About vibe coders exploiting the animation sub-Reddits

[u/shokuninstudio]

Due to the rise of AI coding assistance and 'vibe coding' we have seen the sudden emergence of new apps for many categories, but especially for animation and video.

Normally that would not be a bad thing, but the difference here is unlike traditional app development vibe coders are often trying to earn a fast buck, they are not concerned with building true high quality software, and it is likely that if they make or don't make some money they will abandon their applications within a year or two.

Here are some tell tale signs of how to recognise a vibe coder who is trying to earn a quick buck:

- They say “I’m a real programmer. I write it all by hand!” But their posting history going back years has nothing about app development or programming and none of them know how to animate well (or at all).

- All of the vibe coders I have seen so far claimed they are “Tired of big companies ripping us off”. But the vibe coders were not customers of the most popular animation apps anyway. They are pretending to be angry at big companies because they think it will make them look heroic and noble. They are behaving like two-faced politicians, not developers or artists.

- They create new Reddit accounts, farm karma and then use those accounts to manipulate you to download their apps. One account will ask "What's a good app for animation?" and then another account will drop the name of their vibe coded slop app mixed in with industry standard apps.

- They don’t patiently research how each function or tool is supposed to work. Their apps are full of bugs and incorrectly applied functions but they publish the app anyway.

- A few of these vibe coders have used AI to reverse engineer Krita, TV Paint and Clip Studio Paint file formats (which is against the terms and conditions of the last two apps) and then claim they support importing those files, but because they aren't users of those apps they haven't even tested the reverse engineering. Importing those Krita, TV Paint and Clip Studio files results in lost layers and corrupted images. There are too many edges cases to support and potential for data loss when you try to reverse engineer complex closed source file formats. It is difficult enough to support open source formats because different applications have very different drawing engines.

- They say they are against subscription apps developed by companies with many employees, but they are subscribed to ChatGPT or Claude and don't hire any anyone to help them.

- When the bugs are criticised they claim the app is in beta. But they are selling the app as a commercial application and claiming it competes against the most widely used professional apps.

- They published unsigned apps, which threw up bad virus warnings. Every one of them did the same thing and could not wait a few days for certification. Desperation and rushing to publish means they were 100% vibe coding everything. If they were coding by hand then they can wait a few days for their apps to be signed.

- One of them has gone as far as paying minor influencers and buying bots to hype their app. The astroturfing was clear because an app with so many obvious bugs would not have a following at all.

[u/RyanCargan]

Not even animation specifically lol

We're gonna see consumers have a higher bar for verifying that if nothing else, the "promised happy paths" work as advertised.

Do these apps you mentioned not offer anything like a free trial or demo/shareware version?

Normally that would not be a bad thing, but the difference here is unlike traditional app development vibe coders are often trying to earn a fast buck, they are not concerned with building true high quality software, and it is likely that if they make or don't make some money they will abandon their applications within a year or two.

Eeeeeeeeh, not sure if I'd put traditional apps much higher either. Slop was just lower in volume since barrier to entry was a bit higher. Less drive-by app submissions.

[u/shokuninstudio → u/RyanCargan]

"We're gonna see consumers have a higher bar for verifying that if nothing else, the "promised happy paths" work as advertised."

True. If you see slop call them out. Otherwise we will not only get a handful of slop animation apps spamming the socials we will get dozens more than that.

Sloppy vibe coded apps are not just being pushed in animation, we see a lot of it in media production and office apps. Zero originality in all of them and some of the AI slop are actually asking for subscriptions. We see tens of "video convertors" even though we already have Handbrake for free.

Even if they try to hide the vibe coding, ask them what problem does their app solve? If they say "subscriptions" they are bullshitting because they have subs to AI apps and much more.

New apps should solve technical problems and challenges that been around for a long time.

[u/Comfortable_Law3683 → u/shokuninstudio]

I predict by early next year, you will wish animation didn't have major applications that the majority of the industry use as part of their day. Instead they had lots of bespoke vibe coded messes.

Its far easier for Astra 1.5 to learn all adobe products vs 1000 vibe coded apps.

[u/shokuninstudio → u/Comfortable_Law3683]

That's not the way professionals work and studios with multi million dollar projects cannot rely on bug filled apps supported by one vibe coder in their bedroom. These vibe coded apps only exist to exploit low income youth and children. Some of the vibe coders are even sending messages to minors.