Mining Creativity in B.C. Animation

Once again, B.C.’s animation industry is hopeful for better days in the coming year. But it’s not really looking much beyond that.

This month in BCBusiness is an article about the Vancouver animation industry, outlining its troubles and occasional triumphs.

Writer Peter Severinson correctly points out that the industry is caught between a rock and a hard place. It’s surviving through contracts driven by government job-creation programs, yet at the same time it can’t seem to grow beyond being an outsource for much larger animation companies, usually located elsewhere.

Sound familiar?

Yep, it’s the China Syndrome that we’ve become so used to in the games industry.

Everybody likes to tout the growth of the games industry and in corollary, the animation industry,  as a major player here in Vancouver, Canada’s creative city. New knowledge businesses, thousands employed, big company connections, blah blah blah.

It is true in a sense. Vancouver has a good reputation around the world as a hotbed of animation talent and the Olympics drew animation firms from the world to the city, many of whom are looking at some joint venturing  with Vancouver partners.

Whether it actually happens is another story. The reality right now is that China Syndrome rules in most of the creative industries in Vancouver.

I call it that because it’s a version of what China did several years ago to boost its economy. That was simply to establish itself as a low-cost production plant for the world’s consumer goods.

China, which has to find a continuing stream of jobs for its millions of people, encouraged the growth of factories paying pittance wages to workers to supply the Western world’s lust for cheap consumer goods. It was so successful it employed tens of millions in factories in the southern part of the country to produce goods that stock the shelves of every Walmart in America.
 
Vancouver’s animation industry, like its games industry and, to a lesser extent, its movie industry, is in that same place. Thousands of creative workers are paid, often at low wages, to churn out product for bigger “creative industry” companies like Pixar in the U.S. Almost all work is on contract, there are very few job benefits, and  jobs can disappear in a minute if the next contract doesn’t come in.
 
It’s mining creative brainpower, instead of gold or coal.
 
Here’s the big difference: China appears to have had a long-term plan. It used this factory concept as a base to move up the ladder and is now involved in much higher-end manufacturing, such as of cars and other more sophisticated goods.   
 
Whether Vancouver can do that is a matter of debate. Apparently talks are going on with firms in India and other hot animation areas such as Brazil , and that’s raised hopes that something larger might emerge.
 
But I wouldn’t count on it.
 
Here in B.C., we have a history of resource exploitation, and so the industries that mine creative power are treated much like any other resource industry.
 
They use the usual strategy: Get as much as you can from the world’s buyers and when that’s exhausted look for the next resource to exploit.