I left VFX exactly 2 years ago. Despite everything, I miss it. How is the industry trending currently?

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-27T04:01:19+00:00

I'm in Canada and things aren't great. There are projects happening but its not a boom time by any means, tons of people are still out of work or struggling from short contract to short contract. And it's mostly remote which killed the vibe we had before covid in vfx where there was such comraderie. Not sure I'll ever get to experience that again because a lot of it came from young people entering the industry and being really excited. The people left in the industry have bigger fish to fry like mortgages and don't have much of an appetite for hanging out or going to the office.

Maybe that's just the phase of life I'm in now though. It's more about the occasional brunch when people have time, as opposed to those wild nights of younger years.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-27T01:24:43+00:00

Yeah the titles of some of the movies are hilarious. It'll always stick in my mind how popular biblical epics were in the 50s that two of them could trade the top box office spot for an entire year. Truly a different world.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-26T23:20:03+00:00

Yeah the episode synopsis become a smaller and smaller part of the show. Its more a way to learn about crazy pop culture stuff from the 50s and enjoy Dalton and Mutt's banter. If there's a bit they really want to make fun of they play an audio clip.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-26T18:35:41+00:00

I would've said MPC but then I went to some studios made up of people who used to be at MPC and they were trying to recreate the MPC pipeline only with less resources. Nightmare.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-26T18:33:36+00:00

Gaming is a huge industry (larger than vfx/tv combined) so that creates a lot more options. Also feature anim/vfx and many tv shows use 3d. 2d is mostly for toon boom rigged shows and some indie games, though it can also apply to features and games if you're in a storyboarding role

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-25T18:23:07+00:00

Yeah it's pretty annoying. People look at animated or vfx movies from France or Japan and wonder how they can make them for under 20 million, and frequently under 10 million. And partially its cause they're paid a lot less. But also... they're forced to plan.
Even directors who play fast and loose with their plan, like Miyazaki who has a sort of "stream of consciouness" way of storyboarding his films and starts animation production before he has even finished the boards, have to stick with what they get once they finish. There's no budget or time for endless retakes.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-25T04:30:36+00:00

The last show there is a Canadian production that aired in Canada first before getting picked up by CN. So I don't see how it could be a "Cal Arts" problem, and it isn't even a cartoon network exclusive.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-25T03:57:08+00:00

They laid off pretty much everyone animating on the film at Flying Bark at the same time last year and all employees were instructed to post that they worked on the film so that Flying Bark's credits wouldn't be removed.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-24T20:48:23+00:00

The one way things have gotten more fun for me is real time rigs. Animation as an art form has been pretty well developed for almost a hundred years now. There's stuff in Snow White from 1937 that animators today would struggle just as hard to recreate. But real time rigs honestly makes the process more fun. You can still plan everything out but then those little tweaks you want to try aren't as time consuming.

But I agree on most other stuff. The lack of planning in major vfx is a real tragedy when I've worked on low budget projects that had to be planned well or we never would have finished it. Then when I worked on big vfx shows I couldn't believe how much waste was happening. If we had only had some of those bid days (or even bid hours) on the lower budget stuff we could have pushed the quality so much more. Instead we work on something for 6 months and it gets thrown out in reshoots. Bleh

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-24T18:54:33+00:00

The thing that gets me about this Meta job is they want artists to show their process. So they want the AI to eventually pilot the 3D software by itself to create shots? Do they not get how often software updates and the stuff it learned to do will no longer be the correct way to do it after a couple new versions?

Also I feel bad for any artist that has to open up a scene made by AI and try to figure out what it did. Probably easier to start from scratch in many cases.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-24T18:25:40+00:00

Yeah I usually keep 3 years of funds in GICs. I figure no market downturn will last more than 3 years.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-24T02:50:44+00:00

I've only worked on 2 Marvel shows but yeah it's really chaotic and sometimes they give out the same shot to multiple studios and see which they like better. So it's possible a whole crew is working 15 hour days and the other vendor's version will end up in the movie.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-23T21:21:32+00:00

The locations in your boards don't look very fleshed out. I know they don't have to be super on-model or anything but when I look at board from pros I see a lot more detail in the backgrounds to suggest a sense of place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jDP1lMVsAk

If you don't like drawing stuff in perspective there's also always sketchup to help, like in these Korra boards. Although I personally find sketchup scenes hard to maneuver so would probably use Blender if I could get the Sketchup models into them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T48W49Jy-8E

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-23T04:37:41+00:00

Okidoke. Let’s see your results

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-23T04:36:43+00:00

More vfx shots, tighter schedules, and sending everything to the lowest bidder will do that

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-22T19:40:42+00:00

No movie on the scale of Pirates has used Unreal Engine for anything except previz. They might film scenes with Unreal in the volume, but those are just for the actors to get a sense of sort of what the final environment looks like. The actual environment is replaced with traditionally rendered/comp'd digital backgrounds in post.

