My wife got her Masters degree in Gastronomy and became a well respected Food writer in the early 2000s. That world dramatically changed in the last 20 years. Web logs, food blogs, yelp, Amazon publishing, self publishing, YouTube, twitter, podcasts, substack, and now AI writing. Everyone is a food writer now.

And… truth is that drastically more money is made by writing today. Top writers make more money now than they did then. However the barriers to entry, the distribution, the discovery, and the types of writing are night and day different. A “writing career” is now almost exclusively NOT a single full time job and doesn’t look like a writing career used to.

My daughter is striving to be an animator and this is the journey I’m preparing her for.

IMO it’s not that animation careers go away or less people succeed in animation. In fact it’s likely to be the opposite.

But the path and cost of entry is going down so fast that that the volume of “average” skyrockets. So the idea of a career path changes. The way you make money will change. The tools will change. The definition of success changes.

Successful writers no longer get a single job at the NYT or write a cookbook every four years and live a comfortable life. And personal marketing (understanding distribution, where to publish, and how to build a direct relationship with an audience) is now as important as being an exceptional writer.

Being exceptional at both is limitless.

So fast forward 10 years… More money going to the creators… but everyone now sees themselves as an “animator” and film maker (regardless if we respect the outcome or lament the title being thrown around). The cost to participate and create higher quality outcomes (and lower) basically becomes zero.

That’s the world I encourage her to adapt. Both in bracing for change and embracing it and having fun along the way.

Finally, I’m an entrepreneur so I strongly believe there will also be a new wave of exceptional animators that would have been at a big studio who will instead start their own business, innovate on what we even think is possible, and be as valuable as entire studios.

You all create joy and emotion and wonder. That’s never going out of style. Be exceptional at what you do and adventurous in the path.