It’s been a weird year in 2025 – we have seen the animation industry dramatically shift from the busiest boom time we have ever had in TV animation to an absolute ghost town where it feels like nothing is in production. Not many shows are getting pickups or greenlights at any of the studios, so it’s not localized (it’s everywhere).
Lots of our animation friends are out of work, burning through their savings – some of them are getting ready to find other temporary jobs or even leave the industry entirely. It’s obviously bad out there.
Interns will ask me for advice as they prepare to enter the marketplace in this climate – they feel very apprehensive (and for good reason). My response is to talk through the downturn, why it exists, when it will change, and what to do in the meantime.
Unfortunately, this situation feels like a lot of other downturns we have seen over the years in our industry. Every time we have one, it feels horrible, and lots of people get a bit negative – kind of like when there is a big stock market downturn and everyone sells off their stocks in a rush of fear. It’s hard to keep calm and everyone forgets how bad it was last time we went through something like this.
So that is number one. We have gone through this before. Downturns are part of the cycle of this business.
I won’t pretend like this isn’t the worst – it may be the biggest swing we have ever seen in terms of going from massive amounts of work to almost no work. Many studios are just not picking up shows or greenlighting at the cadence that we have seen historically.
Why is there no work?
Well it’s probably a complicated stew of causes that are all colliding at the same time. First off, we had the strikes – that pretty much put everything on hold (and caused some shows to get cancelled). A side effect after the strikes is the costs of producing shows due to new union agreements went up significantly – those are big negotiated increases to rates and fringes across all unions, not just the ones that struck. That means shows are now more expensive to produce.
The second factor on why we are seeing the downturn: studios decided to change business models and focus on profitability in streaming thus ending the ‘streaming wars’. That means buying a lot less product (despite a perceived ‘unlimited’ inventory on streaming) and being careful in how and what is bought. They are also now being much more strategic with launches and airdates, much more similar to traditional linear broadcast / cable.
The final big factor is the current era of mergers and streamers. These are two big categories disrupting the old “traditional” entertainment model. These super mergers and acquisitions mean re-evaluating all business fronts and finding “efficiencies” to increase profits. Simultaneously there is scaling back investments in old cable / dish channels where carriage fees are becoming less profitable and combining departments which removes jobs and head counts.
The second factor is the new disruptor on the block – trying to figure out how to capture streamer (Youtube / TikTok / Twitch) subscribers. How do you keep subscription streaming services like Hulu and Netflix from becoming the next cable / dish?
If you are following, shows are now more expensive and studios are being much more cautious because of a new business model and competitive landscape. That recipe leads to taking less risks and going for known IPs and shows that are ‘safe’ bets.
When will there be more work?
So this all sounds quite terrible, when are we going to be on the other side of this / when will things go back to ‘normal’?
Let’s start off by saying, we will very likely not be going back to the ‘normal’ of the giant boom era we just experienced. It was wild but certainly not sustainable and definitely not profitable. We are now in the conservative era of smaller / tighter budgets and schedules.
We are starting to see a few projects getting picked up at the end of the year, which is a great indicator. There was also an uptick in live action projects in the middle of 2025, and oftentimes animation tends to have a delayed effect of what we see on the live action side, which could be another positive indicator.
Given what we have seen so far, it could also mean we see a few other projects start up before everything shuts down for the holidays. Hopefully this means we should see more greenlights and pickups coming back in Q1 2026.
What do we do in the meantime?
It’s time to go through the list of usual hiatus suspects. It’s not exciting, but being productive in the downtime is good. That means working on our portfolio / website / resume / reel / samples. Go take a class that we have been procrastinating on. Work on that personal project. Say hi to some friends and reconnect / network. All these things feel like intangibles, but they make a positive difference in our careers.
To wrap up – we as an industry have gone through rough spots like this before and we will inevitably go through them again. They are always tough to experience in the moment, but we always find a way to get through them. Help support your friends, ask for help, and hang in there. We’ll get through it together.
Who knows – it’s just a SDCC clip, but it looks like TBS is trying something different, and that’s a good thing.
nate funaro 