June 19, 2024

What Keeps Animation Going?

High revenue, amazing content, making history… what are the factors that solidify animation’s standing in the media industry? By Ching Wai.

Cartoons, anime, animated series and films - what keeps these animations alive and thriving in the industry?

For starters, animation is no easy task. From storyboarding to animating and the voice-over process, to post production sound and video editing, lots of time, money and effort are spent on an animated piece. Furthermore, making groundbreaking, high quality projects require productions to spend even more on next level, modern technology and skilled talents. Despite the high spending, animated movies have a 30% higher profit margin than non-animated movies. The attractive profit point draws filmmakers and producers into the animation industry.

Producing animated works can be tedious, but the process can be highly stimulating for creatives and resulting productions are rewarding if not groundbreaking. Stunning visuals, unbelievable audio and amazing soundtracks enhance touching and sometimes avant-garde storylines suitable for all ages. To simply reduce such masterpieces to ‘just amateur content’ will be largely unfair and dismissive. Besides, animated films have made significant impact in the film industry, changing the definition of film time after time.

The first ever full-length animated feature in history, in colour and sound, is Disney’s first animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Beauty and the Beast was one of the first animations to use CGI, and was the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. The Nightmare Before Christmas was the first major modern stop-motion animated feature film. Toy Story, Pixar’s first film, was the first computer animated feature film. Frozen ushered in the new era of 3D animation for Disney.

Moving away from Disney, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, produced and distributed by Sony Pictures in association with Marvel Entertainment, pioneered a fresh and unique style of animation that combined 2D and 3D elements, with heavy influence from the Marvel comics.

Global animation market size has steadily increased, and reached US$391 billion at the end of 2022, and is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of more than 5% from 2023 to 2030. Disney is the largest animation studio in the world, followed by Sony and Netflix. Other production companies like Dreamworks, Studio Ghibli, Illumination, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are also well known. Apart from the U.S. and Japan, animation markets in regions like India, China, South Korea, Europe, Canada and Latin America all have high expected growth rates.

Some of the biggest, highest-grossing animated titles in cinema include The Lion King (2019), the Frozen franchise, Spirited Away, Your Name, and The Boy and the Heron. Some largely popular cartoons and animated series include Looney Tunes, Spongebob Squarepants, The Simpsons, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pokémon, X-Men: The Animated Series, and Bluey to name a few.

Ultimately, animations give creatives the opportunity to freely explore and innovate in terms of content and technique. At the same time, audiences of all ages can enjoy them, sometimes together, and in many cases with an added nostalgic factor with adults rewatching animations they used to watch as children. With all this, a rapidly growing AI market, and the advantage of profiting slightly more, why wouldn’t the animation industry take flight?

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