Is indie animation a sustainable business model?
Like all media content it is sustainable only if you are able to consistently think of ideas that people will find appealing.
>>153857825God, I wish I was in their shoesI realize that I can't make my project on a poorfag budget. Currently working 14 hour days just to stay afloat I'd suck an execs dick if it meant my project would get funding.
>>153857825Unironically merch for your shows is the best viable business model from a monetary perspective and one of the main reasons why the main animation industry collapsed in the late 2010s/early 2020s was because cartoon channel execs for years foolishly ignored merch potential for their respective shows and would barely make little merch for the shows their channels would create, many shows got zero merch at all too. Mainstream execs in charge of animation are retards
>>153857825As someone who’s a fan of glitch yet doesn’t buy the merch, I don’t really care about this
>>153857825I always wonder who exactly makes the merch and the pay and working conditions
>>153857863>In other words they better start begging NBC for money.>>153857825If you want your show to be exploitable and contain a retarded amount of tik toc attention span plushie selling moments then sure, but only the retarded moments sell the most.
>>153857940Settle down, Homelander
>>153857825NoNot until YouTube ads start paying better
>>153857825Fun fact:Every one of the industry shows you ever loved lost money on the show itself. All Nick, CN, Disney, syndication shows were loss leaders for the merchandise and tie-in products which were they actual money makers for the cartoons.Glitch is applying the same model but at a smaller scale and more in-house
>>153857825I think a better question to ask is if modern animation outside of Cinema is a sustainable business model? Because the same problems plaguing indie also apply to most cooperate made cartoon post streaming dominance hence the drying up of shows
>>153858134The issue is that for some strange reasons, animation channel execs would barely produce merch for most of their shows since the late 2000s at least
>>153858228ThisAnd the answer is no
It would be nice if our government gave grants to grow our culture or something
>>153858281Manufacturing died, which is funny considering how cheap 3D printing got>>153858134Their main issue is just abusive streaming services, is obvious people don't get a subscription because they wanna watch an indie animated show they don't even know it exists but is clearly all they watch once they have the subscription
>>153857825A business model is how you make money. Is indie animation a sustainable way to make money? Not really. But advertising merchandise is. Is it sustainable to make indie animation? Sure, with the right business model.
AI writers will help. And once AI starts animating, we will be able to save money on actual real animators so the shows will make more.
>>153858413Shut the fuck up you talentless pig
>>153858413Kys
reminds me of how chinks are running fake japanese restaurant franchises in the west
>>153857825>have a good thing going>still aim for the cinemas and Grammys>spit on the people who bought merch but won't be able to see the show
>>153857825 (OP)Animators:>80s cartoons were just bloated commercials for toys made by exploitative companies>Greedy studios are shipping our jobs overseas and breaking our unionsAlso animators:>If you join at the $500 Patreon level, you will receive this limited edition plush made in collaboration with the students of the "Xinjian Academy of Textile Arts">10% of our budget will go towards paying our many wonderful freelance animators from around the worldI'm not criticizing animators for doing what they have to do to make cartoons. It's just interesting that ̶c̶a̶p̶i̶t̶a̶l̶i̶s̶m̶ self-interest seems to guide everyone towards the same ends eventually.
>>153858506Making toys for cartoons isnt a bad thing like alot of modern animators seem to think it is, and also ironically they parroted that talking point from one of john Ks blogposts
>>153858543>they parroted that talking point from one of john Ks blogpostsWhich is doubly ironic, as I recall posts from him about the importance of learning volume by drawing toys of old cartoon characters.
Nobody is willing to admit that the studio system (when it works properly) is simply superior to the indie method in every way. People bitch about indie quality because it doesn't match the studio shows of the past. No, you are not getting fluid hand drawn animation, top tier writing, professional voice acting, and consistent releases in the indie sphere and it's downright delusional to expect it. The real problem is that the industry has failed and is all but dead and can't fulfill those standards either. The industry needs to come back in full force if non theatrical 2D animation is going to survive
>>153858462And in turn reminds me of korean cults running sushi restaurants in the west
>>153857940Move to a walkable city and stop paying for gas.
>>153858661This also means that streaming needs to die and the cable and physical media models must returnAs well as toy stores
>>153858661TADC animation is perfectly adequate post-pilot.
>>153857825/co/ has always struck me as being the #1 board that genuinely doesn’t understand how it’s medium is actually produced.
