THIS OLD HEART O' MINE

So, long time no seeing.
I apologise, but, hey, this stuff’s free and I’ve been focused on how to cope with the latest news, that is I’ve been diagnosed with a genetic heart disease: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
No, no, no. No panic. I’m taking the proper meds, and apparently with a surgery the risks for my health will decrease dramatically. And since I live in a country where there is still (with this fascist government I don’t know for how long) a working public health service, I should be able to survive to get to my pension (AH! JOKING! The last news about Italian INPS are that due to the increasing aging population the Italian National Social Insurance Agency will be in debt for 20B euros by 2032. See ya in 8 years).
[Also, because of reasons, I decided I’ll try and stick with doing this in English (or a language that I hope resembles it). Hope it doesn't come across as too pretentious.]

MIFA 2024

Health news apart, it took me a little also to decide if “report” from the MIFA 2024 in detail or not. Since it’s quite apparent to me that my point of view as a scriptwriter is quite biased, I’ll make it short.
- Yes the boost of European (French, basically) animation was due to platforms.
- From a private conversation (Chatham House Rule, so don’t ask for the source, but this came from a veteran), in the USA animation production has gone down 70%. 7-0. Holy fuck.
- But Europe doesn’t stop. Those old and apparently old-fashioned and often despised public funds are keeping European animation afloat. Of course, lacking Hollywood super-powered promotion capabilities, our cartoons are not global hits, but there is a healthy industry that has not gone downwards like it happened in Hollywood.
- It was a great MIFA for me, and considering the bad mood I was in when I left, that was nice. Of course, there is an ocean (or at least a mountain range) from a good news to a greenlight, but still.
- French creative people are great. I guess the AnimFrance conference was the only one I’ve been to recently where I heard (paraphrasing hard here): “Well, YouTube eats up a lot of content consuming, and part of that content is made with our products without any compensation. Thus we’ll ask to create a law that forces YT to pay for that.” Whoa. Will France be able to do that? I hope so, and I hope this will be followed by a EU law. The idea that big corporations should be allowed free reign just because it’s too complicated to apply local laws on global entities is BS. Because these things happen. “It’s Easier to Imagine the End of Capitalism than the End of the World”, but we must remember that the economic system is an abstraction set up to simplify human relationships, not an abstract entity with its own will to which we must bow. Uh. Sorry for that. You’re here to know something you didn’t know prior to reading this, so here’s the link to the presentation of the 2023 French Market Animation.

AI AGAIN

Oh, you wanted me to talk about AI, again? Well, a short movie made with AI was brutally booed at Annecy, which speaks volumes about artists attitude about it (they… uh… don’t exactly love it).

This feeling is quite common, so what happens in the meantime? “Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition whose members include Amazon, Apple and Meta, is launching a campaign to defend the legality of using copyrighted works to train artificial intelligence systems.” But their arguments are BS: “Gen AI is a net plus for creativity overall,” […] “It’s expanding access to creative tools for more and more people and bypassing a lot of the traditional gatekeepers.” That could be true - but as a rule of thumb, never believe in the good faith of a CEO from Silicon Valley - if, just if, the aim would be to create open AIs. Available to everybody tools to improve humanity life and, in the case of generative AIs, that will produce a shitload of bad art and - ça va sans dire - a small amount of good art too (that’s what happened when photograpy was invented, after all).
But… art doesn’t have “gatekeepers”. Crafting and honing a specific talent is not gatekeeping. It’s acquiring a skill. What about being a CEO? Will AI bypass the gatekeepers of CEO-ing and everybody will become… oh, wait a minute.

I still think that if artists want a cogent argument to bring people on their side about AI, we should insist on its environmental impact.

Also: I’m having lenghty conversations with friends and acquaintances about the topic. It seems clear to me that journalists have a different perspective on the topic. They’re used to consider their work “short-lived”, if you allow me the expression. Read this article today, tomorrow it could be… old news. But even when I have conversations with pros that practice slow-journalism that apparently invalidate the point, the approach doesn’t change. A journalist expects to be paid once, then the article is out in the world and the hope is it’s going to be read by as many people as possible. On the other hand, an artist approach implies that multiple payments are due for every different way our art produces money. I fear a few journalists miss this obvious point. So do I salute with enthusiasm titles like “OpenAI Sued by Center for Investigative Reporting as Media Takes Diverging Paths on Tech Giant”? Or “As AI Marches on Music Industry, Record Labels Counter With $350M Lawsuits In Assertive Move”? Yes and no, folks. As much as I think a legislation is absolutely necessary (thanks, European AI-Act), I still think copyright laws should be deeply reformed to safeguard more and better the artists and not corporations. Because if the aforementioned juicy lawsuits end up in settlement, guess who’s gonna get the shitty side of the contract again? Good guess. I knew you’re a smart bunch.

COMPLETELY RANDOM THOUGHTS

- I still have the impression that legacy media and legacy studios are lead by people who don’t get the structural changes we’re leaving, and the suggestion remains to go DYI and consider that if someone will not give you a spot to shine, you just take it (yes, it takes time). One of my students asked me what I thought about an hybrid approach, that is keeping one foot in traditional media and one in the indie creation world (it may be Substack, WebToon, Patreon, WattPad and stuff I don’t know about yet). It’s honestly something I thought about myself, probably it’s the best choice/safest bet, but someone might point out we don't have 48 hours day. As usual, there’s no set formula, kids.

- Been watching The Boys, and every time Homelander is in a scene, I can’t help but thinking of Hitchcock “The Birds” effect. I almost don’t listen to what he says (Antony Starr delivery of the character facial expressions could be more than enough), because I’m just holding my breath waiting in terror for the moment he will arbitrarily mutilate or kill someone. How to insert in an apparently incongrous way an horror storytelling device in a story pertaining to another genre. Interesting.

- Been reading Matt Alt’s “Pure Invention” (“Pop” is the Italian title) [English Version/Italian version] and I think I understood a little better the reasons behind the success of comfort literature. But I’m also wondering if compact and more powerful hardware will still be able to have a deep cultural influence in the next few years or if now that we went completely digital everything is going to happen in the Noosphere for the foreseeable future (climate crisis could not agree that much on this last bit and forcing us to remember we live in a real, physical, hard and excessively warm world).

- Been (not) promoting Mr. Evidence 4 (Italian readers, I’m talking with you) and again, if you don’t know Italian but you wish to read this in your language and if you have the means to get this comic book noticed by a publishing house in your country (it’s an 8 issue miniseries), you know what to do. Uh. I’m getting older and cheekier.

FUTURE PROJECTS

Legs Weaver cartoon mini-series (more of a special divided in 4 parts) has been announced and yes, the script is by Yours Sincerely.

This is not the only project that is finally getting into motion, but hey, NDAs. And my heart could not bear the joy of too much stuff and too many good news happening at the same time. No, kidding. It can.

See you soon, not necessarily next week, and if you feel you have a heavy heart (literally and not metaphorically, e.g. you feel chest pain just after a few steps), try and go get an echocardiogram. An early diagnosis could save your life.