Many of this blog’s readers will be aware of comedian Sam Hyde. He’s spent his career straddling the line between the rightward edge of the Overton window and the mainstream. He’s also something of a Jack of all trades, having crashed a TedX talk, had a now-cancelled show on Adult Swim, and emerged victorious from a pro boxing match.
These days, Sam has joined the ranks of influencers offering masculinity advice on YouTube. The other day I happened upon one of his videos, in which he answers an email from an aspiring animator looking for career advice.
Watch here:
Sam’s advice for artists to forgo animation and concentrate on graphic novels gave me pause. So I brought the above video to the attention of my valued Neopatrons. Our resident visual artist Bayou Bomber picked up the gauntlet Sam threw down in a recent post of his own.
This blog covers many topics, sometimes about faith, but usually about art. Today’s post is provoked by a recent post within a patron exclusive backroom belonging to a twitter mutual, Brian Niemeier. Quick plug, if you want to be a part of a community that aspires to further their written storytelling craft, you should sign up via Brian’s Patreon or SubscribeStar. Now off to the meat and potatoes of tonight’s topic.
Editor’s note: Many thanks to Bayou Bomber for the generous plug. Key excerpts from his response to Hyde’s video follow.
Sam’s professional opinion is that animation is a waste of time because consumers (consoomers) won’t support any form of video content unless it’s free. How does he support his case? If you forwent watching the video to humor my typed words, please revisit the video above and skip to time stamp 6:00. . . If this is what he considers animation I’ve got news for you, it’s not, it’s what we in the business call motion graphics, it’s not the same. If Sam wants to label these guys as “busy idiots” for pumping out this garbage and fooling is overly developed mind into thinking that is animation, that just makes Sam a plain ol’ idiot.
Animation is what we see in cinematic shorts, features, and videogames. It’s not in photobashing images together and making them move across a screen. Sam makes the conjecture that animation is high cost with low yield as in you’ll put all this time into making an animation with little to no return. “No one is buying tickets to see movies” he says, “people only will watch your animation if it’s free”. Won’t argue that fact, movie theatres are struggling, but he forgets there are other distribution channels like streaming services that place animations in front of millions of viewers. The low yield he speaks of is only true depending on where you’re at in the food chain, the higher up you go, the more you earn from the industry (more on that later).
Quick observation: Maybe I just missed it, but I’m not aware of any animated works Sam Hyde has created. Just sayin’.
So what’s Sam’s expert advice to correct course if one is pursuing animation (like myself)? Go make a comic or graphic novel. Yep. That’s it. Go do it. If you make one of those, it’ll get made into a film. That’s just how this game works. . . lol.
In one hand, we discourage artists from pursuing animation and with the other, we encourage the production of comics/GNs with the promise of a film adaptation. See a hole in logic here? Anime has taken the world by storm. There’s a huge market that thirsts for things like comics or GNs to be adapted into an animation. If anything, it’d be expected. The earliest cartoons in American history were adapted from comic strips. That set the expectation moving forward for everyone worldwide. No animators means no animated film adaptations, simple as. The other option is live action, but with the image comic cinema has created itself in recent times, do you really want that? Will your comic truly shine with the limitations of human actors and fake looking CG for special effects which break the immersion of the visual experience? I mean, it’s your funeral if you want it.
Bayou Bomber follows up with an examination of how much money is in the animation industry.
Again, I could be wrong, but that looks like definite real and projected growth.
Sam seems to think an animator’s only hope will be some big studio who can afford the expenses of an animation. That’s not true. To start, we’ve been talking about this in Brian Niemeier’s discord a lot lately, neopatronage is the way of the future. Creatives won’t need to “make it” by having 200,000 raving fans, instead it’s very real they’ll only need a fraction of that – depending on their financial goals of course, and that’s just to live a comfortable lifestyle.
Read his whole post here.
Business paradigms in the arts have shifted in the past decade – twice.
No one is immune to survivorship bias. A lot of creators are stuck one or two business models behind.
But the facts are what they are.
KDP is dead – at least as a standalone path to a living in newpub.
Waiting for someone to hand you a golden ticket to get you past the gatekeepers is deader than Dillinger.
Seeking out patrons to commission the entertainment they want from you is the future.
Neopatronage is here, and it’s not going anywhere for the medium to long term.
Get the inside track on the Neopatronage Revolution. My cherished Neopatrons get early access to the first draft this month, so don’t wait.
Join on Patreon or SubscribeStar now.
Well to start with Sam has a lot of experience with video graphics (maybe this doesn’t meet this pedant’s definition of “animation”) in addition to working on (multiple) video games right now.
Really dumb and needlessly obnoxious post from bayou bomber (who?). Sam’s not referring to people who aspire to be corporate animation monkeys, who will always have spots in large studios (just like gas station attendants will never be without work). He’s speaking to people who hope to make a good living (or a great one on par with legacy media) while also producing passion projects; and he’s completely right, the expected return on high quality independent animation is negative, the market for them is tiny. Graphic novels have a higher expected return because the market is comparable (just as many people will pay for an indy GN as an indy animated feature) except with exponentially less time and effort involved. Extolling the huge total market and projected growth of animation is fatuous because ~100% of that growth is going to the Disney’s of the world, not the bayou bombers (who?).
And the counterfactual around what would happen if animation didn’t exist is just sad; he’s saying that indie animation is a very tough road with limited upside, not polemically calling for all animation to be abolished lol. With such hysterical mischaracterization of Sam’s point one has to wonder if it hits bayou bomber (who?) a little close to home.
I see you disagree with my comments about Sam Hyde and also sprinkled in some misunderstood assumptions about my response. That’s ok. You’re entitled to your opinion as I am mine.
I said what I said and I stand by every single word.
“(who?)”
You posted this three times almost as if it was supposed to be a “gotcha” moment. Bayou Bomber is a person who is made in the image of God and what he says has value because of it. You may of course disagree with what he says, but to dismiss him completely because he has a smaller voice than others is disgusting behavior.
If the only voices we are aloud to listen to on any subject are the “big” ones we are in more dire straights than we realize.
“bayou bombers (who?)”
My fault for not properly introducing him in the post. BayouBomber is a skilled artist, a valued patron, and a good friend.
Thank you for reading and for sharing your insights.
I definitely see the appeal in neopatronage and the idea that artists would be the equivalent of white-collar workers instead of this “millionaire or nothing” model that we have right now.
Personally, I’ve made more writing money through Substack and BMC than Amazon, and it looks to remain that way for the foreseeable future. Granted, most of that came from my parents. But I think that just proves the point you’ve been making about neopatronage. You need to find enough people who like you and your work enough to support you financially and you’ll be able to go pro (or at least semi-pro).
The big money won’t be there, but I think that’ll be for the best. I’m now convinced that the worst thing that happened to professional sports is TV money and endorsement deals. I think there’ll be a lot less prima donnas in that field if being an athlete isn’t some lottery ticket to the upper class. Same with the arts, though it’s even more embarrassing for us (especially the writers) since we don’t have the excuse of having been corrupted by money and fame (just the prospect of them).
Congratulations on your neopatronage success. I think you can look forward to growth in the future.