Animation vs Automation: Labour, Artificial Intelligence, and the Silent Crisis in the Animation Industry
Fig. 1 - Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford, 2022).
In 2009, Vivian Sobchack asked: “what might it mean to bring together the concepts and practices of ‘animation’ and ‘automation’”? At the time Sobchack was writing on the visibility of labour within a modern computer-generated cinematic framework, where computers have become advanced enough that they appear to “have a life of their own” (2009, 375). In her examination of Pixar’s computer-animated film WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008), Sobchack notes that it is the machines, the robots like WALL-E and EVE, who are imbued with “the movement of life,” while the humans are left motionless. Life in animation is tied to the spectacle of movement, and in WALL-E, life has now been passed from human to machine, their movements a contrast between the “vital” and the “anemic” (2009, 375-376). Of course, the software created to computer-animate the film may have been mechanical, but the creatives and animators behind the film were very much human. It can be easy to forget this, however, when animation is a medium that by necessity tends to obscure the means of its own construction. The very process of animating is to create the illusion of something moving as if it were an autonomous being, as if it were alive. As computer-animation has become increasingly more sophisticated and refined, there are a number of filmmakers such as those behind the Spider-Verse films, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford, 2022) and The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Mike Rianda, 2021), who have begun to reintroduce a greater visibility of labour to their films (Fig. 1). This visibility can take the form of more experimental animated styles that incorporate painterly flourishes, more abstract shapes and colours, and 2D hand-drawn sketches, all of which combine to create a sense of vitality and liveliness that emphasise the fact there are human artists behind the work on screen.
Yet despite the acclaim and fan support behind these features, the animation industry finds itself in a critical moment in its history. The major contributor to the problems the industry is facing is, unsurprisingly, a financial one. After a few years of training families to expect a new Disney or Pixar film on streaming due to the pandemic, it is perhaps to be expected that animated films would take longer to recover at the box office. While there were likely other factors at work causing the box-office disappointments behind Strange World (Don Hall, 2021), Lightyear (Angus MacLane, 2022), and Wish (Chris Buck & Fawn Veerasunthorn, 2023) (for example, none were particularly well acclaimed), it is telling that Encanto (Byron Howard & Jared Bush, 2021), and Elemental (Peter Sohn, 2023) have achieved great success on streaming, the former becoming a worldwide cultural phenomenon only after it arrived on Disney+ months after its theatrical release. Yet these perceived disappointments have only stoked fears in the larger film industry that animation is in trouble, not helped by the high budgets required to create them. Strange World reportedly had a budget between $135 and $180 million, Wish’s ranged from $175 to $200 million, while Lightyear’s reportedly cleared $200 million, making each of them extremely costly failures. The fallout of these sentiments within the industry has contributed to a serious pressure placed on animation studios to reduce costs while retaining a consistent pace of work as studios continue to rely on certain tentpoles to provide results that will satisfy their profit margins.
Such increased pressures have left an animation industry already under significant crunch times, now teetering on the brink of collapse, with cases such as the poor working conditions that led to roughly 100 animators leaving the production of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (as one animator stated: “the working conditions required to produce such artistry are not sustainable”). In May, Pixar announced it would layoff 175 employees, constituting 14% of its workforce, the largest reduction in the company’s history. A month prior, DreamWorks, despite having just launched the successful Kung-Fu Panda 4 (Mike Mitchell, 2024), cut many of its departments in half with the creative staff of its features reduced by 40-50% as COO Randy Lake announced plans to outsource work to third-party studios with the goal of reducing production costs by 20%. Furthermore, the gravity of the situation is made far more dire when considering DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s claim that “the good old days” where 500 artists would work on an animated feature were over, and going forward AI would allow the company to make films with 10% of that number in just three years’ time. This looming threat has left many animators in a precarious position.
Fig. 2 - Rebecca Ferguson as blue-eyed Lady Jessica in Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve, 2024).
Zach Mulligan is one such animator, who created a purposefully controversially titled YouTube video called “The Animation Industry is COLLAPSING,” intending to voice not only his own frustrations but also to start a conversation that extended beyond the animation community. A conversation about the issues from which the animation industry is already suffering from, like large numbers of layoffs and heavy pressures to perform as streaming loses favour within the industry, all the while facing the looming threat of artificial intelligence. Mulligan posits that there are two ongoing discussions taking place within the industry about artificial intelligence: whether AI is a tool, and whether it will lead to job losses. The former is a nuanced debate worth exploring; there are – as Mulligan notes – plenty of uses for the technology to streamline tedious tasks such as the use of machine-learning to aid in colouring the blue eyes of the characters in Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve, 2024). There is a huge caveat to that discussion, however: in my opinion, said tools should only be applied to enhance the quality of the work and improve the working conditions of the artists who are contributing to the film. What has become clear in the last few months is that the executives and shareholders making the decisions at Hollywood studios are only embracing the technology so readily because it represents a potential source for cost-reduction.
