Baby Boomers
“Since baby boomers are naturally more inclined to think of animation as children’s entertainment, the way you represent things visually can play a significant role in how they relate to your content. Overall, they prefer things that look simpler and natural. They aren’t so inclined to represent human characters with unusual colors or limb proportions, like longer legs or tiny heads. And if your story has a character that isn’t human, be aware that adding life to an object can look childish for them, depending on how it looks, acts, and moves.”
Gen X
“Visually, Gen X is way more open to different and unique representations than the previous generation. Less literal narratives also work better with them than with Baby Boomers, but depending on your animation’s length, abstraction might reduce their interest in the video. There’s room for experimentation regarding visual complexity, but just make sure your animation doesn’t rely heavily on complex camera movements and transitions. Gen Xers can follow visual transitions better than Baby Boomers as long as they are simple and help build or tell the story.”
Gen Y and Gen Z
“As you might have noticed, I’m mixing both generations in a single analysis. Why? Millennials and many Gen Z grew up in a period during the 80s and 90s in which cartoons took on a whole new level of depth. Networks such as Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network revolutionized the way animation was perceived. Both generations experienced the advent of 24-hour animation stations, and the animation matured with them. Today, there are thousands of animated shows and movies for adults with unique narratives for different audiences. For example, “BoJack Horseman,” one of Netflix’s most famous cartoons, blends existential crises and extremely poor adult decision-making with the childishness of a typical cartoon, all through the unique view of the main character, a washed-up star of a 1990s sitcom. A lot of this also has to do with the popularization of anime in the western world during the 1990s – with Akira, a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk masterpiece, being largely credited for that achievement. On Rotten Tomatoes, for example, the critical consensus reads, ‘Akira is strikingly bloody and violent, but its phenomenal animation and sheer kinetic energy helped set the standard for modern anime.’ Strikingly bloody and violent is not something you would expect in the review of a children’s show, so you can see how animation evolved toward different audiences. For these generations, animation is not a “children’s thing” anymore; it gained a whole new meaning. Today, you can still find a lot of old and new content on TV channels like Nickelodeon, Disney XD, and Cartoon Network, but animation has also spread across different sections of the entertainment field.“
“Even though animation is mostly seen as a visual storytelling medium focused on video, video games have influenced newer generations’ relationship with animation. Previous generations were used to playing classic arcade machines or early personal video games – like Odyssey and Atari, or even 8-bit consoles. While fun entertainment for its time, their immersiveness was limited by the visual and sound technology available at the time. Newer generations, like Y and Z, experienced all sorts of visuals and narratives through animated interactive worlds and characters, which makes animation even more common for them.”
This article’s thought-provoking. It makes me consider that perhaps I shouldn’t be generalizing broad statements such as “Western adults see animation as a children’s medium”, but rather considering the way each generation consumes animation. After all, it’s the baby boomers who dealt with the transition of animation into a children’s programming block, and it’s younger generations who more frequently encounter animation in their day-to-day lives. My grandfather (age 91) refuses to watch anything animated because he believes it’s for children, whereas my father plays the Assassin’s Creed franchise religiously and enjoys watching anime with my siblings (24 and 20).
Although numbers decline with age, this chart indicates that adults do generally enjoy animation until a cutoff of 40-50 years old. This timespan is so far into adulthood that I would argue it is related to the perception of animation of the age group rather than simply being a vestige of immaturity.
Outside of the gender trend, which would be a separate topic to research, I want to point out that although the article lists “younger” users as being more likely to look at animated content, these users are still 18-29 years old, nowhere near the traditional market for children’s animation. 1/3 adults is quite a lot. And the drop down to 19% for people under 50 years old still makes 1/5 of the adults surveyed.
The positive side of this study is that because its definition of animated content downloaded and streamed is broad, we can get a better sense of the groups that enjoy it, as animated content online is more likely to include subjects appealing to many age groups rather than just being children’s/family movies and TV. The downside of this is that the subjects are self-reporting, which isn’t necessarily the most reliable way to gather information. I can flip this around- getting more reliable figures while losing that niche of a broad range of animated content consumed- by researching box office ticket sales.
