{"id":124402,"date":"2025-10-15T20:33:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T20:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/124402\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T20:33:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T20:33:08","slug":"view-conference-animations-future-of-storytelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/124402\/","title":{"rendered":"VIEW Conference: Animation’s Future of Storytelling"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTURIN, Italy \u2014 A full day at the View Conference<\/a> in Turin ended with animation directors from DreamWorks<\/a>, Netflix<\/a> and Sony Pictures Animation<\/a> discussing how technology, fan engagement and soul are reshaping how stories are made and shared.<\/p>\n

\n\tModerated by Dan Sarto, the Future of Storytelling panel featured Pierre Perifel (\u201cThe Bad Guys 2\u201d), Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans (\u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d), Alex Woo (\u201cIn Your Dreams\u201d), Kris Pearn (\u201cThe Willoughbys\u201d) and Camille Balsamo-Gillis, co-founder of Pro Machina.<\/p>\n

\n\tGame Engines Change the Game<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tFor these storytellers, real-time technology is rewriting the grammar of animation.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCameras have always been a character, now we can actually manifest that very quickly,\u201d said Pearn, describing how Unreal Engine has transformed production speed and flexibility.<\/p>\n

\n\tKang said her \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d team expected to use Unreal for only a small portion of the film. \u201cWe were told we\u2019d only use 20% of the movie that way, it ended up being all of it,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re able to shoot coverage you were never really able to do before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBalsamo-Gillis, whose company specializes in miniatures and practical effects, urged a balance between physical and digital. \u201cThere are still a lot of practical solutions,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s something unmatched about working with a physical, real asset.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPerifel agreed: \u201cIf \u2018F1\u2019 wasn\u2019t shot the way they shot it, driving actual cars, that movie wouldn\u2019t be what it is. You can see it on screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA Music Industry Moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAppelhans compared today\u2019s animation landscape to music\u2019s digital revolution.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s analogous to what\u2019s happened in the music industry,\u201d he said. \u201cBillie Eilish and her brother started out without a huge label, making music that found an audience on Spotify. We may see animation have its own music moment, undercutting the old production model in interesting ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe said streaming and new platforms have lowered barriers for smaller teams \u201cwith talent and dedication to find an audience\u201d \u2014 much like musicians started doing 15 years ago online.<\/p>\n

\n\tFans Are Your Marketing Team<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d cultural takeover offered a real-world example of fan-driven success.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur core audience were teens to early 20-somethings and they\u2019re content makers,\u201d said Kang. \u201cThey marketed the movie. It created a global buzz you could never get with staggered theatrical releases.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAppelhans added, \u201cYou would see fan made content and then you would see the studio put promotional work out there, and for whatever reason, the audience aren\u2019t so sure, they can smell it\u2026 fans started owning your movie\u2026 it\u2019s more raw and persuasive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWoo called that two-way exchange essential to the next phase of storytelling. \u201cPart of the future of storytelling is interaction with the fan base, a conversation happening between creators and audiences,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnimation Remains a Medium, Not a Genre!<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWoo said younger audiences no longer see animation as \u201cfor kids\u201d like many older audiences stubbornly do.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery time I talk to young people, they don\u2019t see animation or cartoons as for children,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ve experienced stories that are broader in tone and theme. Those barriers don\u2019t exist for them anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPerifel pointed to anime\u2019s influence: \u201cIn Japan, animation is for everybody. It\u2019s a Western reflex \u2014 maybe even more American than European \u2014 to think of it as children\u2019s entertainment,\u201d he said. \u201cIn animation, you can really do whatever you want. That\u2019s what makes it exciting for the next generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPaying Attention to Where Audiences Are<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tAudiences haven\u2019t disappeared, rather they have dispersed and fragmented into a myriad of content silos.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCable was a captive audience,\u201d Pearn said of his early years in Canada. \u201cThat\u2019s gone. Where the audience goes, that\u2019s what we have to pay attention to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe warned that while monetization remains difficult, the democratization of distribution means \u201creally funny, smart, awesome filmmakers are gonna win.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Industry Has Handled Huge Shifts Before<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tWhen discussion turned to AI, Pearn recalled earlier upheavals. \u201cComing up as a 2D animator, I saw {Autodesk} Maya take most people\u2019s jobs, half the studio was gone,\u201d he said. \u201cWe can only look to ourselves as creatives to push back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOthers echoed that sentiment while differentiating human creativity from automation. \u201cIt\u2019s like the iPhone camera; everyone has one, but most of what\u2019s made no one watches,\u201d said Woo. \u201cIt\u2019s not the tool, it\u2019s how you use it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPerifel agreed: \u201cAI doesn\u2019t speak to any of us. What connects people is the human voice behind the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe loudest applause went to Chris Applehans who described the human labor generative models have trained on to give them their abilities as \u201cone of the greatest acts of shoplifting you\u2019ll ever see in human history. And so even an AI tool that\u2019s helping you rotate a drawing into a 3D model is using the last 40 years of CG modellers who developed those abilities? It [the model training] just took all that and swallowed it all,\u201d before continuing \u201cand it doesn\u2019t belong to these companies, and they\u2019re so excited for us to move past that and just start talking about what the tool can do. But the truth is that that is the theft of millions of artists and their work. In my opinion, there needs to be a much more responsible reckoning of how that has happened, and how people can be remunerated for it. And then it will be a lot more comfortable to go forward with this as a tool. Just synthesising a century or two of humans figuring stuff out, but you can\u2019t just steal that shit and then move right on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThere was mutual belief that storytelling talent will find a way to be found and still succeed but it\u2019s clear the route and the methods may change.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cArt is something unique to human beings because it comes from the soul,\u201d Woo said to close the session. When asked where she sees herself in 10 years, Kang smiled: \u201cI\u2019d like to just keep making weird things and putting weird stuff on screen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TURIN, Italy \u2014 A full day at the View Conference in Turin ended with animation directors from DreamWorks,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[75512,18,117,19,17,327,127,56268,75513],"class_list":{"0":"post-124402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-dreamworks","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-netflix","15":"tag-sony-pictures-animation","16":"tag-view-conference"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}