Understanding the Animation sector
For my chosen media sector I have decided to choose animation for a whole number of reasons, but the root of my choices stem from my personal interest and admiration for the multibillion pound industry. With animation being an extremely successful industry this means if you’re good at what you do this could turn out to be a very lucrative career for you to consider.
The size of the animation sector is recognised for being a global industry that varies over a whole variety of companies some major and others not so big.
Walt Disney is America's largest media conglomerate. Disney works in film animation, film and games design along with toys that accompany the films and games, they also have a connection to the McDonalds food chain for the advertisements of new film and game releases. Walt Disney Animation Studios based in 2100 Riverside Drive, Burbank America. This product diversity is what sets Disney apart from the other smaller studio’s because of the size it can grow to with all this income from a whole load of different sectors of media and other types of places.
A local to England leading animation company who works in Claymation, Aardman Animations is a very accomplished company that focuses on finding the best talent in animation and putting it to good use to create some of the best pieces of English animation in a very long time. They are based in Gas Ferry Road Bristol, England. There are many foreign animation companies that are very successful within the art. Aardman are especially fixed on employee health and wellbeing and encourage equality and diversity over all employee’s whether it is a disability/ ethnic minorities, graduates/ non graduates and other such things. This is a quote taken from their main website. “we take your health and wellbeing very seriously.” http://www.aardman.com/about-us/jobs/what-we-can-offer-you/
The only thing about Aardman that can make it a little difficult for it to compete with other companies the size of Pixar, Disney and Warner Brothers, is that Aardman started off as a small company with big ideas. “When I joined in 1994 this room was full of models, cameras and a small cluster of directors who sat at wobbly trestle tables scribbling away with pencils on paper” http://www.aardman.com/about-us/studio-tour/cgi/
This was a quote taken from the Aardman website written by Luis Cook, Commercials Director. So compared to the might of the other companies and some even conglomerates, makes it a little bit difficult to compete with them. Although Aardman’ unique type of Claymation animation really sets it apart from the usual 3D or 2D that is adopted by the other companies.
Studio Ghibli based in 1-4-25 Kajino-cho Koganei-shi 184 Japan is an enormously successful animations company who created many astonishing films. Who in 1988 finished the animated feature film “My Neighbour Totoro” which was later on released in the USA by Fox in 1993 and in 2006 by Disney. The film then went on to be made into a carton version of the movie and was released in English in 2004.
An excellent example of synergy to create the animated film Toy Story 2, was the partnership of Pixar who was in charge of creation and production while Disney handled marketing and distribution. They had a few disputes over how the film would be released. Pixar wanted the film to be a straight to video production as to honour Pixar’s three picture deal. But Disney wouldn’t listen (being the bigger and more powerful company) and had it put to upgrade as a theatrical release during production.
The change in technology in the animation industry has greatly advantaged the numerous companies in the way that they can now fully utilise many more ideas that without the new technology would be impossible and because of that can improve sales of new products and films and vastly improve product margins. One type of technology is the 3D design with computers that can now help achieve a much crisper animation with no jumps or skips, just a perfectly working animation. The sector structure of the animation business is always changing with which company is bigger than the other because of a new successful film or game release, but the big leaders who practically control the markets and probably will do for a long time if they keep up with the standards of products they are releasing are. Walt Disney, Pixar and Dreamworks. Disney own mickey mouse, The Bolt and Roadside Romeo. Pixar once owned by Steve jobs of Apple is now owned by Disney. Their blockbuster movies are WALL-E, Ratatouille, Toy Story 1 & 2, Cars, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc. The Incredibles and A Bug's Life. Dreamworks is owned by Steven Spielberg and his other two partners Their blockbuster movies are Shrek 1,2&3,kung fu panda, over the hedge and Bee Movie.
There 335 animation studios in the world that make up my chosen sector. Which gives the industry the talent and the ability to get out all their great work. Never the less this still isn’t enough as some people would like because it is still a hard industry to get into just because the jobs aren’t there so some talent could be lost and good future animation could never be made. I think this will change in the future because of the ever expanding and evolving technology will eventually become easy to access to the common person so they could make professional animation anywhere, without the restriction of choosing only a few programs that would only restrict them from achieve their goal. There are 4700 people who work in animation in 2006 in the UK and nearly half of them are freelance. This figure was taken from the website creative Skillset. http://www.creativeskillset.org/animation/overview/
34% of the people working in the animation industries are woman. Which is slightly less the normal in media industries. Only 3% represent ethnic minorities, which is the lowest in all audiovisual industry sectors.
The main locations in the UK for animation is London but it is there are a number of other great institutions within the UK producing quality animation. These paces include Bristol, Manchester and Dundee. In my opinion though I would say that the main locations are Japan and American. America as the main one because its where the majority of most famous animators come from. Such as Matt Groening and everyone from Disney and Pixar. But to back up my point Matt Groening has been producing and making the Simpsons for over 20 years which makes it the longest running primetime animation ever created which still gets as many views as it did when it first came out.
The future of animation is growing strong and will continue to do so because of many important factors involved. Over the last two decades, animated movies have outperformed all other genres of film at the domestic and worldwide box office. Technology has advanced animation farther than most could have imagined which helps to produce new tools and techniques every year that allow us to create things quicker and easier than the year before. There is also a larger pool of resources. From which to pull artists that I believe has helped grow the industry. This is due to the younger generation growing up with computers and so being more adapted to them than any generation before them. I would also say that the next step in the future technology would be the next generation of mobile phone processing power. This will then rival the competitive handheld gaming devises and so improve the rate of faster growing technology because of two devises want to beat the other one. I also think that this still would not deter the hard-core gamers into exchanging their big consoles for handheld devises but rather the future would only enhance the existing consoles while creating new smaller devises. This in turn would then create new positions for employment, more training because of the more advance technology and so then create more new and upcoming businesses to leap on the opportunity for new technology and will increase the animations market not only in gaming but also in films, web design and other such devises. With the market increase this is only going to demand new locations of business and ownership. New deals will be struck and partnerships will be signed, and all in the name of money and to better enhance the ever expanding industry of animation.
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