The Culture of Crisis in Animation and Visual Effects

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I cam across an article on CG Masters School of 3D Animation and VFX. It is called:


In today's computer graphics (CG) and visual effects (VFX) industry we see worrying trends in places where companies are counting on artists putting in unpaid overtime (which is illegal by the way) as a norm, delayed payments, bidding below production costs, under-cutting the competition just to get projects, and the exponential increase in a trend of outsourcing in an attempt to reduce operating costs.

Has the industry always been like that? Do computer animation companies and visual effects studio know how to do their businesses? Does CG and VFX really cost this much? Can they really be outsourced?

This article is written by Nicholas Boughen who is a VFX Supervisor, CG Supervisor and VFX School owner who has worked in the entertainment industry for 34 years as a team and facility manager, project manager, trainer and artist.

In it he shares about the history of the industry, how it started off with pioneers who push boundaries with unreserved dedication. From that time when CG and VFX was not even a field of artistic and technical field, to the present-day where the subject has become so well chartered out into very clear ares of study and specialisation, this article fills us in on what happened to the industry, giving us a broad view of the causes and effects that drive the operating trends of the industry which we artists have now become part of.

Excellent read for anybody working in, working with, consuming, or remotely interested in the processes, business, or the end products of visual effects and computer graphics.

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