Creating Bluey: Tales from the Art Director(substack.com) |
Creating Bluey: Tales from the Art Director(substack.com) |
"...Or at least have a bit more financial security to show for it. My designs have generated roughly 2 billion dollars for the people lucky enough to be cashing in on it. Not bad surplus value for someone on an 88k salary."""
88k AUD is less than 60'000 USD, and as this art director worked one year on this, the raw ratio of wage earned to this is 0.00003, so 0.003 percent. Sure there were other people involved, but even if this art director's year of repetitive strain injuries is only worth one percent of the value of Bluey, then still it managed to capture only 0.3 percent of the value. This 99.7% makes the 30% Apple-tax on developers look good. I think it shouldn't.
The lesson for me is: creative endeavours are meant to die in our society.
That’s the inherent trade off in a salaried position - you are trading potential wealth for guaranteed security
I have seen every episode dozens of times (I have young grandkids who love it which has caused me to appreciate it beyond any other kids show I have ever seen). It’s certainly visually wonderful, with some really beautiful, innovative, and wonderful animation sequences (Sleepytime, Rain, Faceytalk come to mind). She is not giving enough credit here to the writing and messaging that is really IMO responsible for this show’s success. Lots of animated shows are visually amazing, but they don’t bring the beauty that Bluey does…which to me is wrapped around the amazing father that Bandit Heeler is to his kids…and it’s immersive into childlike imagination and world. That is the writing, the meat and potatoes, the animation design is the gravy.
The fact that access to capital is not evenly distributed means that those who don't have it have to surrender their surplus value to those that have it.
I'd love to move to Seattle and work for Amazon or something to get 'relevant industry experience' but what I'd really love to do is make a go of it here because - like the author - I believe Brisbane is secretly still the best city in the world ;-)
‘Bluey’s World’: How a Cute Aussie Puppy Became a Juggernaut - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43410874 - March 2025 (313 comments)
A look at the creative process behind Bluey and Cocomelon (2024) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43339206 - March 2025 (215 comments)
Also:
Bluey, and the hierarchy of distractions - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41510482 - Sept 2024 (14 comments)
How Australia’s ‘Bluey’ conquered children’s entertainment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38875399 - Jan 2024 (430 comments)
The second part to this is a fine example - https://goodsniff.substack.com/p/creating-bluey-tales-from-t...
I've always wondered how they managed to make the show look and feel Brisbane, and this delivers.
Pond Scum - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2VibU-NeEI
hear hear.
I'm pretty sure there's a few other studios here too which are good. I'm just sharing this 'cos, well... it's nice to hear the positives.
Edit: yeah part 3 https://goodsniff.substack.com/p/creating-bluey-tales-from-t...
You could get many counter examples of projects that did very well and where everyone was in crunch mode for the last 6 months. There is no rule out there and one team being successful once doing things one way is not a proof of anything
The Voices of Bluey w/ Uncle Stripe https://www.20k.org/episodes/thevoicesofbluey
The Organic Sound of Bluey w/ Sound Designer Dan Brumm https://www.20k.org/episodes/thesoundofbluey
>I truly realised that if you create what YOU want to create, the jobs and opportunities that will creatively satisfy you the most will come out of exuding that energy into the world.
This is all about the commercial application of art, but I find it can work for science as well.
> * it was the beginnings of social media in the early 2010s*
- IRC + NNTP newsgroups were already popular by 1989.
- Myspace was quite popular by 2004.
- Facebook was popular by... 2006 I guess?
and that's just a few platforms I can mention.
I got back into web stuff when I moved to the states and have been up and down the stack many times since, but I have a ton of nostalgia for the stuff we did back then. Web 2 was an annoying new buzzword and we were still mostly writing software for kiosks, device drivers in C, bridging that with Lua, and using Flash for the interface b/c everybody else in the space was using shitty C++ Motif interfaces. . . . memory lane.
Imagine that Newtown and the Inner West are a lot different than when I lived there, but I do miss that time.