>>153858788Glitch is and always will be an outlier
>>153858799Anons here are just consoomers, they don't actually give a shit about animation
>>1538588133D animation is just better suited for the modern indie sphere.No, you can't replicate the pristine quality of classic Disney and such on a budget, but you can leverage the ever expanding capacity of computers to produce stunning imagery procedurally.
>>153858902Gameoverse should have been 3D
>>153857940I work a full time job and am making my own pilot on a shoe string budget. Skill issue.
>>153858933NTA but post your workIf it sucks or is less than five minutes long then opinion discarded
>>153858799 Be sure to specify the cartoon side, the comic side actually has anons who have either made their own comics or are friends with people who do make comics. They also are more able to talk to comic creators more often
>>153857825not on broadcast TV. only on pay TV.way too restrictive about marketing/merchandising
>>153858333It wasn't that the manufacturing died per say, its that the companies that the studio executive had inroads with and stable planes for died and the leadership was to ossified to find other sources.
>>153857825Not anymore
No
I don’t anyone is genuinely arguing against indies needing money to be made because of fucking course they do. I just think it’s weird that Glitch is acting as if Gameoverse is something they MIGHT turn into a series with enough merch bux, despite the fact they were already intending to make it a series based on leaked artwork. Why not just announce it as a full series? Would it look bad with neither GD nor KoG having any news?
This is true for all cartoons because animation is incredibly expensive. Ratings alone were never enough to sustain any cartoon that aired on television, they were propped up by merchandise sales.
>>153858799The issue with the cartoon side of /co/ is that most of its Industry Knowledge comes from the 2010s era younger animators like Steven Universe Team's tumblr posts.But everyone was ignorant to the fact that the 2010s era animation industry was at the tail end of a process of institutional decay before the momentum of the industry gave out entirely in the 2020s, and so those animators were blindly walking on air with them and everyone else being none the wiser.Like the reason i brought up the Steven Universe crew in particular is that across all their blogs back in the day I saw one post from one member lamenting the lack of merch, when that honestly should of been a priority topic.
>>153858661Problem is now we have too many killer veteran artists but all the MBAs that would secure funding for such a thing are completely soulless and the greenhorns that would be recruited are completely untrained.
>>153857825The medium by itself with no merch or cons or art sales? Absolutely not. The whole point for 99% of them is to make something interesting enough to attract big studios to want to hire them, buy their pilot or otherwise level up to a paid job doing that same thing. This whole idea of making a full series on YouTube thing is a very new and very rare thing that just started happening like two years ago. People want to spend the effort to make their pilot then hope to god someone at Sony, WB, or Disney discovers them and hires them. That's the goal in mind. Not to be "Indy" forever, that cannot feasibly be done.
>>153859502they have to grift as much neetbux off of the minority of people who do buy merch, scaring people into thinking le catgirl show isn't going to get made if they don't buy enough plastic toys of her, it'll be canned and ross kills himself.
>>153857825Indy Video games too, they also exist just to push merch in all forms.
>>153858134Not quite the same deal with Disney, they have historically never merched their tv series in any significant way. It's more of a extremely rare thing to see merch for some Disney tv animation of any kind. Even DVD/VHS of the shows themselves, Disney rarely releases their series in home theater format too.
>>153857825>>153859599Animation has almost always been paired with the selling of merch, be it toys, plushies, or just items featuring images of the cartoon characters.Think Disney, Hasbro cartoons, Mattel, and even animes.I think the only way to avoid this would be to straight up depend on Patreon or some other sort of donation/crowdfunding, and even then you'd probably benefit greatly from selling some merch on the side, too. There's nothing wrong about it.
>>153858228By itself? Not at all.It needs merch sales, or advertiser support in some way. Because animation is too work intensive and requires a large staff and an insanely long production time. Way longer than any live action thing.
>>153858543Honestly I cannot understand why toys from cartoons is bad. Everyone loves the toys. People that like the show want the toys every single time. Yet those same people will get up on their high horse and bitch about the very toys they want more of. It's a fucked up situation. We are STILL making Transformers, He-Man, and TMNT stuff to this very day. Apparently a lot of someone out there likes this shit and wants more of it or else we would not be getting a He-Man movie in a month.
