going to say in great detail, and I believe speaking about these thoughts can allow for people to find new ideas and to recognize certain problems in a way that’s more productive. If it’s not me who discusses these sorts of things, who else would?
Any attacks on this text regarding my kinks along with any other superfluous tangents are ones I would consider to be not good arguments. They distract from the topic at hand and the points I would bring out. If you want to have a good argument, read the text itself and argue based on the points given in here. There are things that I might be wrong on and I haven’t known of. If there’s anything I said that’s wrong, please feel free to correct me. I’m not the end-all-be-all of animation discussion; I just want to make my points so that others can see a new perspective and to make a positive change in the animation industry.
The 2020’s currently has been a tumultuous year for the animation industry. While the rise of independent animation no doubt caused by the Internet’s growth of influence has the budding roots of a new era of animation, there is no doubt that the industry side of animation has a lot of cracks that surfaced. The Warner Bros. and Discovery merger has been the symbol of the faults of corporations when it comes to treating animation. The new CEO of Warner Bros., the infamous David Zaslav, is now considered the face of corporate greed and the mistreatment of animation. Not only has Warner Bros mistreated animation as a medium, but so has Disney and Viacom as well; all three head honchos of the television animation world.
It’s been no secret that the Warner Bros. and Discovery merger of 2022 has been a controversial event in the entertainment world, animation included. The merger was made so that the CEO of Discovery, the infamous David Zaslav, would be the incumbent CEO of the merged company. Under Zaslav’s rule over the company, numerous projects in the animation field had been written off for tax purposes. Some of these projects include Scoob: Holiday Haunt, new seasons of the animated series Final Space, and one of the most well-known being Coyote vs. Acme. Another infamous decision by Zaslav was to pull a good chunk of animated projects from streaming platforms, such as Infinity Train and Close Enough.
Disney and Nickelodeon had their fair share of horrible decision making, as they have canceled many animated shows due to their lack of advertising towards these shows, usually placing them on streaming services or tertiary networks. Compare how the Nickelodeon show SpongeBob SquarePants has been treated, with numerous spinoffs, brand tie-ins, and video games, to how other cartoons from other platforms had been treated. Much cannot be said about other cartoons that had been shafted for the lack of trying to advertise more to their audiences. The closest to this would be the Cartoon Network show Teen Titans Go!, with how much it has prominence in Cartoon Network’s scheduling. Disney and Nickelodeon had canceled many cartoons for not meeting the quota of being popular enough, not knowing that the companies themselves need to put their weight in advertising these shows. Many shows that have been mistreated like this include Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (Disney), The Ghost and Molly McGee (Disney), and Harvey Beaks (Nickelodeon). Distribution of these cartoons is also a concern when it comes to streaming services, as some regions don’t have the cartoons themselves. This makes people in those regions resort to either VPNs or piracy to watch these shows. It’s baffling how these corporations don’t try to do more with advertising their cartoons, as that would allow them to get more popular.
A big looming threat to the animation world is the use of artificial intelligence to create and direct animation. With the rise of AI-generated imagery with the boom of text-to-image models that allow for the creation of imagery right at the fingertips of your keyboard, a lot of problems have been noted in this process. One of these is what these models have to use to train on in order to generate images, which is often the use of artwork and intellectual properties without the permission of the owner. Another source of concern is the rise of advanced text-to-speech models that can replicate the voices of numerous actors, often without the consent of the people being trained on. Text generation models like ChatGPT are also a big concern in the writing world, as misinformation can spread through hasty generation of work. With the use of these models, a concern rises over the livelihoods of animators, writers and voice actors as the job market gets narrower and narrower.
Even with animated movies, there is a lot of struggle in the industry field. The success of Disney’s Inside Out 2 can be no doubt in part due to the animators that worked on the project in Pixar. However, said animators are struggling to make ends meet because of the layoffs in the company. Around 15% of employees in Pixar had been laid off during the production of Inside Out 2, which leaves a good chunk of animators and other hard-working people out of jobs. It is very apparent that any industry animator is at risk of losing their job.
The constant screwing over of people who work on cartoons has led to the rise of a union known as the Animation Guild (TAG for short) that stands for animation. The seeds of their prominence came in 2021 with their hashtag on Twitter #NewDeal4Animation, which provided a voice for people in the animation industry to have better care from companies. With the rise of AI generated imagery in 2023-2024, new hashtags by TAG and other people who support animators known as #StandWithAnimation and #NoContractNoCartoons have been trending in order to spread the word on how animators have been mistreated by companies. TAG had commissioned an indie animation studio known as Jellybox to make animations for them spreading the word on how AI and companies have been screwing over animators, featuring Adam Conover as an animated version of himself. These videos and hashtags have spread the word around in an effective manner, seeing how many likes and retweets on Twitter that the posts by TAG and other animation supporters have.
