With digital drawing tools and animation software as today’s standard, there’s no question that tech has already produced seismic changes in the animation industry, with more on the way. Here’s how we see tech transforming the animation industry — today and in the future.

A lot has changed since the days when 2D animation was created by hand, frame by painstaking frame. Technology has taken animation production to new frontiers, making it more efficient, streamlined, and flexible. And while it’s true that hand-drawn animation has a certain warmth and quality that technology can’t reproduce, those attributes come at a pretty steep price.

Simply put, traditional animation is labor intensive. And expensive. So it’s no surprise that time-saving technology has been widely adopted in the industry — and the changes just keep coming. Here are some of the ways that technology is transforming the animation industry in 2022 and beyond.

Cloud computing has freed up resources for animation production

Walt Disney. Paramount. Warner Brothers. Columbia. During the “golden age of animation,” this select group of studios (plus a few others) absolutely dominated animation production. It’s not hard to see why. Back then, setup costs to start a studio were extensive, making the barrier for entry into the industry insanely high. You needed office space, animation tools, and of course, teams of talented and skilled animators who would bring your stories to life 24 frames-per-second at a time.

The initial setup costs for animation studios have come way down since then, thanks in large part to cloud computing. Cloud computing has taken the traditional room full of artists hunched over drafting tables and made it fully virtual. Which means that the money that used to go to upfront capital expenditures now goes straight to operations, making it easier and simpler for even small teams to produce quality animations. Thanks to this, boutique studios have poped up everywhere.

Software is constantly evolving and improving

Technology hasn’t just lowered the bar for entry, it’s also allowed animators to hit the ground running and to go far, fast. Thanks to the ever-evolving automation capabilities of animation software, today’s animation production is slick, streamlined, and super speedy.

It’s also surprisingly affordable. Open-source software like Blender and Unreal have put high quality software within reach of all animators, no matter what size budget they’re working with. That, in turn, has made scaling much easier for studios. The 2D animation software front is ripe for disruption and it’s a matter of time before we see a full featured open-source 2D animation solution.

Work from home offers access to a global talent pool

Finding talent for their growing number of projects is also no problem for studios in the midst of scaling, thanks to the shift to working from home — also courtesy of technology.

Collaboration software such as Shotgrid, Trello, and Asana create digital workspaces accessible from anywhere. So animators and artists from all over the world can collaborate easily across distances, even on complex animation productions.

The future of animation

We’ve really only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to technology’s impact on animation. As artificial intelligence tools become more advanced, they unlock the potential to streamline and accelerate animation production even more. And the implications are exciting.

With AI doing the heavy lifting, animators can then focus their efforts on the juicy creative bits, using tech tools to create striking visuals that break new ground in storytelling. Who knows, in the distant future, creating an animation could be as simple as uploading your screenplay to a platform, answering a few questions about genre, style, and setting, and — boom — the software churns out the finished animation, complete with AI-recorded voiceover or dialogue. The sky’s the limit. We may have seen the early beginnings of this with DALL E 2  AI (https://labs.openai.com) that lets you create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.

We can’t wait to see what new technology has in store for us in the next ten years.

Slaymation is an animation studio bringing together pot stirrers, image conjurers, story spinners, and other masters of content creation from around the world.

[Sources:]

https://studiopigeon.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-produce-animation-and-why/