Week 9 - Future software in the Animation Industry

With technology and software improving and constantly being upgraded to raise the bar in visual effects, presentation quality and technical limitations it's guaranteed that the industry will change considerably when I'm hopefully working in the industry.

Figure. 1. DreamWorks Animation Logo

Recently I came across an article from the Wall Street Journal discussing the new animation experience DreamWorks animation are introducing and are currently using on production due for release this year. The article was written in October of last year however the the films taking advantage of these improvements have yet to be released in cinemas. The software is developed by chief technology officer Lincoln Wallen and it promises to speed up the time consuming process and to cut down production costs by at least $30 million from late 2014. This will of course means fewer highly skilled animators working on a single production. That is of course not good. With the average production cost of an animated film at DreamWorks in 2013 around $135 million compared to other studios in the animation field with lower costs of around $100 million and under. This narrows down the opportunity into getting into the big studios like DreamWorks animation. Leading into and making the smaller opportunities like YouTube based work more appealing. This is just one example of how the industry is developing further and quickly changing.

References

Figure. 1. DreamWorks Animation Logo http://www.awn.com/tag/dreamworks-animation (Accesssed 19/03/2014)

Rachael King. (2013). DreamWorks Improves Experience.Available: http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/10/21/dreamworks-improves-animation-experience/ . Last Accessed 19th March 2014.