AI, Aka. Why That Animation Studio Wants Your Adobe Photoshop Artwork Files
But charging as if they hired humans
Getting animation professionally made is a hassle. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t have a $100,000 AI animation lair in my basement. Or any AI animation software as a gal who dislikes recurring subscriptions like Adobe. Or a basement. Or a lair. Or knows where to begin, because um yeah? I don’t use or like Adobe for myself? My own DIY $0 filmmaking setup is a very frugal secret casserole recipe that you either hate as an animation lover who lives for it and thinks blurring edges is so pre-school, or you love as an ordinary person who doesn’t obsess over the genre and is, “Yeah, that composer chick Nicole put together a cute enough movie. So what time is the basketball game on?”
Feeling it is time for me to break free from women’s filmmaking Monopoly jail, or in other words making $0 budget cinema until the end of time as 22 year old men with one IMDb credit each get full financing in assorted methods? Well, that has meant finding animation houses with professional teams who can animate for me. Fundraising to get my pro artists paid. Because that’s what men do. Right? I am 38 years old. Am I supposed to be DIYing my $0 films until I hit 150? 😓
Between the ones who give me the shivers for a mix of reasons like acting oddly towards women or some who demand copyrights to my work for future profits when they are work for hire, and the people who are just ignoring what I say wanting puppet motion animation a la discount .com startup explainer video when I asked for cinematic and disability safe? Ugh. The people you’re telling how you’re a working composer and they’re like, “Do you want us to help you find a composer (as we charge you for it) and help you write a script (because women can’t)?” ignoring all you said about being a composer with your own scripts, directing things yourself. Yeah, they’ll ask if you want to direct it. Or “you need to pay double/triple if you’re directing it (because you will see how our filmmaking is built on air)?”
Then we get into the rest. We have the people saying things like.
“Can you send us all of your artwork with the (insert Adobe brand anything file extensions)?”
And the icing on the cake?
“Can you send us backgrounds for us to animate over?”
Sure, you want me to do all that and pay you?
So anyway, I found out this morning from someone else that this is because Adobe products and others exist where you pop in the Photoshop/Adobe-whatever images for the AI to get to work. Prompted because I got a nifty little flyer from a place wanting to charge me $500,000+ for a 5 minute film, nope, not Oscar winning people, your run of the mill animation house for working USA animators, all bragging how they use AI “to clean up the pipeline.” Shhh, FYI, the standard rate I get quoted by English language animation professionals is $16,000 per minute. Go figure. The actual Oscar guy wanted $500,000, so why those people could think…
Anyway.
I’m not against AI here, because the usage would be using my own artwork to make my own movie. Or your own artwork to put the animation going to make your own movie. Who cares? No, I AM…
I am against paying humans skyrocketing prices to use AI as if it were a human animation office, which costs them $0 after buying the program. With my the artwork I developed from my wacky Wonderland ideas sprung to life. Because you should drop your rates a whole lot.
The only reason I don’t download that myself and shoe string together a passably cinematic film with my unpolished fingernails is I do not know how to use it and can’t learn a lifetime of Gen Z-y new apps in a week. Like I said, no harm if I insert my own images and own backgrounds, or those of paid artists I can use from outside of the animation industry, and help them blur? I guess is the word? Together the motions to be more seamless. Like I said, I’m doing my backgrounds cutouts on apps these people all laugh at, and animation is not my career choice. I’m flip phone babe. Machete does not text. Flip phone babe does not use these new young people apps so I can go yell at clouds.
There has to be a way. I will find it. God is real and one awesome talent agent. I found some animation professionals I did like. Perhaps things will work out for me to fundraise with them.
Beware of people asking you to give them your artwork.
The silence when you ask them, “So will I own the copyrights to my work?”
The incel attitudes when they let men do as they please and talk down to you.
The upselling. The mansplaining.
The everything.
You deserve better as a paying customer.
Do not give over your ownership of your work outside of a studio setting, as an indie filmmaker. A builder doesn’t give the homes he oversees construction on to the yard guys and construction workers because they did work for hire.
These people try this because people agree. Do not be one of them.
In my common response to anyone who has something mean to say since I began releasing animated shorts in 2018, “Don’t like the way I make these films, huh? You can finance my movies to pay animators/artists for me.” 😉 Here we are. The slow pace of getting my films financed and made with the right cast and crew!
Ohhh! The Eyes of Old Texas. A New York centric animated film I began on in 2015. Released in 2021, childlike, silly, was me incorporating some artwork with a talented Wales artist named Richard. He did some faux Empire State Building art pieces that were stunning. I mixed them with my real rotoscoped footage from heading out to the Empire State Building and all around the Statue of Liberty. Remixed it all in a different and quick short film in July 2024 that was like saying, “This is me moving on from my old style. My old life in a blender.” Working with artists has proven me well before. I forced myself into learning DIY 2D, and at one point basic 3D, animation so I can be a better film director for animation and live action. Cannot wait to work with teams of talent!