I just don’t see _as much_ self-directed ambition or obsession? Going to a meetup in Seattle or SF in the early 2010s there were serious obsessives. Masters of domains like Go or JavaScript and someone from Sequoia at the Startup Weekend. Always flocks of folks looking to start their next business. That same bug just never hit here?
This I find weird, surely there are people who can sense opportunities unlockable by tech and Australia is not at all easier or any less expensive than the U.S., I still can’t quite put my finger on it. For me there’s still a magical cultural element to a place like SF, and to an extent – Seattle, when it comes to creating new opportunities.
If you’re around in the next week or two it’d be great to grab coffee and talk about it! Coffee being the great Aussie connector and all.
You can find my email on my profile.
Let me save you the trip, you don't want to work for Amazon at the money they pay. They would have to 1.5x it or maybe even double it to make it worth the suffering of working there.
Life is short-- work somewhere else, or failing that, on your own thing :)
Personally the 3 times I visited Brisbane, were all in all quite neutral for me, not great, not bad. But friends had way worse experiences and when I found a iconic backpackers book, "No shitting on the toilet", I had a good laugh about those passages:
"A friend of mine would never leave a place until he’d had a good time there. Another friend would not leave a destination until he had learnt something encouraging about the people and their culture. Both are currently stuck in Brisbane."
So .. I would have been stuck there as well. So please no offense about your home town. I love Queensland. And Bluey. And would give your hometown a chance again. But I do know people who never ever want to go there again. (But it also has been some years.)
I think a lot of Brisbanes secret beauty is well hidden from people just visiting. The temperate rainforests, glasshouse mountains, some of the best beaches in the world all within an hours drive. The strange birds, the general attitude of the public. I think it's all quite nice. My only personal gripe is that I think it's far too hot in summer!
I'm also extremely biased though, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. Brisbane does have an awful lot of mediocrity too, but I'm still proud of it, and keen to show it off in 2032 with the Olympics!
The oligarchs have put in place roadblocks to free distribution and free enterprise with many historical parallels.
UFC deliberately acquired lands containing key water sources, which gave them control over entire agricultural regions.
Major streaming platforms acquire exclusive distribution rights to popular IP franchises, controlling access to valuable content "watersheds" that audiences already want.
In countries like Guatemala and Honduras, UFC company built extensive irrigation systems that they controlled exclusively, making surrounding farms dependent on their cooperation.
Dominant platforms control recommendation algorithms and user interfaces that determine content discovery, making independent creators dependent on these "irrigation systems" to reach audiences.
UFC secured favorable water rights legislation in many countries, often through political influence, giving them priority access during droughts or shortages.
Large media conglomerates lobby for favorable copyright and licensing frameworks, often extending protection periods or creating barriers that disproportionately benefit established players.
In some cases, UFC would redirect water to their plantations, leaving independent farmers with insufficient irrigation during critical growing periods.
Platforms can suddenly change recommendation algorithms or promotional strategies, redirecting audience "flow" to preferred content and leaving independent creators with insufficient visibility.
UFC built and controlled private railroad networks (like the Northern Railway in Costa Rica) that were often the only viable way to transport bananas to ports before they spoiled.
Major platforms control the technical infrastructure for content delivery, forcing creators to use their systems under their terms to reach audiences before content becomes irrelevant.
UFC owned or controlled most major port facilities needed for export, creating a bottleneck they controlled entirely.
Key content aggregation points (app stores, streaming platforms) operate as essential "ports" that creators must pass through, with these gatekeepers taking significant revenue percentages.
In more remote regions, UFC maintained the only usable roads, effectively controlling who could move products to market.
Social media platforms maintain the only viable pathways to audience building in many genres, controlling which creators gain visibility through opaque algorithmic decisions.
UFC's fleet of refrigerated ships controlled the actual export logistics, completing their vertical integration.
The largest media companies control integrated marketing, distribution, and monetization systems that independent creators cannot replicate, completing their vertical integration advantage.
