Another year means another list of predictions! It's been a hard few years for the industry, so lets take a look ahead and see what we can expect going forward (in our opinion, of course)...
1- More independent series straight to streamers
Perhaps the biggest piece of news in the industry last year (and one that went somewhat under the radar) is that Glitch's record-breaking series The Amazing Digital Circus being picked up by Netflix. Things are commissioned by streamers all the time, so what makes this different? Well, while Glitch is much bigger than the average indie production team, this was the first case of a 'indie' series going straight from active production to streamer, without a production break or a middle man.
Unlike Hazbin Hotel (wherein Amazon Prime picked up the series and produced it themselves in-house) TADC has continued it's development and is still owned by Glitch outright, with just streaming rights belonging to Netflix. This is a huge shift in the industry for both indies and for streaming, for a number of reasons. It means that the show continues to be uploaded on YouTube and creative control remains with Glitch themselves. With streamers pushing more and more predatory business tactics in the last few years (as I've covered thoroughly in these prediction posts), maintaining control of your IP, especially as such a small creator, is huge, and can put the power back in the hands of the animators.
It means you can make riskier content, keep creative control and (most importantly in our opinion) maintain access to release the show if/when a streamer decides to remove it from their platform. We have many feelings about streamers deleting their old content to evade residuals, so this new dynamic between Netflix and Glitch is an amazing blueprint for what a middle-ground could look like, shifting the dynamic back while allowing small creators to get their shows in front of the biggest audience possible.
2- The global mindset
Perhaps an obvious point but one worth mentioning - the power of social media and the internet blurs the boundaries between countries and cultures, with every year new cultural experiences and media being shared across countries and the world. Boosted by post-COVID working from home, as well as the streaming implosion / cost of living crisis / fight against unions in the west, there's been a huge boost in animation from countries in Asia, South America and Africa especially. Last year saw The Glassworker, Pakistan's biggest animated film to-date. It also saw Flow, an international film made by a remote and scattered team across Europe. This year will see more from upcoming films in Indonesia, the rise of Chinese animation in the west, and other films we've yet to hear about, that will blow up in the same way Flow did.
Just looking at the effect anime has had in the west (My Hero Academia is the number one merchandising IP in the UK right now) there will be sure to be more crossover of cultural styles and more out-of-box imports we would not have seen 5-10 years ago. Imagine the influence anime had on American animation in the early 2000s, and expand that idea to worldwide influence.
3- stats, stats and stats
While this one may seem random, it's worth considering if you're in the more corporate/advert space, or primarily make motion graphics. The last five years has seen a meteoric rise in people using interactive statistics. The first major example was Spotify Wrapped, a yearly recap of all the songs you've listened to. These days, we get a wrapped for a lot of things - hell, if we wanted to find out our top 3 shopping items of the year, we could find that information. A decade ago people were perhaps more skeptical on companies recording everything, but perception has changed and it's now part of a norm that we expect to continue and grow.
In the animation world, especially advertising, this means that shiny and smooth interactive videos are going to be very popular, so expect an up-tick in demand for animators with UI or data visualization experience. It also generally changes the things we'll animate for. Before, a studio may have been involved in making a trailer for an app to sell it, but with the more person-oriented nature of both social media and statistics, we can foresee more and more apps utilizing strong and eye-catching animation as part of their core services, promoting people to share their stats with the world via social media. Basically, imagine companies turning their marketing funnel inside out, and focusing their animation efforts on things users can share outwards, rather than hero videos to draw people inwards.
4- Stop Motion and the desire for hand-made stuff
Perhaps it's the Wallace and Gromit in us talking, or the eventual trailer drop of Laika's Wilderwood, but Stop Motion is having it's moment (as predicted in last year's list). Another point we made last year was the inevitable rise in 'anti-AI films'. We've already seen Aardman's Vengeance Most Fowl tackle a seemingly helpful AI go rogue, but in a wider sense, we foresee getting more hand-drawn, stop motion or overall hand-made-looking films going forward.
We've already seen this stuff like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Wild Robot, which have adapted the popular 'spider-verse style' into something more imperfect, messy and textured. As AI pushes out overly smooth and often lifeless-looking art, we can see these anti-trends continuing as artists priorities the artifice and imperfection in their work, from shorts to indie to Hollywood.
5- Creator-first
Just as we've seen in the last few years, companies have taken up less and less space in social media conversations in favor of individuals, especially those who create video content or run a 'personal brand'. The continued growth of LinkedIn and growing distance between companies and users in social media spaces are the two main reasons for this change, but for animation there's a third, and (you won't be surprised) it comes down to AI.
Having a person to connect with rather than a corporation is important for audience connection and building a 'personal brand', even if you are not representing just yourself. In the animation world, the importance of simply being real is now more important than ever. We predict that behind the scenes content will have a huge boost, as showing your craft is going to become just as important as the end product.