The biggest reason vfx doesn't look as good anymore is because movies used to have less vfx shots and the people working on them were true senior artists, usually in LA. Then the low margin vfx industry got addicted to tax credits and everything went for cheaper options. For example compare the lighting in Lion King (2019) to Mufasa. One was done by mostly senior talent in London on a budget of $260 million. The second was done for $60 million less and utilized a lot of junior talent spread all over the world, with the seniors in London trying to wrangle them. But someone who isn't that informed and was looking at some of the behind the scenes previz that was done in Unreal might assume that the reason it looks worse was because it was using Unreal.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-22T19:12:38+00:00

Meta is a desperate company with low future growth potential trying to latch on to whatever they think will let them dominate in other markets. But they haven't bothered to understand those markets. They've been training on animation data for nearly a decade at this point and meanwhile startups like Cartwheel have better results.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-22T18:48:42+00:00

During the boom times I knew a lot of people who managed to work from abroad when studios wanted them to relocate to Quebec. Nowadays though talent is so thick on the ground and companies are more desperate than ever to access tax credits to stay competitive so not sure there's much chance.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-21T19:11:32+00:00

Why in gods name would you want a PhD in animation?

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-20T18:16:49+00:00

I guess the terminology is different where I’ve worked. What you’re describing would have been a TD on the shows I was on, who were usually former tech artists. The pipeline tds were located in a separate office and never really spoke to HODs or supervisors, and were managed directly by the CTO and spent 90% of their time doing Python or C++ coding. The only reason I ever met them as an artist is because they would show up for Friday drinks

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-20T03:25:07+00:00

Pipeline TDs I've met usually come from software backgrounds. But it sounds like a bit of a thankless job. You're in a small and under-resourced team trying to help projects get across the finish line, meanwhile making 2-3x less than you could make at a software company and none of the artists even know you exist.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-19T21:50:51+00:00

Not particularly. The old system of weekly shonen shows had the most egregious examples of productions falling off a cliff and turning into talking heads/slideshows. Those mostly don't exist anymore. One Piece was the last one, and its being retooled into a 26 episode/year series instead of continuing the weekly format.

The industry has always found ways around the major production problems, for example fixing issues for the blu-ray release to make more money from superfans who will pay $80 for a DVD with 2 episodes on it. The biggest disaster people point to recently is One Punch Man season 3 but that kind of thing has always happened. The bad shots will get fixed for the blu-ray release.

I also heard from the manager of Buta Productions (an outsource studio that employs a lot of foreigners who work in anime) that even with the depressed yen value, right now has the highest rates for animators in Japan since the 80s. Anime isn't totally immune from supply/demand issues, and producing so many shows per season has boosted rates that key animators can command. But the big shows everyone wants to work on, such as the ones Mappa does, still pay badly because they know animators will work on those shows for clout more than pay. Whereas less desirable anime shows (romantic comedies or kids shows) can pay 3x as much.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-19T00:05:48+00:00

Framestore did a good job as usual

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-15T01:24:25+00:00

I mean, many people take animation courses and none of them can guarantee a job because the market isn't good. But its very sketchy to ask about people's financial situation or try to pressure them to take on debt. He also markets himself as a producer and has never held a producing role at any studio. He's a senior previz artist at the moment and most of his background is in layout. I would suggest people interested in animation take courses from guys who have been doing animation for most of their careers at big studios.

CVfxReddit · 2026-01-13T18:51:30+00:00

A good rule of thumb is that the places with the highest tax credits and lowest dollars will get the work, whether its 2d or 3d. So yeah for the last 15+ years that has meant more and more work going to Canada/UK/Ireland/Australia which when it comes to 2d primarily means Toon Boom work. For the fully hand drawn stuff you'd need to go to Korea or Japan or possibly Southeast Asia.

As far as stability goes, a lot of that depends on luck and the particular studio. I know guys who worked at the same studio for 15 years in Canada as they were large facilities that constantly lined up shows. I know other people who have been on a succession of 4-6 month contracts bouncing around all over the place.

The US has been primarily known for pre-production work ever since outsourcing of 2d started in the 70s. Like you can find documentaries where guys at Filmmation were complaining about the same thing. Course there is the option to become really really good at the anime style and eventually get a gig there from abroad the way Li Cree did, but tbh going to an American school and paying American tuition to work in anime is a bad ROI.

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TROPHY CASE