🔸 THE FINAL CUT 🔸
INDUSTRY NEWS FOR VISUAL STORYTELLERS
The Final Cut · May 29, 2026
Storyboarding · Animation · Comics · Pre-Production · Tools & Pipeline
Happy Friday, and welcome back to The Final Cut — your weekly roundup of what’s moving in the world of visual storytelling.
A wild week. Netflix Animation’s production workers just ratified their first union contract with The Animation Guild — 89% in favor — and three days later Dark Horse Comics workers announced they’re unionizing too. Meanwhile Amazon dropped a GenAI animation slate that pulled Jorge Gutierrez in and a BuzzFeed-revived “Good Advice Cupcake” project that the show’s actual creator publicly torched as “an assault on artists everywhere.” That all happened in 72 hours.
Grab a coffee. Let’s get into it.
Industry — Animation (Labor)
Netflix Animation Production Workers Ratify Their First Union Contract With The Animation Guild
Feature production workers at Netflix Animation Studios voted 89% in favor of ratifying their first contract with IATSE Local 839 (The Animation Guild) on May 28. The agreement, hammered out over two weeks of bargaining this month, sets wage minimums, dismissal pay, and workplace protections for production workers — a group that’s been organizing across studios in waves since 2023. TAG framed it as foundational, and it now becomes the template every newer NAS-style unit will negotiate against.
Source: Animation World Network · May 28, 2026
Comics & Illustration (Labor)
Dark Horse Comics Workers Announce They’re Unionizing — On The Studio’s 40th Anniversary
Workers at Dark Horse Media went public on May 27 as Dark Horse Workers United (DHWU), asking interim CEO Jay Komas and Dark Horse leadership to voluntarily recognize the union by June 3. Their stated goals: job security, transparent decision-making, and a seat at the table on choices that affect creators and staff. This lands in the same week as the Netflix Animation ratification — and signals that visual storytelling labor organizing isn’t slowing down, it’s spreading from animation studios into traditional comics publishing.
Source: The Beat · May 27, 2026
Tools & Pipeline
Amazon Unveils Its First GenAI Animation Slate — Including A Jorge Gutierrez Series
Amazon MGM Studios and AWS announced a three-title slate built around generative AI production tools: Cupcake & Friends from BuzzFeed Studios, Love, Diana Music Hunters from former Nickelodeon exec Albie Hecht, and — most unexpected — Punky Duck from Book of Life and Maya and the Three filmmaker Jorge R. Gutierrez. Gutierrez clarified afterward that he plans to use AI cautiously with “artists driving tech, and not the other way around,” and noted the project hit greenlight two months after pitch. The slate marks Amazon’s first formal push to bring generative AI tools into commissioned animation pipelines.
Source: Cartoon Brew · May 27, 2026
Comics & Illustration
‘Good Advice Cupcake’ Creator Loryn Brantz Slams BuzzFeed’s AI Revival Of Her Character
One of the Amazon slate’s titles — Cupcake & Friends — revives “Cuppy,” the character Loryn Brantz created as Good Advice Cupcake while at BuzzFeed. Brantz, no longer at the company, posted that BuzzFeed is moving forward without her using generative AI and called it “an assault on artists everywhere.” BuzzFeed responded that Brantz had been invited to participate but declined due to her opposition to generative AI, comparing its use to Disney’s adoption of Xerox for inbetweening. The split — IP holder vs. original creator — is a preview of fights working creatives can expect when companies revive owned characters using AI without the people who designed them.
Source: Cartoon Brew · May 28, 2026
Industry — Film & TV
Louis Clichy’s Hand-Painted ‘Iron Boy’ Takes The Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize At Cannes
Cannes 2026 had its strongest animation showing in recent memory — Critics’ Week opened with In Waves, and the Marché du Film expanded its animation program to three days. When the prizes were called Saturday night, Louis Clichy’s Iron Boy, a hand-painted feature, won the Special Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard, and Lucas Acher’s hybrid student short Laser-Cat took La Cinef. Two wins out of a packed field, but the signal matters: Cannes programmers are actively giving animation slots that used to belong to live-action auteur work.
Source: Cartoon Brew · May 26, 2026
Tools & Pipeline
Black Eye Technologies Launches Black Eye 2.0 — A Dynamic Camera System For Unreal Engine
Black Eye 2.0 shipped May 28 — a major update to the dynamic camera system built exclusively for Unreal Engine. It targets a real production headache: cinematic and gameplay cameras both tend to break when scene layouts, animation, or timing change late in a project, forcing teams to rebuild camera logic from scratch. The company is founded by Adam Myhill and Gerald Orban, the team behind Cinemachine, and the new release adds modular tools for gameplay, cinematics, marketing content, virtual production, and in-engine storytelling. Worth a look for previs and virtual production teams already on Unreal.
Source: Animation World Network · May 28, 2026
Animation — Technique (Stop-Motion)
Netflix Drops Trailer For ‘I Am Frankelda’ — Mexico’s First Stop-Motion Feature
Netflix released a trailer and new images on May 28 for Arturo and Roy Ambriz’s I Am Frankelda (Soy Frankelda), Mexico’s first stop-motion feature, which streams June 12. The story follows a gifted 19th-century writer whose ignored dark tales come to life when she’s thrust into her own subconscious — a setup tailor-made for stop-motion’s tactile, slightly uncanny range. The film was Annie Award-nominated and represents a significant milestone for the Mexican animation industry’s growing presence in long-form stop-motion.
Source: Animation World Network · May 28, 2026
From the Community
A few Substack posts from the visual storytelling community worth a restack this week.
Animation Obsessive
The Look of ‘Ernest & Celestine’
A deep dive into how the watercolor look of Ernest & Celestine was built — the kind of visual breakdown that’s almost extinct now. If you do production design, board, or color, you’ll get something out of this.
By Animation Obsessive Staff · May 25, 2026
Animation Obsessive
Escaping Cartoons
On the rise of “animation” as a respectable term — and what gets lost when the medium tries too hard to leave “cartoons” behind. A useful conversation given how often the industry’s prestige push gets read as a rejection of where the craft came from.
By Animation Obsessive Staff · May 22, 2026
Animation Obsessive
Three Follow-Ups
This morning’s drop — more on Xerox, Sherlock Hound, and Chen-Yi Chang. Good companion to the Loryn Brantz / BuzzFeed AI story above, since the Xerox-as-precedent argument is being thrown around a lot right now.
By Animation Obsessive Staff · May 29, 2026
And that’s a wrap for this week. We’ll be back next Friday with more industry news.
Beyond The Process is a newsletter for working creatives in visual storytelling — storyboarding, animation, comics, illustration, and film pre-production.
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