We have some mixed feelings on this (presenting on camera is it's own skill-set, and shouldn't have to be learned on top of being a good animator) but more competitive times mean freelancers and companies may have to use their voices to help create personal connection.
6- The great Adobe migration
In 2023, we predicted that the community would migrate off of Twitter. It happened a bit slower than anticipated, but happened all the same. Next is Adobe!
With their rising prices, pushier rules and pro-AI stance, it's becoming clear they will either (a) dominate the industry forever, or (b) be replaced by cheaper industry disruptors. If history has told us anything (especially in the tech world) it's that option B is the only real end scenario.
Look at the 3D world - we hear about Blender so much now that it basically is the new industry standard. And with movies like Flow being nominated for so many awards (more on that later) open source software looks like the way to go. Moho had a huge rise this year in the 2D world, so we imagine cheaper, more open-source softwares will arise as people begin fleeing Adobe for good.
7- The crash of the 'live-action' reboot
Aiming sights at Disney specifically, since the late 2010s, we've seen a boatload of animated movies made into 'live-action'. This trend peaked with the 'live-action' Lion King gaining over a billion dollars at the box office, which meant that more were bound to be coming, sooner rather than later.
And that's exactly what happened. There's currently eight live-action remakes on their schedule, not counting Mufasa which just released. While for now they are proving to be easy cash cows, we predict that bubble will not last forever. Over the years we've talked about the mistreatment of the VFX industry, both in their working conditions, union busting and hiding their work on 'invisible/seamless CG' to appear more authentic. This treatment is making more crunched timelines and therefore a worse final product. This, plus the continued rate at which Disney mine their own greatest hits, will eventually see even the casual audience (the backbone of their revenue, generally speaking) drop off as their tactics become less about storytelling about more about fueling never-ending IP remakes.
8- An indie Oscar winner?
Since the 'Best Animated Feature' category arrived in 2001, not a single winner has been made or produced by an independent studio. This may change this year, with the 3D feature Flow, which was made entirely in Blender.
Directed by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, the film was made by a remote team exclusively on Blender. Usually films like this are the token 'indie nomination', but after overperfoming at the box office and winning best animated feature at the Golden Globes, it's looking more and more likely that it has a serious chance of winning. You could even see it as a/the front-runner right now!
Just for fun, let's look at the other predicted Oscar nominations -
Inside Out 2, Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, The Wild Robot, Memoir of a Snail.
Honourable mentions to Moana 2, Kensuke's Kingdom, Sicorro and the Kingdom of the Wind.
9- The new form of NFTs: Crypto brands
We've spoken about NFTs or crypto in some form almost every year since staring this list. In 2023 we declared the trend dead and every remaining NFT project on essentially borrowed time, but against all odds, it's survived under a new form: as 'crypto brands'.
These are NFT operations in disguise. The ones who know about crypto are in the loop, trading and minting and all that, but for those who don't, they now interact with these brands from the other side, enjoying a brand without realising they are propping up a crypto operation. Take something like Pudgy Penguins: A widely successful social media account focused on couples and relationships, the general public sharing their videos and buying their plushies helps boost the real core of the business, helping people trade NFTs for more and more. By pivoting around a character, the whole thing feels less gimicky and lets both audiences focus on the side that they care about the most.
We've never been the biggest fans of NFTS, mostly because of their environmental impact, but as far as evolution goes, this is an interesting new form for the subculture. With the deep links between AI and Crypto, we were expecting a lot of generative NFTs, but surprisingly the community is actually embracing art more so than anticipated as the years go on.
10- Innovation and changes at Cut the Mustard
Of course, our arbitrary time to talk about ourselves.
2024 was a year of transition for us. We faced constant growth until 2023, where things got difficult and we (alongside the entire industry) struggled. Things are slowly getting better, and we've really come back fighting. That involves a lot of new skills, interests and changes, big and small. We've been learning some new software, pushing into new industries and creating new relationships. We have some stuff we can already show off (like a film we made in Animate, a first for us, and soon we'll be doing the same with Moho) and stuff we can't (like some big pivots and opportunities for us) but the important thing is that tough times create smarter solutions, and that's what we've been busy cooking up at CTM HQ.
One goal we will share is to update our social media game. More regular posting, more interaction, more personal elements to how we share our content with our audience. When you're a small studio it's hard to work out how best to present yourself - as a watertight organisation, or a group of friends making their way in the industry? We'd like to be a bit more personable and a bit more honest, which should be fun. After all it's point No. 5 in our own list! We can't ignore our own advice.
Thanks for reading. Follow us on socials as we have some great new (and long awaited) projects going up on the site soon. If not, see you for our 2026 list!
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