AnimationResources.org – Serving the Online Animation Community

A Few Questions…

At our last Discord event, we were discussing the early days of the our organization. It was founded in 2004 as the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive, and re-established in 2011 as Animation Resources, a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization. In 2013, we began accepting memberships. A lot has been accomplished since then.

During the question and answer section of the program, a member asked me about the long-term future of Animation Resources. They asked what I imagined the organization would be like in 50 years when I’m not around to lead it any more. This isn’t the kind of thing that most folks think about, but it’s actually a question that I’ve considered.

The average person doesn’t realize that non-profits are very different than for-profit companies. A for-profit company hires employees to perform specific tasks, while a non-profit is whatever the volunteers choose to make of it. It’s easy to say a non-profit should do this or should do that… Everyone has an opinion on what non-profits should be doing. But if there isn’t a volunteer willing roll up their sleeves and make it happen, it won’t get done.

There are things I think are important, and I have my own ways of doing things. You see that reflected in everything Animation Resources does right now, but I don’t expect other people to have the same priorities and methods I do. We have a working Board of Directors. They’ve all taken on responsibilities and they choose how they’re going to manage them. I can’t tell you what form Animation Resources will take after I’m gone. That’s up to the people who take the reins and run it to decide for themselves.

What I can tell you is that the idea will continue in some form or another. I don’t judge my work by the number of scans or films in our collection. I count the number of artists that I’ve helped over the past couple of decades. Since 2004, there have been dozens and dozens of young artists who I dubbed “the archive kids”. I invited them in, treated them as peers, and shared with them. They all charted their own course. No two are alike. But these kids aren’t kids any more- they’ve gone on to work as professional artists at every studio in town. I am VERY proud of them and what they’ve built for themselves.

They’re all different, but I’ve shared the same thing with every one of them… a love and respect for their art form. None of them see animation as “just a job”. It’s their passion. They continue to learn and grow and change with the times. They’ll be creating and learning and growing long after I’m gone.

My goal has always been to be a catalyst to move the art of animation forward. My hope is that the effect I’ve had on these archive kids spreads like a ripple for years and years. I believe that generosity breeds generosity. The artists from the previous generation that I was lucky enough to know were very generous with me. I share that forward. The archive kids subscribe ti the same philosophy. They call it “infecting” their fellow artists with passion for animation. The future is in their hands. I have no doubt that the ripple will continue to spread.

There’s no other organization that does what Animation Resources does. I think our work is important. I hope you do too.

That said, I have a question for you…

For the past month, Animation Resources has shared incredible downloads and livestreams. We haven’t locked them up behind a password gateway or charged money for them. Everyone had access for free. Did you take advantage of these podcasts, e-books, videos and Discord events? Do you appreciate the material we share on our site every day of the week? Are you glad Animation Resources exists?

If so, why haven’t you signed up as a member yet?

Animation Resources is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. We aren’t supported by government grants, and the big studios don’t feel any need to support us. That’s fine. We’re here to serve artists, not the government or large corporations. We expect artists to show their appreciation by supporting the organization that supports them.

Who are the people behind Animation Resources? We’re a handful of the current crop of archive kids along with a half dozen professionals who feel strongly about the art of animation. None of us are paid. All of us work very hard preparing the Reference Packs and podcasts for you. Artists know how difficult it is to be an artist. We have to stick together and support each other. We owe it to each other, and we owe it to the muse.

Some people see animation as just a job. Those aren’t the people Animation Resources is looking to serve. We’re looking for people with a passion for the medium and a drive to create- artists who strive to better themselves and learn and grow. Does that describe you? Then I’ll ask the question again…

Why haven’t you signed up as a member yet?

A lot of people tell me that they think Animation Resources is great, and they’ve thought about joining, but they just haven’t gotten around to it yet. That isn’t demonstrating respect and support for the hard work of the volunteers that create all this valuable reference material for you. You wouldn’t go to a restaurant and eat a wonderful meal and then “not get around” to paying the bill. How much is your creative growth worth to you?

It’s not hard to create a ripple yourself. All we ask is that you contribute $95 a year to help us pay our bills and grow our organization so the work of Animation Resources will continue to have an impact for decades to come. Please join today.

Stephen Worth
President
Animation Resources

It’s Members Appreciation Time again at Animation Resources, and For the past decade, Animation Resources has been serving artists working in the fields of animation, cartooning and illustration. Our volunteers and members have pulled together to raise the bar for our art form, and it’s time to celebrate… It’s Members Appreciation time again!

During the month of February, Animation Resources expresses our appreciation for to members with a very special Reference Pack, and we invite you to become a member too. For the next 30 days, we will be sharing reasons why you should join us. Our benefits of membership far exceed the cost of our annual dues. You can find out what our members get at the Member Appreciation Page. It’s easy to join. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…

Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal.

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Animation Resources is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our group is operated entirely by volunteers, there are no employees. 100% of the money that we collect in dues and direct donations go to supporting our programs serving the worldwide animation community. For instance, here is one thing Animation Resources members have purchased for the organization…

This is a Drobo 5n network attached server. This holds five 10TB hard drives. With a usable disk space of 30TB. It spreads the data across all five drives, so if one hard drive fails, or even two hard drives crash at the same time, all we have to do is pop a new drive in, and the data is recreated from the redundant data on the remaining drives. Our volunteers have invested tens of thousands of hours into digitizing animated films and artwork for our archive database. A solid backup plan and equipment like this is vital to protecting that investment.

When we began accepting memberships in 2013, all we had was one copy of each digital file in our collection on hard drives that dated back as far as six years. Since then, we have been using the money from the membership dues to purchase new, more rugged drives and disk arrays like this Drobo. At this point between our master servers and all of our backups, we have nearly 200 TB of data. All of our data is fully protected now, but we are working on creating a third backup for offsite storage.

This Drobo 5n has the potential to allow us to connect our database to the internet, so volunteers who don’t happen to live in the Los Angeles area can log in remotely to help us catalog and cross link our collection. In the past year or two, we have purchased several of these Drobo disk arrays, which are capable of hosting all of our current work files. This will allow us to catalog our material much faster than we have been ever been able to in the past.

Currently, our two main computers are 6 years old and our 12 years old backup computers died recently. We make do with what we have, but in order to run the database properly, we need speed. If you are upgrading your Mac, consider donating your old one to Animation Resources. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit, so your donation may be tax deductible. Our short term goal is to get a Mac Pro with solid state drives that will be able to run our whole database at usable speeds. But we can’t afford that with the number of members we now have.

Eventually, we would like to start migrating our database to a cloud server, accessible through the Members Only Page. We would also like to be able to make our collection available to universities and libraries via the internet, so the archive’s reach can be worldwide. That’s still a few years in the future, but every step we take gets us closer and closer to our goal. The speed that we progress is directly related to the amount of financial support our members contribute to the project.

It’s Members Appreciation Time again at Animation Resources, and For the past decade, Animation Resources has been serving artists working in the fields of animation, cartooning and illustration. Our volunteers and members have pulled together to raise the bar for our art form, and it’s time to celebrate… It’s Members Appreciation time again!

During the month of February, Animation Resources expresses our appreciation for to members with a very special Reference Pack, and we invite you to become a member too. For the next 30 days, we will be sharing reasons why you should join us. Our benefits of membership far exceed the cost of our annual dues. You can find out what our members get at the Member Appreciation Page. It’s easy to join. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…

Animation Resources depends on your contributions to support its projects. Even if you can’t afford to join our group right now, please click the button below to donate whatever you can afford using PayPal.

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