Whether or not artificial intelligence constitutes a labour issue is unquestionable at this point. In the 2023 Writers and Actors strikes, we saw the issue become a lightning rod that sparked several existential questions that rippled across the industry. While many creatives remained unsurprised as their worst fears were confirmed, there were many others left shocked by the extent to which the studios viewed their labour as disposable. SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher’s speech after the first negotiations broke down illustrates this plainly: “I cannot believe it, quite frankly, how far apart we are on so many things. How they plead poverty, that they’re losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their CEOs. It is disgusting.” Yet despite the apparent victory of both writers’ and actors’ unions in September 2023, there has been little apparent slowdown in the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence in all areas of the industry.
Fig. 3 - Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (Sam Fell, 2023).
It has become an open secret in the industry that the technology is seeing widespread utilisation. For fear of backlash, projects employing the technology – from posters to visual effects, to the work of writers and producers – have mostly kept quiet. This secrecy is unsurprising considering there have been studies confirming the potential devastation AI could have on the employability of artists. One such study projected that as many as 204,000 positions will be negatively impacted, with particular sectors such as voice acting at greater risk. There has already been significant backlash from the voice acting community which is heavily reliant on employment in the animation and gaming industries, who claim to have been betrayed as SAG-AFTRA struck a deal with Replica Studios that would allow them to create AI digital replicas of their voices for new productions once consent is granted by the performer. While the deal theoretically helps protect the agency of voice performers, unless carefully handled these companies could eradicate an entire profession through sheer greed and for the sake of efficiency – a profession which has remained integral to the emotional power and connection between audiences and animation’s most indelible characters. Just look at Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (Sam Fell, 2023), whose various re-castings from those who appeared in the 2000 Aardman original caused considerable controversy among fans of the original (Fig. 3).
The common thread that connects all of this is a fundamental divide in the entertainment industry between companies motivated by profit, and artists motivated by their passion for art. Conversations around the use of AI represent just another example of the growing divide between the commercial interests of studio executives and the creative interests of the working artists who actually value film as an art form. Artificial intelligence is just the natural endpoint of an increasingly corporatised industry mindset which has normalised an attitude among studios wherein they operate as companies producing a ‘pipeline’ of ‘content’ to satisfy ‘consumers.’ What we are seeing now is a confluence of events, a convergence point in which Hollywood’s relentless search to appease Wall Street investors and race towards profitability has coincided with the emergence of a technology that provides the potential to reduce spending on their biggest expense: human labour. With all this potential disaster looming, is there any light at the end of the tunnel?
The good news is that animation workers are unionising at a rapid pace, with the Animation Guild expanding by around 1000 new members since December 2021. The vast majority of these individuals are production workers seeking the same benefits as their writers and artist coworkers. Furthermore, the Animation Guild will be negotiating this summer for a new contract that will hopefully address some of the major concerns facing workers in the industry. It is also important for us as audience members and potentially future creatives to support the people that make these films possible. We must remain vocal in our support for writers, animators, voice actors, and production workers as they face a turbulent period ahead of them.
**Article published: June 28, 2024**
References:
Cain, Sian. 2023. “Fran Drescher’s Fiery Speech Against Hollywood Studios Goes Viral as Actors Strike.” The Guardian (July 14, 2023), available at: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jul/14/fran-drescher-speech-actors-strike-writers-strike-sag-aftra-hollywood-ceos.
Carras, Christi. 2023. “Hollywood’s Animation Workers Are Unionizing at a Rapid Pace. Here’s Why.” Los Angeles Times (December 13, 2023), available at: animation-guild-growing-production-workers-disney-warner-bros.
Cho, Winston. 2024. “Sony Pictures to Use AI to Produce Movies and Shows In ‘More Efficient Ways’.” The Hollywood Reporter (May 30, 2024), available at: sony-pictures-adopt-ai-streamline-production-says-ceo-tony-vinciquerra-1235912109.
Cho, Winston, and Scott Roxborough. 2024. “Hollywood at a Crossroads: “Everyone Is Using AI, But They Are Scared to Admit It,” The Hollywood Reporter (May 15, 2024) https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/hollywood-ai-artificial-intelligence-cannes-1235900202/.
Lang, Jamie. 2024. “SAG-AFTRA and Replica Studios Ink Agreement on AI Voice Use in Video Games.” Cartoon Brew (January 11, 2024), available at: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/artist-rights/sag-aftra-and-replica-studios-ink-agreement-on-ai-voice-use-in-video-games-236625.html.
Sobchack, Vivian. 2009. “Animation and Automation, or, the Incredible Effortfulness of Being.” Screen 50, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 375-391.
Zahed, Ramin. 2024. “Industry Observer Zach Mulligan Shares Thoughts on the State of the Animation Biz,” Animation Magazine (May 24, 2024), available at: https://www.animationmagazine.net/2024/05/industry-observer-zach-mulligan-shares-thoughts-on-the-state-of-the-animation-biz/.
Biography:
Oliver Vigni is a writer and recently graduated student from King’s College London, where he studied a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from 2021 to 2024. He is an avid fan of animation; his areas of interest revolve primarily around computer-animated films with a focus on the increasing formal and aesthetic experimentation within the medium.