>>153858281Same reason toys r us shut down. Kids started playing with toys less and video games more. The merch produced by Glitch is more of a “collectable” than a toy to play with which is a niche market fine for small productions (like Glitch), but can’t sustain mainstream pipelines.
>>153859502They do these "pilots" because that's what the industry always did (and possibly because of Hazbin Hotel) without the thought and purpose of an actual TV pilot.Literal cargo cult mentality.
>>153858813It's working fine for worthikids too and he runs a much smaller operation
>>153859502Obviously the *intent* of making it a full series is there. No one pitches a pilot without that intent. But the pilot model is there to gauge the actual viewer interest.
>>153860252>Honestly I cannot understand why toys from cartoons is badBut anon, think of "le artistic integrity" of artists who choose to work for major entertainment networks!
>>153860047No that is not right. Disney historically merched the fuck out of their shows until after Ducktales 17 when they just gave up on it Disney shows followed one of these 1. The show was merchandised to fuck2. Were based on an existing IP (Aladdin, Lion King) in which it serves as a promo to existing merch from the film3. The company had little confidence in the product so did not make merchandise for it and only would if it was proven a hit that could sustain in
>>153860252I thought it was more angry parents looking for things to bitch about. The whole>OMG they're advertising to CHILDREN!!@!@!thing was a bored housewife looking for a "Cause" event back in the 1970s. They were bitching about cereal companies that paid for most saturday morning cartoons back then. They did it some more in the 80s, and it seems that never really went out of style.
>>153857825Onky if you have a lot of fans who buy your merch.
>>153858921they'll probably have a 3d episode
>>153859502Because they still need sales, and pretending like moving forward on the series is dependent on sales convinces people to pull the trigger whereas if it was a sure thing, people might procrastinate more or hem and haw.Similar to companies that have expensive goods but they’re almost always on sale. Why not just make the sale price the regular price? Because people will be coerced into buying something if they think it’s a limited time deal even when they consciously know the next sale is likely just around the corner.
>>153859997> People want to spend the effort to make their pilot then hope to god someone at Sony, WB, or Disney discovers them and hires them. That's the goal in mind. Not to be "Indy" forever, that cannot feasibly be done.Rare correct take on /co/. They’re trying to follow the Hazbin model over the Glitch model.
>>153857825Merchandise has always been the real moneymaker for cartoons and comics.
>>153857825So they put this statement because of all the people saying they're not really indie? or was it because of TADC and Gameoverse drama? the funniest thing about GLITCH is that they never simply ignore the drama, they just put statement after statement
Downsides>overall viewership decline>youtube content policies recently nerfed rant videos as harassment and content farms as inauthentic spam so less auxiliary content to boost the main channel>no matpat to advertise your show with a wrong conspiracy theory >new shorts algorithm won't recommend videos older than 30 days so no more feedback loops of viewers watching the backlog which caused shows like chikn nuggit to growUpsides>still blowing every other long form genre out of the water when you look at YT incognito
>>153860707>Disney historically merched the fuck out of their showsSame with Nick. See: SpongeBob and iCarly merch. CN was always the outlier.
>>153861584They abandoned TADC after it crashed and burned and moved on to Gameoverse, they're 100% betting on it to be Glitch's new cashcow
>>153857940gotta start begging friends and family to give you money
how much do you reckon it costs to make one episode of this shit?
>>153858732>Move to a walkable city>get mugged or stabbed by a random Black person>defend yourself and you will be called a vigilante no matter how much you do the "I'm not racist" song-and-dance rutine
>>153860728The cartoonists in the charge of the creator-driven wave in the 90s and beyond talked about how much they hated the toy shows in the 80s. Their shows were just as merch-driven as those 80s "toy commercials", the difference between the two is that in the 80s, the show's premise, characters, etc. were driven by corporate and in the 90s the ideas were coming from the creators of the show for the most part.
>>153858732>Move to a walkable city and stop paying for gasJust buy an ebike and disconnect the 2 wires to make it fast as fuck. All you gotta pay is your electric.
>>153861584Can't have a straight female lead in anything these days. They really hate dudes.
