Last year's predictions are here.
And as for 2011 . . .
Anime and Animation
Manga, Middlemen and Migration of Power
As we mentioned last week 37 Japanese publishers are working together on the J Manga Portal, a joint portal site for North American anime fans this year. A way to get titles, and of course news.
This is something Bonnie and I have been talking about for months: that Japanese companies and any manga company is best off going to the web and going electronic to both reach people faster, provide content, and to provide competition to scanilations. After all if they don't want people scanilating, then they need to get stuff out fast and cheap (or free).
However this goes beyond my predictions – it's a gigantic group effort by a large number of companies, some of whom I'm quite sure don't necessarily like each other. This isn't one company here or one company there, this is basically major representatives of an entire industry making a universal shared content and news portal. This is huge.
Fanimations: Animation, Technology, and Animated Fanworks Of The Future
Last week bonnie discussed Bad Thai Disney Ripoffs and how technology for animation was putting it in reach of everyone. She speculated on how animated fanworks could one day be much, much easier to do. I of course wanted to add my own analysis.
Namely, taking the idea that someday technology could give us reasonable-to-high quality, quickly-done fan and amateur animation. Laugh as we will at the Thai Faux Disney, the quality of the animation is not horrendous – if it were a fanwork it would be considered pretty decent. So, building on the idea that technology is making animation easier and easier, what points do we have to reach to get to many people using available tech to jump on the animation bandwagon? When do fan animations (fanimations?) reach a point where, like music videos and so forth, anyone can at least give them a go?