This infrastructure control meant that even farmers who maintained their land independence faced a stark choice: sell to UFC at their offered prices or watch crops rot without access to transportation networks. Many small farmers eventually sold their land simply because independent operation became economically impossible under these conditions.
Just as farmers with technically "independent" land still couldn't effectively operate without UFC's infrastructure, many content creators today maintain technical ownership of their intellectual property but face nearly impossible odds without access to the distribution infrastructure controlled by major platforms and media companies.
Lots of factors involved, some more regulatory others more cultural. One is that Australia’s property market has been so hot for so long it sucks up a lot of investment; the US market, while recently being quite hot as well, has historically been much more mixed (the US had a big price drop around the time of the GFC, Australia saw some declines but they were a lot smaller). Another is the US legal system tends to be more borrower-friendly in bankruptcy, foreclosures, etc, making people more willing to take out loans to fund their business ideas
Maybe see you there :)
I also hear good things about Dinosaur Polo Club
I'll take a gander at Runaway Play later this weekend. Thank you for the pointer!
Easier said than done, but some people I knew from college actually managed to pull this off.
Perhaps even via basically free 0.03% expense ratio index fund that automatically gives the owner access to business success across the entire economy.
Bluey is also made by the government, so technically, there is no equity gains or profit to be had at that level, it’s just a negotiation of compensation.
But yes, they would have had bigger reach, and we might not have gotten this far without the BBC. I just want the ABC to have got a more significant chunk.
The interesting question would be “if at the time they had offered him 40k and points, would he have chosen that?”
Van Gogh couldn't trade his paintings for stale bread.
I also don't get where you get these idea that there's this huge glut of artists producing work that's unpopular and getting paid for it. If you're at the point you're getting paid 90k a year, you're working in studios that almost certainly turn a profit.
I've hired people first hand for projects that ended up being a flop. They made out much better than I did
Someone has to take the risk. It's not guaranteed it'll be a risk with a positive expected value either
They have years where they make hundreds of millions, years when they lose hundreds of millions.
It is weird to want the security of a paycheck, participation in unlikely huge successes, and no exposure to much more likely flops.
You ironically and accidentally stumbled onto the very reason Marxism has always failed so miserably.
In this case, not getting a royalty for their contribution is shameful.
Fyi, George Lucas made sure everyone involved in Star Wars got taken care of.
What capital is there to own? Maybe Ludo Studios negotiated a piece of the pie for themselves, but I doubt it is much in the grand scheme of things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluey_(TV_series)
> It was commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Broadcasting Corporation, with BBC Studios holding global distribution and merchandising rights.
> What capital is there to own?
The rights you mentioned is part of the ‘capital’ - these days capital and ‘means of production’ certainly involve intellectual property. I think it always did - capital was always referring to ownership - but the mix is starting to lean heavily on intangibles now, with software running so much of the world. The ABC & BBC capital used to include tons of high power broadcasting equipment, but maybe that mostly going or gone now?
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
No, the marketing is everything. The product is just a floor... it just has to be "good enough".
See: pop music.
You get baseline security by trading away the unlimited upside, but you are still incentivised to produce your best work by knowing if you help create a huge success you’ll get additional compensation for it.
>it was about capital ownership granting full access to work-created value.
> Granting full access to work-created value” means the owners (investors, CEO, etc.) would split profits among workers rather than keep the profits for themselves.
This is remuneration, the reward in exchange for your effort/wares/risk.
In this case, the artist would have had to ask taxpayers (or the taxpayers’ representatives) to sell them a piece of the taxpayer’s equity. Or some type of royalty/revenue sharing agreement.
Obviously, that was not going to happen for a small time artist (that kind of stuff is reserved for well connected people when it comes to government assets).
But the second best option the world has come up with is public equity markets, where the common people can invest and gain access to equity, which is also very liquid.
Startup investors often treat this like an odds game, expecting that while 9 out of 10 investments might fail, one of them will return better than 10x, which turns into a net profit on investments.