>>153861963I recall hearing that Murder Drones was around 250k per episode Lackadaisy is the same
Here's the hard truth the western animation sphere needs to accept. Merch sales are important, very important in fact. Its was drives revenue into making the venture profitable in the first place. This is something anime has figured out years ago, turning damn near every character you know in figure, plushie or statue of some sortPeople scoffed about the "toy driven" era of the 80s and looked down, but its what drove and lead to the so called "creator driven" era, and made it possible, and look who's still being talked about to this Even said, "creator driven" series, had to merch themselves regardless if they were built for it or nothttps://youtu.be/hTzKXAEOdFc?si=7gv1r_OzJ8Nv83jC
>>153857825>>153861584Small indie company, pls understando
>>153862309Here is the other hard truth: We reached the point where they have enough IP for a lifetime of merch sales and no further characters are needed, which is why animation is now dead.In their mind, these companies have series that are evergreen in interest, they just occasionally need new media to capitalize.Why risk on something new when you can just release Zootopia every 10 years to prolong interest until they are in all the parks? Why make a new series concept when you can spend it on an Oswald series and use it to push more existing merch? Why make a new DTVA show that will not get interest while you can just bring back Phineas and Ferb which sells everytime?Same with WB, Paramount, toys like Transformers or He-man, all of them. In all sectors for animation, film, tv, streaming, they do not need to risk bombs anymore and hope their loss leader sells merch. They can ensure it is something that will sell right away and get straight to the valuable part of merchandising. Which is why we only will get reboots from now on.
>>153857825I sincerely hope that they sold enough KoG merch to finance a full season. That pilot was great.
>>153861584>>153861682Kit Bodega sexo
>is gaijin scumbags stealing jap shit a sustainable business model?yes. i mean, it's pretty huge now and maybe it will last for a few more years at least and then they will disappear
>>153857825It used to be a lot less sustainable back in the Web 1.0 days of uploading Flash cartoons to a website funded by banner ads.
>>153861983>just make shit up with no actual experience living in the city
>>153857825bitch, 80% of the profit from practically ANYTHING comes from fucking merch. Movies make money n ticket sales, sure, but you know where they make most of their money? Merchandise. Toys, T-shirts, branded foods or drinks, shit like that.
>>153861682Yes they "abandoned" a series after succesfully producing all episodes and putting the final one in theater
>>153857825https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBovw_668v4This will never be topped.
>>153863753They abandoned it by not mentioning it for over a week and only talking about Gameoverse so they won't have to address the leak, YEAH
>>153863083Fuck off, faggot
>>153864472>not mentioning it for over a weekOh wow a whole week!
>>153862248jesus christ, good luck to these guys on these ventures
>communists upset things aren't free.How dare Glitch run a business.
>>153857825A studio specializing in animated shows making most of its money on toys, clothes, and other merchandise? Surely, such a radical and never-before-heard-of idea is unsustainable!
>>153860707>until after Ducktales 17Idk I can think of 3 of their notable cartoons prior I never saw much merch for. Gravity Falls was notoriously a slow burn to actually get further than basic barfing gnome shirts, Wander couldn't get a single fucking thing despite Craig drawing up a lot of charming merchandise ideas. Never saw much for Star Vs either until I think around them trying to hone in on potential GF viewers and maybe released a book?Kim Possible probably had more merch than their 2010's shows until they finally started doing something with GF late in the game. It took that show ending to really get anything notable.
If they want more money why don't they make a cartoon about real estate investors instead of a cartoon about lesbians working at McDonald's?
The real question is how fast an Indie should push out merch. Do you drop the pilot and then get merch sorted out or do you merch the exact second the pilot drops?
>>153865823Its an Optics and Risk vs Warchest and Reward question.Pushing your merch out of the gate looks tacky and if your pilot fails its going to hurt you a lot more, but is way more likely to get people buying and so if you either need the money or have built up a good reputation already its better to do the merch alongside.
>>153857863True. Even in Japan which is much more decentralized and has a lot more animation produced, studios rise and fall constantly. The big artists stick around, reform new entities, etc. I think only Toei has been around since before the 1970s.
>>153865823Depends who you areIf you are Glitch? You push it out immediately upon the pilot debut if not before. No matter if you look shilly or lame doing it, you have a built in audience who will buy it and your whole company depends on itIf you are one guy making a pilot? Wait until it comes out to see if you even have an audience for merch to be made then plug it in
>>153864663This but unironically
>>153858506Example 1: Animation made to advertise pre-existing toy line conceptExample 2 (Modern Day): Original animation concept that just happens to be advertising tie in merch One of these things is not like the other.
