Recently, the animation industry has shown remarkable resilience, reinventing itself to remain relevant. Examples include Arcane, in which animators relied on keyframe animation, resulting in manual animations textured by artists and stylized in a painted look. Blue Eye Samurai is another special show in which animators drew the characters in 2D and inserted them into 3D spaces with the help of CGI and a live-action approach to camerawork.
However, modern animation faces numerous challenges despite the increasing talent and innovation. Animation studios, especially, often face tight deadlines that lead to unsatisfied viewers, poor work-life balance that triggers burnout, and technical issues in the production process, such as hardware malfunctions or software glitches.
The latter tend to be the most frustrating and time-consuming, considering animators rely on technology the most. A possible solution to this struggle is cloud services that enhance collaboration and provide efficient online spaces for creating content. Here are the most common types and their use cases in the industry.
How can the cloud benefit animators?
Usually, animators need powerful workstations and a reliable internet connection to maintain a decent workflow and collaborate with teams. This could lead to slower productivity and even technical difficulties, which is why more are switching to cloud-based services.
Accessing online-based tools for creating, editing, and rendering content is a game-changer. It supports features such as remote rendering, which processes complex animations without risking lag on the computer. The software also automatically saves changes, tracks revisions, and enables real-time collaboration.
Another important feature is cloud storage, which helps animators adapt according to the size of the project. Animators must research the best software solution, given that rendering services are computationally intensive. Let’s explore the available options.
Animation software based on the cloud
Animators who prioritize scalability, flexibility, and security, along with collaboration, will choose cloud computing. It is one of the most used features because it allows teams to work from anywhere in the world, thanks to its high security standards, and to collaborate in real time.
When choosing such a tool, it’s important to consider intuitive tools, prebuilt assets and characters, and easy 3D animation that doesn’t require heavy software. However, it’s worth noting that cloud animation is highly dependent on the internet, and subscription costs include recurring fees. Moreover, the provider’s security protocols might not always be reliable.
However, cloud-based animation is promising, given the rising trend of AI integration, which helps animators achieve automatic lip-syncing or enhance motion. In addition, real-time rendering is possible with previews and final renders that don’t need the support of expensive machines.
Animation that uses cloud rendering
Cloud rendering is important because it provides speed where animators would usually struggle to finish scenes. It helped create some of the best films, like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, by establishing an efficient process for achieving a unique animation on the market.
Users can upload their files and set the rendering settings, expecting the final frames to be ready in a short timeframe. It’s the ideal alternative to rendering farms, both in terms of cost and speed. Moreover, cloud rendering can render multiple files at the same time, which is a good multitasking feature that helps animators focus on more important aspects of a project.
Still, it’s best to thoroughly research the available software, as some products lack support for plugins and specialized software. Moreover, cloud rendering can still be pricey, given the computing resources it provides.
Animation based on a hybrid approach
The hybrid approach is a mix of software and hardware that more remote animators choose. They can use whatever desktop tools they prefer while syncing files to the cloud automatically. Security is supported by data encryption, securing client confidentiality. In addition, hybrid systems use in-house creative control but still rely on the cloud for collaboration.
Moreover, this approach allows animators to combine more complex elements, such as 2D and 3D elements, to capture the dimensions of a character and an environment. Fusing these techniques creates a real depth and dimensionality that viewers appreciate, as seen in some of the best animations like Arcane.
Hybrid animation has numerous advantages, such as the following:
- It supports flexibility with seamless integration of styles;
- It enhances the visual storytelling by improving the narrative;
- It captivates the audience’s attention with unique visuals;
- It’s cost-efficient and maintains high-quality of the final product;
What are the best animations of 2025?
As the animation industry expanded, more and more unique stories and visuals emerged each year. In 2025, we’ll also have some pretty neat animations coming from different productions. Pixar, for example, won people’s hearts with the story of Elio, a young boy whose imagination takes him to another planet. The movie's visual atmosphere was unlike anything else, with the team behind the project revolutionizing their approach by layering the lighting differently than usual, which happened at the end of the animation.
Another notable project is K-Pop Demon Hunters, whose popularity skyrocketed upon release. With a vibrant visual style, the story of the three girls forming a band hunting a demon in an alternate world became Netflix’s most-watched film, maintaining its place in the top ten for 15 weeks straight. The animation techniques were also unique, drawing inspiration from 2D aesthetics but focusing more on a three-dimensional approach and CG. This is how the team brought the movie's glamour, with a lot of soft focus on the effects and many lensing choices that offered a bold, graphic look to the characters and environments.
Other notable animations include Ne Zha 2, a Chinese movie featuring heroes and demons in scenes never seen before, and Jumbo, an Indonesian film about a boy dreaming of becoming an artist.
Conclusion
Animation is one of the fastest-evolving industries in technology, constantly revolutionized by talented teams. Developers use different approaches to animate and create visual storylines, each with its own system. Many rely on cloud technologies that enable real-time collaboration and reduce hardware requirements, but a hybrid approach is usually preferred, allowing artists to use their own hardware while still benefiting from the security of the cloud.