With all this in mind, it seems like the animation industry is getting lots of support from many people online who have passion for animation in general. However, a question emerges: Is this support enough? While the hashtags and animated videos have trended a lot in animation communities, we have to observe the audiences certain types of animation have, how people see animation, and how we can allow for more people to support animation. This text is all about what can be done to make sure the messages supporting animation are seen by the masses.
A noticeable observation regarding animation as a medium is how it is perceived based on what groups have created it. It has been apparent that independent animation projects such as The Amazing Digital Circus by Gooseworx and the infamous Skibidi Toilet by DaFuqBoom have higher amounts of discussion and support online and offline than cartoons made in the industry such as ones made for Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney. It is an interesting conundrum, as it seems as if people do not perceive both types of animation as equal in terms of animation itself.
In general animation discourse, it seems as if independent animation is one of the most viewed and discussed sources of animation. One of the more prominent recent examples is the web series known as The Amazing Digital Circus, created by Gooseworx. Statistics have shown that the first two episodes of the web series had gained as much as a hundred million views online, compared to the couple million range of many industry cartoons. In the discourse surrounding the internet, The Amazing Digital Circus has been given numerous fan-made creations from art to videos by thousands to millions of fans of the series. The show had received enough popularity to get merchandise and a manga adaptation from CoroCoro Comic. Numerous content farms also churn out videos about the webseries meant to ride the algorithms on YouTube and TikTok, which shows how big the property is to the point where suspicious companies want to cash in on the property’s name without endorsement of Gooseworx.
Although The Amazing Digital Circus has a big reputation, it pales in comparison to the popularity of Skibidi Toilet. Described as one of the biggest current phenomena of the Internet, the Skibidi Toilet web series of videos have been viewed billions of times all together. Its main popularity is through children in Generation Alpha, with the phrase “skibidi” itself being a term with no set definition but being a part of the vernacular of the youth. Like The Amazing Digital Circus, Skibidi Toilet has been given numerous amounts of fanart, fan-made videos, merchandise, and unofficial content-farm slop. Skibidi Toilet, hated or loved, is arguably one of the biggest currently popular animated series in the world.
Both The Amazing Digital Circus and Skibidi Toilet are cut from the same cloth as industry-made animation. Despite the differences in distribution, budget, and what people are working on, at the end of the day they’re all animation. Observing discourse surrounding indie and industry animation, there seems to be a difference in how people discuss these two categories. It seems as if people categorize indie and industry animation as separate from each other, despite both encompassing the term “animation”. Not to mention that people seemingly discuss independent animation more and more than industry animation, having them both be separated in terms of discussion too. This observation is very interesting, and can lead to understanding how to spread the word about animation in all categories, and to help the cause of helping animators in need.
By allowing for discussion of indie and industry animation to merge with each other, it can allow for people to associate indie animation and industry animation together, and would allow more people to recognize the problem set out in the industry world. It can lead to more people discussing strategies on how to survive in the animation landscape alongside getting more backing by people (financial or other methods). With this, more progress can be made on making animators thrive in the animation business.
On the subject on how people treat indie and industry animation differently from one another, pondering on why that’s the case can allow for new strategies to allow for animators from many sides of the internet to show off their identity, alongside people in the cartoon community improving on how they treat animators and other people working on cartoons. We can only rely on speculation on psychological phenomena to try to understand why people react differently to these categories of animation and it comes down to how people see corporations, animation, and animators. Specifically, the parasocial aspect of independent animation.
To get this out of the way, the negative connotations of the word “parasocial” can raise a few eyebrows. When that word is used, it is used in the context of how the viewer sees the animators and animation, with nothing at fault of the people behind the animation or the animation itself. To recognize how people see indie and industry animation differently can allow for the viewers themselves to recognize these differences and to act accordingly, alongside animators themselves finding ways to promote themselves to inspire others and to get the word out of their work.
On the psychological aspect of how people see animation, it’s most likely caused by how personal the product feels based on if it’s indie or industry. For the independent side, there is likely to be a sense of a personal bond with the indie project in question because of how indie projects are seen. The personal bond would be about how the person sees the indie project creator as a person like the casual viewer; a sense of comfortability, reliability, and familiarity. Many indie creators like Gooseworx delve into their personal thought processes on how they contributed to their projects, having a different mindset than corporate head honchos. These indie creators are seen headfirst mostly with the association of their cartoons, different mostly from how corporations are seen headfirst in relation with the cartoons. A corporation is seen as unfamiliar to the individual, something more secretive and harder to contact or be like. As such, the viewer feels more separated from the industry cartoon than the indie one. These mindsets are reinforced time and time again due to the Internet and the algorithms of many websites, alongside the association of hierarchies of influence and/or wealth. The hierarchy of classes is usually made so that it’s culturally normalized that each class usually doesn’t form a personal bond with one another. The higher classes can be both revered and lauded by the lower classes, but it’s seemingly more difficult for lower classes to have bonds with higher classes. This hierarchical mindset could be a huge factor to how people perceive indie and industry animation differently; the association of indie cartoons with their creators and the association of industry cartoons with the companies that own them. Although systematically, the creator of an indie cartoon should have the same level of personal bond as the creator of an industry cartoon, the fact that the industry cartoon is heavily associated more with the company that owns it (a higher class) provides trouble for people to personally feel a bond with the industry cartoon creator. There are exceptions to this rule if the industry cartoon is big enough such as with the creator of SpongeBob SquarePants, Stephen Hillenburg. People have a sense of a personal bond with the creator due to the beloved respect people have of SpongeBob SquarePants due to the cartoon having a huge cultural impact. Most creators of industry cartoons unfortunately don’t have this luxury, and it’s harder for the people who work on industry cartoons as writers, storyboard artists, layout artists, etc.
