a modest proposal

Something really bothers me about the animation industry right now. Everybody seems to send their stuff to Korea. Why? Even good animators like Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken. There's more new animation being made now than for a long time and there's a distribution channel for it (cable) but none of it is actually being animated here. It's apparently 'just how it's done now'. This is distressing for a couple of reasons.

One- Outsourcing Creative work. This isn't just labor. This isn't just something anyone can do. This is creative work. Even inbetweens are creative work. Which brings me to the second point:
Work for new artists. Used to be, young artists would get to build up their skills on the crap work like inbetweens. Then they'd have a foundation for drawing animation, and know what's required to work in a studio. Now, no one can get those skills. School teaches you basic principles (if you're lucky), but you need to work on a real series to apply those principles. So, there's never going to be a native animation industry here. It's all overseas.

How come this is the way it's done? Money? Probably.

Also, I should probably say that I have nothing against Korea or their animation industry. They're selling a product that people want to buy- more power to them. What i don't like is the people who made the decision that outsourcing jobs was a good idea.

The real point of this diatribe? Someone needs to found a studio that will do that, if that's how the industry works now, no one does animation in-house, then someone needs to make an inbetweens studio in America. There are a ton of people who want to get into animation- i went to school with a bunch of them. Probably i have enough connections to staff a studio like that. i don't really know. I don't really know the size of the staff or the amount of money involved. We'd of course need it to be very cheap, to compete with Korea. Office space is pretty cheap in some places here, and no Aeron chairs for anyone. Is that cheap enough?

This studio would have these benefits:
Rapid turnaround.-It just has to be faster to FedEx stuff to Burbank than to send it overseas.Has to.
No Language barrier.-This shit should be obvious.
No culture differences-This is a little more subtle. Animation depends on physical acting. A lot of physical acting is gestures and poses, a lot of which are culture specific. An American company would know what you mean.
Possibly starting a new industry in the Bay Area.

what do you think?
-jeremy