Doom and gloom posts
I keep seeing depressing posts on here about people giving up on motion design and contemplating career switches, like maybe going into the woods and growing berries or becoming an underwater hamster breeder or something. The reasons given are burnout, "AI" (which can currently only do shit-tier motion design), or unable to find work. Is it really that bad or is there selection bias going on? The people who are doing well and are busy don't tend to come on r/motiondesign and brag about how well it's all going for them. So all we see are "end is nigh" posts about how it's pointless to be a motion designer because "AI will be able to do it just as good as you in 5 years d00d trust me bro."
I've been working at a company steadily for 5 years now. One of the big news channels. I have yet to use AI for anything other than very early-stage design exploration, occasional asset generation (stock images), or making AE expressions. It sucks at pretty much everything else. If I can't even get it to generate an image the way I want it, how the hell is it going to make a 5 or even 30 second animation the way I or the client wants? Also, tokens are expensive as hell. You can easily blow through $1,000's trying to get the result you want, and it's still not even 80% there. Keep in mind, this is WITH subsidized compute thanks to capital expenditure, which will be drying up soon because none of these companies are profitable.
I just don't see "the writing on the wall" yet. Maybe I'm blind. I think a more likely explanation is that the field is oversaturated (like many creative fields are), huge economic uncertainty leading to reduced budgets and reduced hiring, and a (possibly trendy aka temporary) advertising shift toward more UGC from influencers. I continue to believe that motion design has near infinite potential (experiential, movies, commercials, AR/VR, signage, etc) and near infinite demand, with cost and speed being the only true bottlenecks. Anybody else agree? Or do I need to start thinking about becoming a toilet repairman?