I love the animation and VFX industry. And I’ll be honest, a lot of difficult news came out in our industry last week that is too difficult to ignore. This news got me thinking and even more focused that at Animation Mentor we are doing the right things to help you and this incredible industry that we all love. I wanted to share my thoughts about this subject in my blog.

— Bobby Beck

I’ve been thinking about the state of the industry a lot this week. It’s hard to see some of the most successful and talented film studios go through tough financial times. Margins for VFX shops are getting smaller and smaller as globalization becomes our reality. And for us at Animation Mentor, we feel there is an answer to this challenge — and our commitment to bring our answer to reality has become our vision and relentless focus as a company.

To start the change, we all must embrace globalization as our friend, not as our enemy. And that means understanding that the jobs are no longer going to be based largely in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, or New York. The jobs are going to be in every corner of the world and the work will be done directly from your home computer.

The world, as we know, is already heading this way — and this is a good thing. So why not seize the opportunity to live anywhere in the world or not have to uproot your family, and focus on creating the most incredible VFX and animation ever, and make that a plus for the quality of your life?

These are exactly the reasons why we are SO excited for our students as we make big leaps to make this future a reality. Remote, distributed filmmaking — where you work collaboratively with multi-discipline artists from around the world — is the future. It’s what we at Animation Mentor believe in, it’s why we’ve been working to bring the Studio School to life, and it’s just the beginning.

The future of the animation and VFX industry is abundant. Animation and VFX are in everything these days from films, games, commercials, billboards to mobile games. This work is not going to shrink any time soon. In fact, VFX and animation are only getting bigger and more pervasive.

My thoughts here are meant merely as a way to change the lens we see through and to look at the current challenges that lie ahead more optimistically. The Pixars and ILMs of the world need to exist and hopefully always will. At Animation Mentor we believe that a thriving, global workplace is something that will exist in our industry and we want to see artists at the forefront of that renaissance. This is our passion and hope for your future.

— BOOM