What this chart doesn’t show is the amount of people in age category that would be likely to attend a cinema anyway, not to mention the fact that this may be disproportionately skewed by the 2020 COVID crisis: would audiences over the age of 50 be going to the movie theater anyway?
Luckily, I found a study that’s a bit more comprehensive in the fact that it takes into account the age distribution of admissions, however, there’s a couple issues with it that are not entirely relevant to my research, which I’ll discuss below.
The main thing I’d point out as skewing the potential takeaway of older audiences simply not enjoying animation (Paddington is an outlier because it’s combination live action + VFX and also even with my limited UK knowledge I know its a well-loved classic among all age groups). is the fact that every single one of those animated movies are made for a child or family-friendly audience. On the surface it may seem that the cutoff for enjoying animated movies is 35, but I’d actually posit that those 35-year-olds paying to see How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The LEGO Movie are actually exhibiting a willingness to consume children’s content because they love the use of animation as a visual narrative as it contributes to the story.
It may also be said that this age group is disproportionately represented because they may be accompanying their children to the theater, but the first chart does not necessarily seem to show the two trends of ticket sales to the groups corresponding in a way that’s conclusive.
As I’ll continuously repeat myself, it would be easier to tell how willing people under the age of 40 are to watch animated movies if there were more marketed towards an adult audience (and of those, more with a diverse range of content rather than the action movie or sex comedy dichotomy.)
Stormy Studio Ltd, an animation studio in Plymouth (UK)
to note: Stormy Studio clearly gains from advertising its practices.
“Whilst all emotions can be delivered via animation or film. Some are often better suited i.e. live action footage can make it easier to deliver a message that is relatable or create empathy and compassion. Whilst animation can explain complex ideas, build excitement and wow an audience. There are of course many pros and cons when looking at live action vs animation and we’ll explore these in more depth below.”
from Stormy Studios’ insights page:
Budgeting for Animation vs Live Action, Mowe Studio, an animation studio of Hallendale Beach, FL
(another one to note as seeking to gain from advertising itself)
What makes production more or less expensive?
“An important aspect to take into consideration when budgeting for a project is understanding the details that make it more expensive. This will help you to adapt your production to make it fit the budget available. As a rule of thumb, the more people and time you need, the more expensive it will be.”
Live Action
“During live-action productions, more people also means more money spent on supporting this team, which translates into more food expenses and travel costs — an exponential increase.
Besides that, location is a significant factor. It needs to be available and accessible. And you may need to pay for transportation for everyone to that location. As for talent, hiring a celebrity will quickly increase your expenses, and never forget to account for union talents as they also tend to be more expensive than non-union talents.”
Animation
“In the animation world, the type of animation or the techniques involved may require specialized (and more expensive) professionals, or increase production time, which directly impacts costs. For example, an animation based in Motion Graphics (with graphic elements, typography, and shapes) usually requires less time and people than an animation involving characters.
Characters in animation are very complex and require a very talented and specific professional (a character animator). Since characters tend to be the focal point in a client’s review, it’s crucial to account for extra revisions every time characters are involved.
When it comes to cel animation, the professionals and time required to develop this type of animation can increase drastically. Like in live-action, all those specialists have a huge impact on the final piece. Depending on the client’s goals (and of course, budget), adding them can be the best way to deliver something extraordinary.
A final thing to note: if time is of the essence and you need to speed up production, an animation team can always bring in more people to get the job done faster, but of course this increases the investment required.”
In the end, what’s the difference between live action vs animation?
“Live action budgets range widely and can increase quickly. A big part of its costs are related to administrative tasks such as logistics, transport, location rent, food crew, COVID crew, etc. Animation is more time-consuming, while live-action productions can be shot in one day and be ready for post-production. Animation can be a cost-effective solution when budgets are not high, but it doesn’t mean you’ll get the best animation with that. Animation is more malleable in terms of how you can simplify its costs, but a good animation will involve many specialized talents and require as much budget as live-action.”