The “risk” might be relatively big for small investors, but it’s quite low for the bigger savvier institutional investors.
Startups are economically interesting, but they are not the majority of the economy. When evaluating parent’s argument, don’t forget to think about companies like Walmart, Amazon, Exxon, and Disney.
Yeah, it's not free profit though. If you're not good at choosing investments you end up with 9 out of 10 failing, and 1 only making 2x. That's what I mean by there are no guarantees of it
It's very easy to look at an isolated case where they made 10x and see it as unfair.. and miss the 9 other shots they took which lost money. Or hell the 90 other shots, and they're still in the hole overall
> When evaluating parent’s argument, don’t forget to think about companies like Walmart, Amazon, Exxon, and Disney.
Yeah these are definitely a different ballgame. Not sure where I stand on it - I don't know enough about the economics of that
> It’s very easy to look at an isolated case where they made 10x and see it as unfair
“Unfair” is subjective and an insanely deep topic we can’t even begin broach here thoughtfully. It’s always true that a profitable company has incomes that exceed its costs, by definition. Since costs include employee pay, it’s always true in a profitable company that employees are collectively providing a greater value to the company than they are capturing for themselves. You’re still arguing from a failed startup perspective, and by and large, failing and failed startups are not running the economy, nor are even a significant portion. The majority of people in the economy are working for someone else’s profitable company. People who have money do take risks on startups for the chance make it big, but those people had money to begin with.
You can call capital equity or remuneration, but that seems slightly weird even though there’s overlap of concepts. Either way, I don’t think that’s what the phrase @plotics used was referring to. The “capital” in that case was referring to the money, goods, and other means of production used to finance the project before any remuneration occurs. Capital is the leverage by which the well connected people assert the rights to the future profits. Workers not having equity is indeed what not having access to the full value means, which keeps workers from building capital.
I think we’re probably in agreement. And even though there’s an analogy to capital, Bluey wasn’t a capitalist operation so definitely not clear Marxist ideas apply here.
The economics are the same for a startup and established company, no? I was just talking about that because that's what Bluey was. Walmart was also once a tiny business and the returns are still happening today. We're all free to own part of them through publicly traded stocks. Of course the returns are a lot lower now simply because there's less risk
If they're extracting so much extra from employees that they're overpriced in the market, that leaves room for a competitor to offer lower prices. "Your margin is my opportunity"
If they're getting outsized margins by paying tiny salaries, it opens up room for a competitor to get the best people to work for them by paying more
Worker co-ops are still an option under capitalism, also
It's not a perfect system but it seems to work fairly well?
> those people had money to begin with
Well.. are we not posting this on a VC firm's website? There are options to getting money if you're starting with none
I can very much get behind removing generational wealth. That benefits no-one
No, I don’t think so at all. A startup founder and a startup investor are starting from completely different places and have completely different risks from a minimum wage Walmart or McDonalds employee, and they usually occupy different social classes.
Workers in a co-op are part owner, so they become, in part, the capitalists. They might be fractional capitalists, but they are part worker and part owner. That’s fine, and it’s not what Marx was worried about. Marx was worried about the plight of the laborer who gets no share of the ownership at all. Startup founders are sometimes also owners, they are capitalists. Investors are more pure capitalists, they use their money to buy ownership of companies in hopes of making more money. Stock purchases are also a way to be a fractional owner in a way, that’s one way to look at it. Most minimum wage employees don’t have any stock, most of the lower class doesn’t have any stock.
Nobody said that owners don’t take risks in capitalism. They do take risks with their capital when they invest.
> Your margin is my opportunity
Tell that to the low-paid & minimum-wage workers across the country. Somehow competition has failed to result in the minimum wage going up on its own. Somehow competition hasn’t eliminated the working poor.
BTW most of the ultra rich capitalists are wildly in favor of generational wealth, since it benefits them and their families. Historically it was true that the majority of ultra-wealthy people had inherited their wealth, despite all the rags-to-riches and startup stories we’re told.