Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/47583
one of the first drawn to the city early on in its own nine-year history. "It was about seven-and-a-half years ago," MPC London (pictured) has expanded overseas to the US with studios in Los Angeles and New York. Chennai was admittedly "lower labor costs," says Lake,"and the ability to work around the clock. But we've invested in raising their skill levels:We're continually looking for more value-added activities for them." That includes 3D stereo and stereo con- version capabilities.The Chennai studio con- tributed to many of Imageworks' 3D stereo conversion projects and is slated to work on The Amazing Spider-Man, a native stereo 3D feature."We're developing with them a native stereo pipeline to support us," Lake says. "Two of their senior artists spent two months here working with our development and production teams to establish the technology and processes for that production. It's critical to get the most out of our Indian operation." The chief hurdle in working with Chennai was the year or so it took "to upgrade the infrastructure and become fully integrated," he reports." Another challenge is more long term. "Will Chennai continue to be price competitive five years from now?" Lake won- ders."In some markets, like Mumbai, wages are pretty inflationary.Thailand, China and the Philippines are trying to get into the game as well." Nevertheless, since launching in India Imageworks has had an opportunity to take an increasing stake in the facility there and is on track to take control of the entire entity in 2012. A year after opening in Chennai, Image- works' new facility in Albuquerque debuted. A smaller studio than Culver City, the start- up was fueled by very attractive incentives from New Mexico and peopled with many artists from Culver City who were looking for a lifestyle change. "Right now Albu- querque is focused on the back end of the pipeline — everything beyond animation — and they are fully integrated with us," says Lake."We're connected by a fat pipe, and proximity means that latency is not an issue. We look at Albuquerque as being across the street from a technical perspective." The company launched another start-up in Vancouver in March 2010.The lures of the Canadian city were many: favorable econom- ics, a growing production center, a ready- made talent pool — including several Culver City-based artists who hailed from Canada 26 Post • September 2011 and opted to return north of the border. "We opened Vancouver with a number of animation artists on The Smurfs and have been pleased with the success of recruiting local talent," says Lake."In crewing for Spider- Man, Oz The Great and Powerful, Men in Black III and Hotel Transylvania, we will look at ex- panding into additional artist categories; ele- ments of our software development and shader team are now in Vancouver, too." Using PC over IP technology for connectivity has enabled HQ to support the Canadian fa- cility through the network without building out a new data center. Vancouver's location in the same time zone as Culver was another key factor in the decision to open there."It makes the work- day that much more efficient, and we're close enough for direct interaction with clients." Vancouver has a long been a popular live- action and game production center, and Canada has a storied history in animation. With federal and provincial incentives — in- cluding extra provincial credits for digital and VFX businesses, Vancouver is exploding with satellite operations of major VFX and animation studios. However, says Lake, it is not just the cost of labor that's promoting growth. "With vir tually every major com- pany setting up an office in British Columbia, there's a lot of production happening in the province.This variety is attractive to talent. Universities there are also targeting VFX and animation, and developing very qualified candidates for our industry," he says. Lake believes that "pressure from the stu- dios on all vendors to bring costs down isn't going to change any time soon. Nor will the needs of our clients to have the close proxim- ity and access to our key creative talent and the interaction that our Culver City headquar- ters affords. But when you have markets with qualified talent, attractive tax and economic incentives, and a net lower cost of labor, [which are] able to delivery high-quality work, you're going to see growth." ZOIC STUDIOS Vancouver may be a magnet for satellite VFX and animation facilities now, but LA's Zoic Studios (www.zoicstudios.com) was www.postmagazine.com says Zoic co-founder Loni Peristere."NBC Universal was making the Battlestar Galac- tica (BSG) series and wanted us to consider Vancouver as an option — a way to save on the budget yet keep the movie-like feel we'd established for the mini-series. In addition to BSG and NBC, our other network and stu- dio partners were also pushing for solutions to further creative opportunity while fight- ing shrinking budgets.We'd been making pi- lots up there and knew people in Vancouver, and I'd fallen in love with the city and the community.We felt Vancouver was the right solution for all of this." Zoic soon opened an office in Vancouver's Sun Tower building where it handled VFX for the Marcus Nispel feature, Pathfinder.The new facility then crafted VFX for the pilot and first three seasons of Syfy's Eureka, which was shot in British Columbia and re- quired numerous virtual sets, CG characters and 3D environments. "We opened the of- fice to make Pathfinder and Eureka work cre- atively and fiscally for our clients," says Peris- tere,"which in turn created an opportunity for strategic growth for Zoic." The company has grown steadily over the years and today Zoic Vancouver occu- pies new space in Gastown's The Landing Building. "It's a mirror of our LA facility only smaller," says Peristere."The equipment mir- rors LA, too.We treat the two offices as one company and cast [VFX and animation tasks] based on ability. No matter where you are, you log on and the computer recog- nizes you and you can access all your work." He concedes that there were certain technical "obstacles to overcome" at the outset: network speed, file-naming proto- cols and software compatibility. "But now we're streamlined with [Autodesk's] Maya, [Chaos Group's] V-Ray and [The Foundry's] Nuke universally across the company and with Shotgun" database software, he re- ports.Videoconferencing is available to all boxes to enhance face-to-face communica- tions and a "hearty" exchange program promotes artists' visits. Zoic Vancouver boasts a 2K screening room and the company's proprietary ZEUS technology (Zoic Environmental Unification System), a realtime 3D set-generating tool that reduces the time required for virtual set production from days to hours, Peristere says."We used ZEUS for two seasons of V, and we're now running it on ABC's new Once Upon a Time, which is shooting and posting in Vancouver, and ABC's new Pan Am series in New York." Zoic Vancouver has a permanent coterie