AI, Cartoons and Animation

[ed. See also: What if Making Cartoons Becomes 90% Cheaper? (NYT). Better cat videos?]
via: YouTube/X

No part of the entertainment business has more to lose — and gain — from A.I. than animation.

The $420 billion global animation industry (movies, television cartoons, games, anime) has long been dominated by computer-generated imagery; Walt Disney Animation hasn’t released a hand-drawn film since 2011. In other words, unlike much of Hollywood, animation companies are not technophobic.

Even with computers, however, the process of making an animated movie (or even a cartoon) remains extraordinarily expensive, requiring squadrons of artists, animators, graphic designers, 3-D modelers and other craftspeople. Studios have a big incentive to find a more efficient way, and A.I can already do many of those things far faster, with far fewer people.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, a former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and a co-founder of DreamWorks Animation, has predicted that by next year, it will take only about 50 people to make a major animated movie, down from 500 a decade ago. If he were founding DreamWorks today, Mr. Katzenberg said of A.I. on a recent episode of the podcast “The Speed of Culture,” he would be “jumping into it hook, line and sinker.” (NYT)