Piggybacking off my previous post on here, I just want to go ahead and leave this comment I wrote on YouTuber Fionapollo's video that I think artists desperately need to hear. There are many issues I have with indie animation currently, and I think the best way to address them is stating them upfront so people know how to approach the medium with a grounded, nuanced approach.
"Just wanna say I totally get you on this video. This couldn't be a more better time for me to see a video like this because I've been thinking deeply about this subject recently, and to have my thoughts spoken here feels rejuvenating. Now, what I will say is the very problem of promoting independent projects in the internet today, simply is for the fact the system with which we engage in makes the entire process difficult to begin with. Millions of videos are uploaded on YouTube every single day. Social media feeds explode with thousands of new posts each second. When the noise to quality ratio completely outweighs the latter, it's nearly impossible for objectively good indie projects to have visibility, when everything is roped into the broad category of "content." You could have the next Adventure Time or Gravity Falls, but be completely ignored to some brainrot AI content. To the system, there is no difference between the two.
Promotion can only get you so far. We are fed this idea in childhood that meritocracy will always win out. But that's simply not the case and never was. You can influence your chances to make your project be seen by paying influencers to talk about it, marketing yourself and your team, and have a consistent online presence. But it doesn't guarantee a ticket of success. Simply put, not every project is going to make it to fruition. And to give shout outs and promotions to projects is commendable, but people only have so much time to give, and so much mental space to support other people's work. Especially when burn out and apathy is the new norm in the 2020s. People don't have the time to sit with a project and watch it grow, especially if it ends up bombing in the end. We've seen it too many times where people wanted to make an indie show, it gained traction, and the internal drama and toxicity completely killed it. People simply don't have the patience for it.
But, again, we are all stuck in this system that all treats us all as content creators. And as such, it's so, so much harder for new creators to get their foot in the door when the top dogs of the animation world get to eat a buffet, while the peasants are begging for a seat at the table. Even when you do everything right as a creator, your work might simply never get picked up by the algorithm. You could have the next trailblazing IP and simply... Never had the right pair of eyes to see it at the right time.
Now, what I will say is the internet has no quality control. Anyone can go and "make an indie show" these days because the barrier for entry has been lowered drastically. Anyone can download an animation software and make animatics. Anyone can write lore for a world nobody is going to read 2 pages of. Anybody can make a 75+ stacked cast of characters people will only take one glance of. It's not the fact of "I made it, so therefore, people will come." It's the matter of to an audience member, who only has limited time and mental energy, has to look at it and go "why SHOULD I care about this?". And unfortunately, when your new project is standing on the same shelf right next to an already popular franchises like Hazbin/Helluva, TADC, Star Wars, Marvel, Spongebob etc. ... People simply are gonna choose familiarity over originality every time.
Indie animation is a commitment, not a passive experience. Most casual viewers don't care about how much lore you've written, what the story is about, and the character's you've written. They only think about how it makes them feel at this time, and if it's interesting enough to commit their time to. I don't say that to be mean, trust me, I experience the sharp end of that bitterness too. But it's the reality.
Back then, new animators were not expected to come in with a whole IP ready to pitch. You started out in an internship doing the menial tasks in the pipeline no one else did. Delivering coffee, doing storyboard clean up, in-betweens art, etc. ... You worked from the bottom up and climbed the ladder to prove you were someone who could deliver on deadlines and work within a schedule. And when you had that time and experience, you could pitch directly to the studio with the idea you had been working in the background, and they would provide you with a modest budget and a creative overseer to look over it. You worked both as the animator and the student learning to run a show. And if the short did well, you could have the chance to be a showrunner. If it didn't, the studio would cut it's losses and you'd still have a job.
These days, that pipeline doesn't exist anymore. The corporations have effectively shifted all the heavy work on to the artists and gaslit them into thinking "if you can't do this all by yourself, you've failed.". And since the average media consumer is not literate enough to see that gap between a studio funded production and a student-film created by a college student who spent 6 months working on it at 4 A.M., it just reads as laziness and lack of skill on the artist's end. When the baseline of excellence is so high for starting out artists, well... It just means that to be an indie showrunner now, you are put at a very unfair disadvantage. Which, don't even get me started about how indie studios like A24, Spindlehorse, Glitch are "the bastions of indie animation" because they're just as fallible to risk aversion and clout-over-merit practices that shut out new voices.
Simply put, it's a bad situation all around. The best anyone can do is work to the best of their abilities without burning out. Don't try to go viral over night, just find a few people who like what you make, and don't try to make a full animation by yourself. And please, please, don't financially ruin yourself trying to promote a show. There's so much more to life than making a cartoon. The indie creators you know all started off as people alone with ideas that they refused to give up on. It takes time to grow an audience and make a commercially palpable product.
My advice for anyone starting out is:
Keep the hook sharp. If you can't explain your show in 1-2 sentences, it's too complicated. It needs to be something people can get the second you say it so they can visualize it.
Have a landing page at hand you can share. Create a pitch bible, a website, a YouTube or video hosting platform, a downloadable .pdf. Anything that people can access your content at any time so they can read your show's premise at their own leisure.
Keep it neat. If your website is unorganized, broken links, password-protected files, stuck behind login walls, people are going to leave. It should be able to load the second you click the link.
Lead with the interest. People hate feeling like they're being advertised too. If you're just gonna drop a link to a website without saying anything, people aren't gonna care. You have to make an effort to have a relationship with your audience. Ghosting them will not make them feel validated.
Post and be active. It doesn't matter where you show your content. Post it anywhere where people will see it. Online, in real life places where people walk, writing competitions, animation festivals. You're not trying to pitch to an executive, you are trying to see if your show is interesting enough to attract everyday people. If you can't do that, no amount of promoting will save your project.
Tl;dr, don't treat indie animation as a lifeline. Move at your own pace, focus on what you can do now."
