Sony Imageworks is taking 10 years before it can premiere its first production (Open Season, left) while smaller players are rapidly expanding, like Animal Logic with Happy Feet. © Sony Pictures Animation (l) & © 2006 Warner B

While Sony Pictures Imageworks took 10 years to plan its new animation division, which launches Sept. 29, 2006, with the opening of Open Season, the digital revolution is now changing the rest of the CG landscape at a much faster rate. Whereas the major studios had been the sole suppliers of animated features, smaller players are now rapidly expanding to provide product for the box office. For example, Australian vfx house Animal Logic is in production on its first 3D-animated feature, Happy Feet, which opens November through Warner Bros. Pictures.

In London, Framestore CFC has recently formed Framestore Feature Animation. Founded with the aim of becoming London's premiere permanent feature animation studio, Framestore Feature Animation has commenced work on its first project, The Tale of Despereaux, in partnership with Universal Studios. Meanwhile, Santa Monica-based Digital Dimension opened a feature animation studio in Montreal some two years ago and now has several animated features in the pipeline.

But it’s not just feature entertainment that is fueling the expansion. Guava, a New York visual effects studio, has significantly expanded its 3D animation department to keep up with growing client demand for character animation, effects animation, virtual 3D sets, compositing and related effects.

Brickyard VFX has taken the “shrink and grow” approach by launching a new 3D division to be run by Jay Lichtman (left), Yafei Wu (center) and Robert Sethi.

In that same regard, David Waller and Geoff McAuliffe, co-owners of bi-coastal Brickyard VFX, have taken the “shrink and grow” approach by launching a new 3D division to be run by Jay Lichtman, Yafei Wu and Robert Sethi. Lichtman was head of production and Wu was senior 3D lead at Glassworks and Sethi was lead character animator at Double Negative.

According to Waller, expansion was a matter of necessity. “If the people aren’t in house, you don’t have access to them all the time. It seems like with CG, people get gobbled up quickly on big projects and disappear for a while. So if you expect to be competitive with these higher end jobs, then you need to get a (CG) department in house.”

What prompted Brickyard, with offices in Boston and Santa Monica, to go to London to select talent? “Jay Lichtman, is a talented guy — an uncommonly talented guy,” acknowledges Waller, “and we heard he wanted to come back to the States. We thought that maybe he would be a good person to lead the department. And he had suggested a couple of guys [Wu and Sethi] he knew in London that were really, really good and that really wanted to move to L. A. As a team, he thought the three of them might be able to function well right off the bat from day one and start making pictures.” So, it takes more than raw talent to set up a new CG core.”

Besides skill and synergy, Waller pointed out another contributing factor to the hire: versatility. “One of the things we liked about these two artists (Wu and Sethi) was that they weren’t so far down any road that they were so specialized that they wouldn’t be able to work in a small place. You get some people who can just do tracking or they can just do shading. That’s their thing. These guys could do pretty much everything.”