>>153858413>got the paintpiggies madLOL
>>153857825Doesnt that apply to all animation?
>>153866297Example 1: He-Man (freaking epic)Example 2: The Amazing Digital Circus (BOOOOOOOOOO)
>>153858134It was still rare for TV shows to get merch deals right out the gate. They would still wait a bit to see the ratings come in before making deals with factories to produce toys or licensing things out to cereal or McDonalds or whatever. It wasn't until at least 10 - 15 years of things like Simpsons, Ren & Stimpy, Rugrats, He-Man, Jem & the Holograms and so forth where it was anticipated that you should have merch deals ready to line up as soon as the show drops. And EVEN then, studios would still pick and choose who to invest in early because they think or want to push for something to be a hit. CatDog being prioritized for merch deals over Spongebob is a popular, well-known example of this.But you were able to see it elsewhere; like, of course Nickelodeon is going to invest in Danny Phantom early on compared to Catscratch. Butch Hartman already produced a successful cartoon at Nick and it was much easier to market an action show merch-wise. Catscratch is a comedy show and would have to prove itself for a bit. The indie method feels unsatisfying because they're dropping ONE episode and then going, "ARE YOU A FAN? HERE'S SHIRTS AND POSTERS AND BUTTONS AND PLUSHIES AND BAGS AND PILLOWS AND MORE!!!". How the fuck are you supposed to know if you're a fan of something after one episode? So then you SEE the ploy of trying to make characters marketable and sexy in order to sell shit before a show even has to prove itself being worthy of merch. I understand this is necessary for a studio of a smaller scale, but from the consumer's point of view, it was much more satisfying that studios made investments and allowed a fanbase to grow before nickel and diming then instead of telling them, "We're only gonna make more if you buy our shit, do it now or it's cancelled". It's much more manipulative than even shit like 80's toys.
>>153857825Only when there's a single active indie animation monopoly.
>>153866362Most cartoons do not have merch.
>>153866536This, I've only seen fan-made Heloise plushies.
>>153866536Ya but didnt a bunch of good ones like Generator Rex and Megas XLR and Symbiotic Titan get buttfucked because no merch?
>>153866513>indie animation monopoly
I think twitter shits on glitch because glitch breaks the rules of what an industry show does."YOU CANT PUT A SHOW YOU HAVE FOR FREE ON YOUTUBE AND PUT IT IN THEATERS, ITS BAD BUSINESS""YOU CANT GREENLIGHT A BUNCH OF SHOWS AT ONCE, THATS BAD BUSINESS"As if animation fans on twitter are all experts on entertainment business.Really, they're just upset everything they have built themselves up for, all the rules they've learned for Hollywood, are being broken by this indie studio in Australia, and now they're looking for reasons to hate them, really barebone reasons to hate them to make themselves feel justified and superior for NOT being indie.At least, that's how I thought before I realized what glitch is doing is pretty good. Flaws aside, they are doing what they want, and we need shakeups like this in animation because god forbid animation evolves as a medium for a different audience that isn't kids and adults only.
>>153864472They abandoned TADC cause they are done with it and wanna focus on their newest project because that's what you do when you, you shill your latest projects because that's what you are working on right now
The ceiling has dropped because youtube isn't pushing the drama and ripoff videos surrounding indie animated series anymore, so there's no avalanche of spam advertising to push a pilot over 100 million views. Looks like indie animation is no more. It was fun while it lasted.
>>153857940LOOK AT THIS LOSER THAT CAN'T ACHIEVE HIS DREAM
>>153866667name another indie studio producing animated pilots with a huge advertising push and merch lines at launch
>>153867109Spindlehorse
>>153867109Monkey wrench
So what is this thing? Something about the frontrunner in a fledgling industry offering this kind of "help" to rival corporations they could easily kneecap usually means there's some kind of catch.Is it literally just a middleman or a means of "convenience" that would prevent effort towards more professional licensee?
>>153857825No but indie animation as a whole has never been sustainable. Moving to being a merch company with indie series to advertise the merch is a return to 80's form.Also I would never have Glitch handle my merchandising their merch looks like ass, I'd just shell out to deal with a toy manufacturer directly.