The solution to this problem could be the help of people who are fans of both indie and industry animation to platform all animators and give them a voice, regardless of not being a creator of the cartoon they’re working on or if they’re working on an indie/industry cartoon. This relies on the community of cartoon fans to collaborate with the people who work on said cartoons. YouTube videos can be made with big YouTubers in the animation community interviewing industry and indie animators on their jobs and their mindsets. The indie animated series by Shockwave Animation known as Animation Station with Millie Martins is a huge step forward for allowing animators to have a platform talking about their jobs and their work, as it’s set up to be an interview with said animator/notable animation community member. RebelTaxi’s Pizza Party Podcast also platforms many animation industry and animation community people too in their podcast episodes. An observation here is that these platforms are targeted towards people in the animation community through advertising and how they spread their word. You don’t get to see YouTubers like MoistCritikal make videos regarding animation industry stuff. Perhaps a push for more YouTubers who discuss events across the Internet and in the media landscape to discuss indie/industry animation could work? That is to say if the YouTubers are willing to do so; forcing someone to focus on topics they aren’t interested in would be a no go. More podcasts discussing animation, collaborating with influential people to help out on platforming animators, along with many other options can be done. By spreading the word to more types of YouTubers with more audiences, it could allow for more people to focus on the problems animators face in this world and to make a change for the better.
By making it so that industry and indie animators are seen by general viewers as just like them, it would allow for a more personal bond that the viewers would have, which would allow for a larger audience to help out spread the word about the issues animators have with greedy corporations mistreating them. NDAs could be a big issue though, which you can’t really break without serious consequences. As long as an animator is available to platform themselves and the work they contributed, there should be potential for many to chime in and help them out get a bigger platform so that they can be given more help. We all are people at the end of the day, regardless of what job we have. As long as we all work together, we can help each other make the world a better place.
And for the casual viewer, they can help too regardless of what platform they have. A viewer can have lots of potential to do good to help out animators. Even though they might think of themselves as not a substantial figure that can help on their own, their voices matter as much as animators. By collaborating through engaging with posts and the content that animators from both indie and industry content make along with the groups and projects associated with them, viewers all together can make a big difference in helping people out through website algorithms picking up on engagement.
A lot of the pieces are already there when it comes to discussing animation. Many online users and content creators in the cartoon community have been in prominence discussing animation and cartoons. What there should be more of is interviewing people who work on cartoons and discussing their thought processes and their work. It would allow for these animators, writers, etc. to be given a bigger platform and to show what they thought when making or drawing gags, stories, and visuals for cartoons. A big problem with discussing animation is that both the cartoon community and the people who work on cartoons are insular with each other. By bridging the gap, it would allow for the people in the cartoon community and perhaps even people outside of it to feel more personally connected with the animation industry workers. This can allow for more civil discussions and to make sure people’s voices can be heard.
It’s also very great that #StandForAnimation and #NoContractNoCartoons are big hashtags in the cartoon community field. To show that passion is to show that times are changing and that the people want animators to be treated with respect. The cartoon community should make videos regarding the crisis going on with the animation landscape with tax write-offs and AI, which can spread the word to many about this situation. Many people might not know about this or might not think it’s a big deal, but through making content that spreads how dire this all is, it can make them think differently. Word should be spread to bigger YouTubers who are willing to platform this discussion, allowing for more viewers to be aware about the plight of animators. With all of this influence, it can allow for companies to be worried about the bad PR they would get with the tax write-offs and the usage of AI along with other ways they nickel and dime the animation industry.
To unite many into making sure the animation industry gets better treatment would allow for a higher chance of good results to happen. Animators’ voices should be heard, and through the viewers chiming in by helping them out, the animation industry might have a better future. All of us need to do our share and work together.
The animation industry is on a rocky road. Although it may seem as though indie animation is doing better than ever, we should help out those working in corporations to have better treatment of not just their cartoons, but their jobs foremost. Through recognizing how we treat indie and industry animation differently, we can change how we treat animators accordingly to treat them much better than before. The promotion of the personality of animators can allow for viewers to feel a personal connection to them and would yield a higher chance for them to help out as much as they can.
Animation is a medium that should be given more respect than it gets, it’s an art form that often gets looked down upon as being “just for kids”. By the viewer and worker uniting, we can make sure progress is made to have animators and animation be respected.