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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.05 - AUGUST 2000
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Recruiting at SIGGRAPH 2000 "In the past there was a need for senior-level personnel," Reinke said. "Then, as software and pipelines improved, it was easier to bring in junior-level artists, train them and put them in a solely artistic role. This resulted in having less technical skill development. Now we've come back around full circle and need experienced people with both skills." Reinke believes the greatest damage has been done by the numerous short trade programs that teach only software. The longer two-year programs produce students with superior talents, blending art, technology and software. He serves on advisory boards but finds most learning institutions and training facilities reluctant to lose the income generated by the demand for brief, concentrated software courses. "I often get students who say to me, 'I know Maya inside and out,'" Reinke said, "but we only use 50% of Maya because 25% will not work in our pipeline and 25% was rewritten to work in our pipeline. That means that 50% of the student's time was wasted learning software instead of improving artistic skills. We've always looked for generalists with strong, artistic style." Reinke serves as adviser on the board of Gnomon School of Visual Effects. "Gnomon is a good example of a fine upcoming school," he said. "They integrate skills in the way they train, retrain and cross-train." Reinke described the Cinesite culture as being relaxed and easy to work in without walls or cubicles, large enough to accommodate several big-budget, high-profile projects yet small enough to retain a "family" atmosphere with free-flowing communication. "Our environment tries to create and nurture personalities who want to be involved in everything," he said. For Reinke, one of the most important advantages to working at Cinesite is "the ability to see the whole production process, no matter what role you play." On the heels of Stuart Little, the upcoming Hollow Man and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Don Levy of Sony Pictures Imageworks welcomed keen interest from the SIGGRAPH community. "There are fewer than half a dozen enormous projects in the marketplace today. Imageworks is lined up to work on three," Levy said. "One of our priorities we're interested in is meeting shader writers. A lot of the kind of work we're doing looks as good as it does because we develop proprietary shaders that enable us to give our images the very special kinds of look that we're able to achieve. We're also looking for technical directors and character animators. One of the things Imageworks has become respected for is our work in creating digital characters and integrating those characters into live-action environments. A large measure of our success in creating those performances falls upon the shoulders of our digital animation team." Levy also emphasized that "talent knows no borders," inviting applicants from the international community. Sony's alliance with Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, a new operating unit of Sony Pictures Entertainment, has broadened the horizons this year for Levy. "All of our broadband initiatives, our online activities at Sony and our gaming unit, Sony Online Entertainment -- which includes EverQuest and the whole Verant Organization, which we have now acquired -- is represented in our booth," Levy said. "We will now be able to engage talent from a broader cross section of talent as broadband comes into play. The computer graphics opportunities are only going to grow, so we now have more opportunities." Jeff Fino, co-founder and executive producer of Wildbrain, said, "SIGGRAPH is not the best way to find people, but it is a great way to meet people." He said he likes to impact careers by imparting advice, adding, "Information exchange is the most important aspect of SIGGRAPH."
Wildbrain is looking for generalists who like to work on a wide variety of projects, including commercials and film. "Our employees might work on a commercial one week, then a short film or television series development the next week," Fino said. "We work on various types of projects." Top on Wildbrain's list was Internet animation. "We started modestly with 2D cartoons," Fino said, "but we are aggressively pursuing more 2D and 3D animation." Fino said he has tended to find more artists than producers and production managers at SIGGRAPH, and noted it's sometimes difficult to attract people to the Bay Area due to its high cost of living. Like other studios, Wildbrain recruits internationally, a task made easier by the Internet, which has yielded a diverse workplace. The company is selectively searching to fill two to five positions. "We have a free-flowing environment with lots of creativity," Fino said. "We are a corporation with deadlines and clients, but a creative environment needs a little exemption from the norm." Offering challenging work, Wildbrain also rewards creativity. "Animation is a merit-based system," Fino said.
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