>Earlier this week, the entertainment industry was rocked when Disney announced 1,000 layoffs. Among those affected was Marvel Studios, whose visual development team going from 13-15 people to just a handful. This team’s spent decades creating how characters look onscreen and typically has their work collected in big, expansive art books.>A recent Polygon report from several (now ex-) staffers explores the visdev team’s history at Marvel. One former artist, speaking under anonymity, said the group existed because Kevin Feige “had a particular vision of how things should be translated.” The claim was backed up by Moon Knight and Captain America 4 artist Michael Uwendi. In his words, the team would get to design characters and create visuals that inspired movies, often without looking at a script beforehand. As fans of the comics, he said the team knew “how to push and pull while keeping it fan-friendly.”>Because of that specificity, they weren’t always popular with other departments. “[It wasn’t] like a rivalry,” the first source stressed, “but some sort of politics went on in these departments.” (Another source noted the costume department as one of many that “didn’t like having us around.”)>With an in-house development team, Marvel Studios developed a house style that became recognizable by longtime fans. Now that the team’s been broken up, Uwandi’s worried about what that’ll mean for future projects in terms of cohesion, not to mention team synergy. When a team in any industry is laid off, the biggest casualty is institutional knowledge and camaraderie born from collaboration.
>To Uwandi, these layoffs are “shortsighted.” But are they due to AI? He wouldn’t be surprised, and neither would another artist with more recent Marvel work to their name. That person alleged other departments at Marvel Studios were using the controversial technology, including costume and art designers. (Not the visdev team, apparently.) But a third anonymous former member argued that wouldn’t be the case, and that Marvel plans to rehire its cut artists “on a freelance basis.”You can read the full reporting here.https://www.polygon.com/marvel-studios-artists-disney-layoffs/source:https://gizmodo.com/marvel-studios-former-art-staff-discuss-shortsighted-layoffs-2000748109
>>153300214I ain't clicking that shit.
>>153300155They are just going tk replace everything with "AI".The new hexed movie is so clearly an AI invention that the mother is just the wife of gru frim minions. At least Disney is dead.
>>153300155It's not like they've been making good comics for the past ten years.
>>153302173I know there is a tranny meltdown every time someone talks about AI, but it literally cannot be worse than the slop from the last 10 years.
>>153305086It can always get worse, never tell yourself things can't get worse. They can and will.
>>153305086LOLSecret Wars, Rings of Power, and a lot of the recent disney output was AI. Its not going to be good.
>>153305086This AI is going to be modeled after the slop of the last 10 years by people who approved of the last 10 years.
>>153305086Sorry, you got BTFO.
>>153300155Goodbye. Hope the rest follow suit.
>>153300155>Disney is going to die because of AI and its taking Marvel with it.
>>153300155These quotes are vague as fuck about the workplace issues, who does this help
To me it just seems like they're cutting down how much Marvel content they make so it doesn't make sense to have full time artists, they'll just hire them as contractors on a per film basis like almost every other position in making these movies.
>MCU shitnobody cares
>>153308352They still had the department back when the Marvel output wasn't as big (three films at most per year). If they wanted to go back to that, they could've kept them had they not being obligated from the upper levels.
>>153300155>This team’s spent decades creating how characters look onscreen>group existed because Kevin Feige “had a particular vision of how things should be translatedGood riddance
>>153308352>>153308527This changes are related with Hollywood leaving Georgia as a location to make films. Marvel was one of the biggest players there and is obvious they are slowing down their output. So is natural they are going to shut down positions they find unnecessary at the moment.
