Wow the money shot of this I think is the quote:

"...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.

What a fantastic write-up. As a Brisbane native and software developer I often feel similarly to the author about Brisbane's software dev scene. Brisbane so often feels like a backwater, with the big dogs down in Melbourne and Sydney, and the 'peak of industry' in the US.

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 ;-)

Recent and related (ok, maybe a bit much, but the new article looks good too!)

‘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)

As someone who struggles to make anything that looks good, I am fascinated by designers ability to take a brief and bring it to life using their own unique artisic voice.

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.

The art director's graduate animation project (as mentioned in the article) from 10 years ago:

Pond Scum - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2VibU-NeEI

I now avoid jobs that pressure everyone into thinking a good show or project can only be created at the expense of everyone’s well being. Even if the IP they’re offering you a chance to work on is exciting (and unfortunately I’ve seen way too many times now how this can be used as a bargaining chip to mistreat people). It doesn’t have to be that way. You can make something great without killing your crew.

hear hear.

Semi Related 20khtz episodes that are delightful:

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

As a brisbane resident, seeing aspects of my city skyline lovingly created for kids TV is fantastic. I like to imagine small people the world over seeing the story bridge or "the zip water heater" state government building or the brown snake and to them it's just Shelbyville without a monorail but to anyone from Brisvegas..

Amazing story, and what a narrative voice! The whole thing pulls you in and pushes you off, it builds you up and breaks you down. I loved this

>there’s a huge amount of calculated work and effort that can put yourself in a position for luck to occur.

>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.

Somehow this is written with an Australian accent.

Nitpick:

> * 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.