>>153866297why exactly was it bad to make a cartoon to advertise toys? people had jobs, the work was steady, you could tell stories around the toys. i don't get what the big gripe was
>>153867345Late stage capitalism
>>153857825>indie studio makes money from merch>shows owned by gorillion dollar corpos can't even get official t-shirtsmost animated feature films also don't have merch anymore, it's quite shameful really
>>153861653CN had quite a bit too especially for the 90s showsPPG was a cultural phenomenon for merch
>>153867345It's lousy for the cartoonist when creative decisions are made by the toy company and you have no say about it.
>>153857941>viable business model from a monetary perspective and one of the main reasons why the main animation industry collapsed in the late 2010s/early 2020s was because cartoon channel execs for years foolishly ignored merch potential for their respective shows and would barely make little merch for the shows their channels would createAnon, this wasn't really up to them. No producer in charge of programming of Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon can just magically press a button and order a toyline for one of their shows.What really happened is that toy companies lost interest in making toylines based on kids cartoons. Which resulted in the massacre of action cartoons in the early 2010s as none of them were able to get a toyline going.
>>153863585Okay:>move to a walkable city>it's actually highly inconvenient because the zoning wasn't originally intended for it to be a walkable city so the businesses and infrastructure were put in place assuming auto traffic Or>move to walkable city >"walkable city" is mostly just marketing, the only part that is actually walkable are entertainment districts and recently renovated upmarket residential/light commercial areasOr>move to walkable city>CoL is higher due to lower efficiency, still need a car anyway because it's unrealistic to assume that all your needs will be fulfilled by businesses in walking distance
>>153865823You have some merch lined up at time of pilot release ready to drop within a few days to a week with the rest of the line finalized and ready to go into production once you get audience feedback and gauge demand after the pilot drops.
back then:>please make a show out of these toysnow:>please make a show we can make toys out of
>>153869412>just make shit up with no actual experience living in the city
>>153869059Should have tried harder. Action figures aren't the only merchandise option in town after all.
>>153869664No matter how you bitch, you will always have a tradeoff regardless of designing for cars or a walkable city, and changing from one design to the other will always either cause issues or require reconstruction.
>>153866729Jax is a troon, dont post Xim again
Make an animated workplace comedy so it tricks the youtube algorithm into thinking your show is about business so it plays a $50 ad for an investment firm instead of a $1 ad for a mobile game
>>153857825>>153861584>>153861682
>>153869059Very interesting. How did you find out about that
>>153870981Don't forget Studio Meala, they did a bulk of the animation itself.Thanks for cropping off all the cringe merch promos BTW.
Does this actually come as a surprise to people? Isn't it painfully obvious to anyone that cheap plastic crap sold at ridiculous prices is what makes animation even remotely profitable?
>>153866597Correct, same with ROTTMNT. Playmates backed out of a deal if I'm not mistaken.
>>153857825>>153857941Indie cartoons are now in the same boat as 70's/80's toy line shows like G.I. Joe and Transformers.Sell toys to kids or the show gets cancelledSo in about 20-30 years is when we'll see Indies hit the actual creative period with risks taken but a sea of edgy nonsense, like how everything had to be Xtreme or ToonzTADC buts redone like Lunatics UnleashedHoly shit this is going to be awful
>>153858320>give taxpayer money so a private company can make their anti-white homofag therapy cartoons>never male profit>taxpayers never get a return for the money being burnedHow about no
nope animation was always supposed to be a passion thing with just enough to get by but with rising living costs thats not longer a viable path, that's why Japan was able to do it they had pretty good living standards even with how much u made in the anime industries but even that more recently is starting to break down
>>153858661>professional voice actingIf nothing else, Gemoverse's JP cast is loaded with tons of industry veterans, many of whom have played extremely popular characters and have been active for decades. I imagine the only reason why they don't have more pros besides Chris Sabat in the english cast is because Ross drew from his friends before anything else. But fuck, if they can get Shigeru Chiba and Ryo Horikawa, I wouldn't be surprised if they nabbed Steve Blum or Grey DeLisle for an episode or something.
Imagine if every single household in every developed country in the world gave a dollar to cartoon network every month. That was cable TV. Now it's only half of the households, and instead of spending it on new cartoons they spent it propping up hbomax.
>>153872070What can you say? people still love Transformers to this very day, despite the og cartoon being a 30 min toy commercial
>>153861584Reminder to not trust leakers like this hack
>>153857940Digital Circus pocket pussy
>>153857825indie slop.
