My good friend Zach Mulligan just put out a thoroughly sourced and expertly crafted video about the state of the animation industry. Well done Zach! His fifth point about AI reminded me of another revolution, a much older one. In 1900, Frederick W. Taylor revolutionized industry by introducing repeatable and reductionist processes to metallurgy. Such processes were designed around efficiency, boiling down the steel smelting process to a series of steps so easy that anyone off the street could do them. While immensely profitable and popular among the titans of industry, Taylor's doctrine rendered skilled craftsmen, like animators, out of a job. He saw paying a premium for experience as a waste. Animation executives seem to be operating with Taylor's methods of industrial efficiency in mind. After all, Taylor's book is often cited as the most influential management book of the 20th century. They are creating profit by cutting the cost of labor in pursuit of technological advancements that promise greater returns. It would make Taylor proud. Here's why the 21st century is exactly the WRONG time for this kind of thinking: as information moves quicker, and as more data clogs up our collective mental bandwidth, interactions between the connected elements of our society increase in frequency. Where business was once predictable, it is no more. Variations in output are no longer proportional to changes in input. The business environment has become complex beyond all predictability. As a result, business leaders must maintain, not eliminate, a workforce of resilient and robust craftsmen. Especially in the creative realm of animation, this cadre will provide distinction from competing studios. They enhance the flexibility of an organization to adopt subsequent emerging technology and allow it to quickly adapt to rapidly changing circumstances, rather than pigeonholing them into a one-trick studio. This can be seen directly in the corporations that adhered most closely to Taylor's tenets during the Great Recession. Companies like GM struggled to stay afloat because they were stuck in their old ways, too rigid to innovate and thus became uncompetitive. Rivals like Ford, on the other hand, who maintained a looser, more "inefficient" corporate structure remained solvent. This outcome was all but guaranteed by the changes wrought upon us by the information revolution. Certainly, laying off a skilled workforce for technology may be profitable and efficient in the short term. However, by doing so, leaders are making their organizations more brittle to future shock, more vulnerable to competition, and less adaptable to the practically infinite variables of tomorrow.
This might be the most important video I've made so far. The animation industry is in serious trouble, and thanks to things like massive layoffs, outsourcing, and Generative AI, it's going to get worse before it gets better. If you're outside the animation industry, this might come as a surprise to you. The last few years have been brutal, and while there is a light at the end of the tunnel, it's going to take a lot of collective organizing & a general mindset shift about animation to get us there. I love this industry so much, and it's awful to see so many good human beings affected by companies prioritizing shareholders over employees. Please share/repost this to help spread the word about our industry! #animation #animationjobs #ai #layoffs
Creative Director / Animator / YouTube Content Creator - “No The Robot”
1moAn amazing analogy, thanks for the in-depth reaction Matt! You're absolutely spot on with your analysis of applying old ways of thinking to a modern problem. Thanks for sharing!