Sometimes Rainy, Sometimes Sunny

Visual effects is in melt-down mode in Southern California. But not for everyone.

Shade VFX is the rare California-based visual-effects company today that says it is expanding.

The boutique firm relocated to a new facility in Santa Monica this week that doubles the company's space and includes areas that can accommodate greenscreen shoots.

What makes the move notable is that Shade says its business is thriving at a time when other visual-effects companies are teetering on the brink of financial ruin. ...

It's a funny thing about animation, visual effects, and say, the game industry. Much of it has melded together in the computer age, and as one part is going down the chutes, another is climbing up.

Take the Animation Guild as an example: DreamWorks Animation has gone through major downsizing in the past few months. You'd expect that our membership ranks -- since DWA is a large TAG employer -- would have withered. But such is not the case, because as DreamWorks Animation has become smaller, other animation studios under Guild contract have become larger.

* Walt Disney Animation Studios has two features in production.

* TV animation studios are ramping up work.

* Animation sub-contractors are working on their own projects plus productions from Disney, DreamWorks, Marvel, and others.

Animation has been a boom-and-bust business since the 1930s, with expansion and frenzied hiring followed by lay-offs and bankrupt animation studios. As I've said multiple times before, Disney is the only studio that has been continuously under an IA contract over the last sixty-one years. Even Warner Bros. Animation, which was among the first Hollywood cartoon studios to be unionized, disappeared for a stretch of years.

There is no doubt that the animation/visual effects industry in California is getting tough competition from states and countries offering lower wages and/or government subsidies. But there remains a huge number of designers, animators and programmers working in Los Angeles County, to wit:

TAG Employment -- First Quarter

2010 -- 2,586

2011 -- 2,533

2012 -- 2,669

2013 -- 2,750

Why the upward trendline? Because animation has grown by leaps and bounds for twenty years, and though Southern California has lost market share, the overall market for animated product is immensely bigger. In fact, cartoons are the most dynamic profit center of movie-making, which explains why the employment/production pie has gotten steadily larger.