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How do you build a studio that can grow without major pains?

There are a variety of factors that need to be taken into consideration across all areas of the studio’s business.

One of the first items that should be nailed down is how your staffing requirements align with the business, production, and technical goals.

• Are you going to be using production processes that require artists with a higher degree of technical aptitude and/or an investment in training? Or, are you going to adapt your toolset and workflow to be more ‘artist’ friendly. What is the local talent pool available to you?  Are … Continue Reading
  
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l always aim to establish and create a cohesive team that feels like a family, so that people have a sense of loyalty and commitment to their colleagues and the studio. Another goal is to always keep the motivation of the team at a very high level. I feel that It is important to provide opportunities for group members to become acquainted. One method that I use is eating together. I’ve always made a point of eating lunch with my coworkers as often as possible. It is amazing how this one little thing can impact a team. I also believe … Continue Reading

Productions don’t run like an organized, gantt-charted schedule. Real productions are chaotic: Missed deadlines, miss-communication, director’s scope/artistic creep, new tasks, new people in, old people out. This is why information needs to be centralized and archived. No more he-said she-said. No more forwarding 500 emails to a person who gets involved in the middle of a project. No more losing knowledge when someone leaves a show. With a good production tracking system it’s all there: centralized, archived, accessible, date stamped, and labeled for clear accountability.

Here are my top 5 tips on recruiting the best talent for your production.

1.) Only hire A people.

If you start making compromises, B level people will start to hire C level people who will in turn bring on D Level staff.

2.) Only hire people who are smart.

You want to recruit and hire staff that have aptitude, not a particular skill set. You want to find those that are going to be able to learn any new technology rather than people who happen to know Maya version 6.0 this minute. You want those that understand the concepts, … Continue Reading