>>153862000you can pretty much tell their seethe was the fact that they had to work on someone else's idea, not their own. And it was just John K that bitched about 80s cartoons, he bitched about everything every day. He is not a stick to measure the industry thoughts and opinions by any means.
>>153857825It's the same operation as any other animation studio. The money is in the merchandise. The animation is, in a roundabout way, marketing for merch. Japan does this, Disney does this, those action figure cartoons from the 80s did this, etc etc.
>>153872018Don’t forget double dipping on outsourced slave labor for the drawings and the merch
>>153858413>>153866303>ragebait
>>153873575It is understandably frustrating when you have to make a cartoon at the whims of a toy company. https://web.archive.org/web/20160404092712/http://www.joeheadquarters.com/interviews_dixon.shtml>so when I was told to make room for a new character in the first scripts of season two, I said sure. Then they told me it was the new Cobra Emperor.>"Excuse me," I said. "Cobra Emperor?"">Yeah. Cobra Commander's boss.">"Un-huh. And where has this character been for the last sixty-five episodes?">"Oh, he's been there all the time, we've just never seen him before.">I turned a couple of shades of purple and explained that (1) we had repeatedly established Cobra Commander as the Big Kahuna of all things Cobra and (2) there had not been even the faintest hint of any Cobra organization level beyond what we had seen in the show. Oh, they said. Well, come up with a couple of ideas to explain where he came from.>So I hammered a few ideas around and came up with two: First, that Cobra Commander had screwed up so badly his underlings decided to *build* a better leader, or second, that Cobra Commander was the front man for a vast, far more secretive, far more sinister organization which had sent him out into the world to conquer it. I liked the first idea much better (particularly since it would still permit me to write "The Most Dangerous Man in the World") and put all my efforts into it.>So of course, Hasbro selected *BOTH* ideas and said combine them. Well, that pretty much threw "Most Dangerous Man" right out the window. I made a couple of proposals as to what kind of organization could be behind Cobra, one of which as a blatant nod to James Hilton's "Lost Horizon" was set in the Himalayas and used Cobra-La as a placeholder name (i.e., the name of a character or thing until you can think of a better one, like Joe Hero and Big Bad Guy #1). Unfortunately, Hasbro fell in love with that concept and name and despite all my efforts stuck with Cobra-La.
>>153857825Nobody give a shit that they were making merch with tadc and murder drones, and now all of a sudden with this new show Gameoverse or whatever is it a problem that they are making money?I think this is just the same crowd of SJWs leftshits afraid of the female body angry that the show had a little bit of bikini fanservice and now are trying to cancel the show and the studio with whatever stupid shit they can think of, truly an NPC hive mindset.
>>153858134>spongebob makes billions a year with underweardoes anyone actually believe this
Animation itself is pretty much worthless. If TADC or hazbin hotel cost one dollar per episode to watch/buy, there's no way they'd have one percent of their current popularity.
>>153873583Japan's a little bit different, anime is generally an advertisement for the source material (the manga, game, light novel, etc.). Merch sales are secondary.Also, blue-rays of anime in Japan are sold for like $50 dollars per disc with only two episodes per disc.
>>153860707>>153865605Star Vs. got a comic book miniseries that was canceled halfway throughout, Cinestory comics that are stills from episodes from the show in a comic format, a Series Guide book and the Book of spells.
>>153876407https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyolson/2024/10/18/at-25-spongebob-franchise-continues-to-be-money-for-nickelodeon/>SpongeBob SquarePants, the animated porous prodigy, hit the milestone birthday of 25 this year. And unlike most young adults, he and his Bikini Bottom cohorts have been a windfall for parent Nickelodeon, generating $16 billion in retail sales since the launch of the franchise.
>>153876559Can I see the one billion dollars in underwear sales please
>>153876589That anon was exaggerating, but an average of over 600 million a year for merchandise is still pretty high.
>>153858320Gov't funded entertainment is retarded, its admitting an established billion dollar industry is too retarded to sustain itself from its work, meanwhile there are far larger issues at hand (housing/healthcare/resources) than employing a tiny percentage of people so some CEO can write off expenses and buy a vacation property. If they do invest in corperate entertainment it should educate the population about nutrition and investing and not just retarded fiction fantasy comedies, do that on your own dime. Otherwise the government may as well just pay everyone welfare and we can all stay at home and do what we want
