International Effects

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Pixel Corps'' wired workforce is part of a trend toward decentralized visual effects production.

Pixel Corps is the kind of idea that Buckminster Fuller might have dreamed up in the '60s. But it would only have been a dream. Forty years later, Pixel Corps founder, Alex Lindsay, is using the Internet to create a global community of artists inspired by the craft guilds of the Middle Ages. Only instead of building cathedrals, Pixel Corps will be making movies. The common language isn't Esperanto, it's zeroes and ones.

Pixel Corps was founded in 2002 in San Francisco and has rapidly grown to include more than a thousand members in more than 30 countries. This is actually the second online effort by Lindsay, who previously founded DV Garage — the website that sells “Training and Tools for the Next Generation.” DV Garage is a commercial site selling services and products, but it has also become a popular community site for VFX artists. In the '90s, Lindsay worked at JAK films (Star Wars' previz team) and ILM, and this has enabled him to attract old friends with long professional VFX resumes to provide in-the-trenches training. DV Garage and Pixel Corps are separate companies, but Lindsay realized that his Garage customer base also represented a growing army of up-and-coming digital artists.

So Pixel Corps was born. Think of it as an open source VFX work group. Artists around the world join to learn from professionals leading group projects and to work in a collaborative environment. The base curriculum includes more than 90 hours of video training, and along the way members also build their reels, receive software discounts, and meet professionals who in the future may recruit them for work in the real world.

What separates Pixel Corps from most other online training sites is that it is supervised by professionals who are training artists but also looking to build a team. Pixel Corps has a stake in the success of its members because one day they may be valued employees. Artists work at their own pace, but only insofar as they get to choose the number of challenges undertaken and the area of production they focus on. Once you sign on to a challenge, you are given training and then a project with a deadline. In addition to the training, artists can share ideas and information so they have a great deal of access to expertise on a daily basis. As artists move up the ranks they may even become team leaders.

Pixel Corps is organized as a clustered cell training and management system. As Lindsay explains, “There are nine research teams that work independently, nine production teams that manage and design projects, and nine tech teams that implement the actual projects. Each team has a team leader, each team leader has three senior artisans, each senior artisan has three junior artisans. It's a large structure through which the projects run — rather than specific teams for every project. Each person commits to 12 hours a week. We need this time commitment to build projects bigger than anything we could do as individuals.”

While visual effects is Pixel Corps' main focus, there is a broader view of effects creation that covers the conceptual underpinning of any VFX shot and includes training in Scriptwriting and Basic Drawing. The main training, however, is in technical areas including compositing; photogrammery; HDR creation; character development (animation, skinning, texturing); keying and matte extraction; Photoshop for VFX; and modeling and motion Capture — with more subjects added as time goes on. There is a $50 registration fee for new members, and the price is $150 for three months of training and overall participation in the group. A yearly membership is $420.

Pixel Corps, the studio, is still in the Beta stage. Taking the army into battle on a real visual effects project is no small task, and Lindsay and his team are busy creating the battle plan. Like any studio, there has to be a pipeline of common tools and methods, asset management, daily review of large files, and creative interaction with a director. “We're in the process of making this work right now. Most of our research has revolved around using off-the-shelf solutions, working on processes, just getting enough people on the same page,” Lindsay says. “Our next step is to push this process into code. The area we're primarily focused on in 2006 is job management, asset transfer, and feedback systems. The goal is to have a fairly robust system that someone could use 18 to 24 months from now.”

Going International
While Pixel Corps is dedicated to the idea that an artist is only one web address away, Lindsay''s interest in international communication has led him to visit Zimbabwe and work with local CGI talent. “My commitment is to bring those skills and the infrastructure to as many in Africa as I can. We have been doing research in Zimbabwe for almost five years and plan to open a more permanent location [of Pixel Corps] in 2006. Where many see a continent in trouble, I see an investment opportunity in the most valuable natural resource of the 21st century—people.”

While Pixel Corps has not taken on any paying jobs yet, there have been several test projects, including those initiated by members. One of these, a competition issued by CGSociety (another well-known VFX community site) was undertaken by an ad hoc group of Pixel Corps members. The challenge was to create an original “Big Freeze” scene ala The Day After Tomorrow in which the temperature drops more than 100 degrees in a matter of a few seconds. The scene was to be set in a major city.

Twenty Pixel Corps members teamed up to do their version of The Big Freeze set in Rio. To see a making of the movie, click here; to view the final short, click here. The Pixel Corps, Rio Team (representing 26 artists in nine U.S. states and five countries) won in the Hybrid Animation Category.

While the work on the Big Freeze — Rio is not ready for the big screen, the level of accomplishment by a small team with a short schedule produced results comparable to what is regularly required for Sci Fi Channel made-for-TV-movies and cable series work. It is confirmation that Lindsay's wired work force could be an option for producers in the near future, continuing a trend that promises to decentralize visual effects production and put more pressure on Los Angeles-based shops.

Hollywood VFX studios are already feeling the heat from offshore studios; George Lucas has invested heavily in a Singapore facility to do CGI pictures, and studios throughout Asia are setting their sights on outsourced episodic television projects, and soon, visual effects for major motion pictures.

Lindsay's idea, viewed from the artisans' perspective and with a strong humanistic impulse, is more about having artists fulfill their dreams than producers lowering the bottom line. “The idea was that everyone, in every part of the world, had a nugget of wisdom to share…but that they simply couldn't be heard in the current structure. I wanted to create something that they could use,” Lindsay explains.

With the right infrastructure in place, there is no reason why Pixel Corps won't be able harness CG talent based on a meritocracy. This is true free market thinking, one that is blind to trade barriers, political interference, and hopefully, corporate manipulation. That may be hoping for too much, but at the moment it seems like a very liberating idea.