Will AI Replace Animators? The Honest Truth From a Game of Thrones Animator

By Jonathan Symmonds, Lead Animator, Game of Thrones | Founder, Sophoria Academy

Every week I get messages from students asking the same question. Sometimes it’s nervous, sometimes almost apologetic, like they’re embarrassed to be considering animation as a career in 2025.

“Jonathan… will AI take my job before I even get started?”

I understand the fear. After 23 years animating creatures for some of the biggest productions in film and television history, including Avatar, Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, I want to give you the honest, unfiltered answer. Not the cheerful one. Not the doom-and-gloom one. The real one.

The Part Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud

Let me start with something most people in the industry won’t admit: the animation industry is contracting right now. I receive calls and emails from colleagues I’ve worked alongside for years, genuinely talented people, legends of the craft, asking if I have any projects coming into my studio. People who helped build the visual language of modern cinema are struggling to find consistent work.

So yes, it’s hard out there. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

What I want you to understand is this: the reason the industry is contracting has very little to do with AI, and everything to do with the economics of content production. The real problem is that there simply isn’t enough content being created at the moment. Major studios are competing on budget, which means they often hire three juniors instead of one experienced artist. What they don’t account for is that those three juniors take just as long to train, and correcting their mistakes costs time. And time, as we all know, is money.

Because of that, in my own company I hire experienced artists. Always. Because one artist who delivers perfect work on schedule is worth more than three who need hand-holding. The industry will catch up to that logic eventually.

What AI Actually Cannot Do

AI can generate animation. It’s getting faster too. In fact, in a couple of minutes it can produce a walking jellyfish, a centipede that turns into a butterfly, or a talking crab with a full performance. I’ve seen it. It’s genuinely impressive.

But what happens when a director wants to change something? What happens when the creative brief shifts halfway through production, when the director wants the centipede to move with more menace, or the jellyfish to feel more graceful, or the crab to land a moment of comedic timing that actually works? AI can regenerate, but it cannot respond. It cannot interpret. It simply cannot take direction.

That is what I call the animator push.

The animator push is the human instinct that shapes a performance. It’s the accumulated knowledge of every creature you’ve ever studied, every film you’ve ever watched, every physical law of weight and timing you’ve absorbed over years of practice. It’s the thing that makes a horse that can talk feel believable, because you already know, in your bones, exactly what breaks the suspension of disbelief when you blend human and animal movement.

AI has no suspension of disbelief. It has no bones.

The GOT Dragons: Why No AI Could Have Made Them

Let me tell you how we actually made the Game of Thrones dragons move, because most people have no idea.

We didn’t simply sit down at a computer and start animating. First, we bought chicken wings and studied how bones move under skin. Then we referenced horses, crocodiles, bats, eagles, snakes and lizards, anything that could inform how a creature like this might exist. We even placed the dragon model inside a virtual wind tunnel simulator to test whether the anatomy could physically sustain flight, and used that data to refine the model accordingly.

There was also a challenge nobody ever talks about: the dragons had to grow from babies to adults across multiple seasons. Every time their size and weight increased, the entire physics of how they moved had to be reconsidered from scratch. Heavier mass, different centre of gravity, different wing beat frequency, a completely different sense of effort and momentum.

That kind of iterative, instinct-driven, reference-hunting process is not something AI can replicate. Not because of a technical limitation that will be solved next year, but because it fundamentally requires a human nervous system to understand what feels real.

The Trollhunter Story

One of my favourite moments in 20 years of this career happened in Norway, where I was working as Lead Animator on the feature film Trollhunter. The director wanted the massive, ancient trolls to move very quickly.

Every instinct I had told me it was wrong. A creature of that size and weight simply cannot move that fast without destroying the audience’s belief in it. I pushed back. The director insisted.

So I made him put on a heavy sack and re-enact the movements himself.

He couldn’t do it.

That was the end of the conversation. That moment, the instinct to protect the truth of a performance and fight for physical credibility even when a director is pushing you to abandon it, is something no algorithm will ever replicate. The entire film could have become a meme. Instead, it worked, because a human made the call.

That’s the animator push. And it lives in you, not in a machine.

What I Tell Every Young Animator Starting Out Today

The world is changing. That’s not a threat. It’s simply a fact. Compared to when I started, the opportunities available to young animators today are extraordinary.

When I began my career, I studied animation for four years at university. After that, I spent two years as a runner, making tea and coffee, observing, absorbing everything. I had to earn my break the old-fashioned way.

Today, a young artist can access world-class training from anywhere in the world, at a fraction of the cost, and start building a professional portfolio immediately. The barrier to entry has never been lower. So what will separate you from everyone else?

Fill your bucket with sand.

Every skill you add makes you heavier: harder to replace, more valuable, more attractive to hire. Learn to animate birds, insects, quadrupeds, dinosaurs, and creatures that don’t exist. Show that you can deliver believable weight and timing on anything. Then add editing skills, learn Photoshop, and understand the pipeline. The more you can do, the less replaceable you become.

On top of that, surround yourself with the best people you can find. This is the piece of advice that changed my life:

“Surround yourself only with the best. The better they are, the better you will become.”

Invest in your education, your skills, and your network. Because the animator who does all three will never struggle to find work, and no AI is coming for them.

For some inspiration on what’s possible, watch my TED Talk, the story of my journey from Zimbabwe, through my career, and the lessons I learned along the way:

The Bottom Line

Will AI replace animators? For generic, low-stakes, easily reproducible work, it already is. I won’t lie to you about that.

But for the work that truly matters: the dragon that has to grow from a hatchling to a mountain-sized predator across five seasons, the troll that has to feel ancient and massive moving through a Norwegian forest at night, the creature that doesn’t exist anywhere in nature and still has to feel completely real, that work requires a human.

It requires experience, instinct, curiosity, and the willingness to put a heavy sack on a director’s back and prove a point.

That work is yours. And it will be for a very long time.

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Jonathan Symmonds is a VFX artist and animator with over 20 years of industry experience. His credits include Avatar (James Cameron), Game of Thrones (Seasons 5–8), House of the Dragon, and Prince of Persia. He received three VES Award nominations for his dragon animation work. He is the founder of Sophoria Academy, an affordable online VFX and animation education platform.

Watch Jonathan’s TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBS7BROldk

Start learning at Sophoria Academy: https://sophoria.academy