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Comment by GiorgioG | Hacker News Reader

There is no animator shortage. They just don’t want to pay up.

There really is an animator shortage in anime. There's a popular blog with multiple articles on it: https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2022/08/05/the-layout-crisis-th...

Though simply paying more sounds like it would fix the issue.

They are suggesting the shortage exists because nobody is getting paid well enough to continue onwards or join in. These folks are also necessary to raise the next generation of animators.

It's not just that, it's also that training opportunities have become rare.

Expecting to hire employees that are 100% trained to do the specific vacancy on day 1 is why the market is shit right now.

Yeah the shortage is because the pay is shit and the companies don't want to have any training burden. Self-created shortage.

I think plenty of companies would like to spend time training but aren't able to because the budget is too small. Still makes Sony reasonable for the shortage as you say.

If your budget is too small for training its too small for running a business outside of 1 person.

Its the same thing as people claiming there’s an “accountant shortage”. Both are nonsense. There’s a shortage of people who want to do the job for pennies

Same with tech worker “shortages” in places like the UK and Australia.

No, what you have is a shortage of people willing to fill your vacancy at those prices.

Particularly in Perth there is a whole shadow economy of people working remotely for overseas firms, because local positions don’t pay the bills. This doesn’t say “shortage” to me, it says “cheap”.

And in the UK most small/medium businesses seem stuck in a vicious cycle of low pay, low productivity and low expectations.

There is also a huge shortage of BMWs in the $5000-$7000 purchase price range.

That's just a local problém, there's no such shortage in Europe. Guess I'd just need a really cheap shipping option to the US to make some profits ;)

>> That's just a local problém, there's no such shortage in Europe.

Your point is valid even in the context of my humor actually. Many of these problems are highly local.

For example, the "shortage" of things in NYC are usually because people dont account for local constraints. My colleagues in NYC complain about a "shortage" of nannies, yet cant seem to see that the living wage in NYC is super-high. Why would a nanny work for below-living wages? I'm sure that with commensurate income, the shortage would disappear.

How long does it take to learn? Are other jobs that draw from the same talent pool becoming more efficient?

As someone learning 3D animation for indie games, it seems to take at least a year to get good enough. And even after spending that much time drinking from the firehose of information that Youtube is, I suspect that someone with a 4-year degree in animation would have a significant leg up over someone learning by themselves.

I think there are a lot of people who are going to school for animation, but maybe supply and demand are mismatched? But at the same time, a lot of VFX, animation and game studios are doing layoffs, so there probably shouldn't be that much a shortage of talent? I suspect GP comment may be right that the studios that are not able to find animation talent may just not be willing to compete on salaries.

Anyone can pick up a pen and draw. But animation/cartoon/anime are both a product and art, and require time for those who draw to grow from amateur to master. Some will get there in no time, and some will take time to get there. There are no one size fit all equation.

Hayao Miyazaki's thoughts on an artificial intelligence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc&t=47s

To be fair, the footage they showed him was just not good. They tried to play it off as as horror genre clip, but knowing how bad "AI" is/was at the time makes me think that wasn't the original intent. That was uploaded 7 years ago. GenAI has made improvements since, but it still doesn't dispel his point

Baumol cost disease

It's 100% this.

That's right, straight to the point.

Cost reduction is a major focus

lol "Tackle Rising Animation Costs"

To say this is to argue there is never a shortage of anything.

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