Digital Media Online: Thank you all for taking the time out of your busy schedules to talk. With so many questions, I guess the first place to begin is by asking, what is the current state of the industry as you see it?

Daryl Bartley: That's really hard to say. More of it is being done than ever, but more people are out of work than ever. I think the same thing is capable of happening to 3d that happened to 2d.

Dave Campbell: I think animation is in a great place right now. Sure, there are always concerns on the production side about where the next job will come from. - and any ups and downs in the industry are in many ways a natural part of the cycle.

But animation itself, be it for use in feature films, games or design, is becoming more accessible to a wider range of people, and the hardware and software involved is making the process of getting the art done much easier.

Mark Sylvester: From a pure numbers position no one can ignore the thousands of positions that have been lost in the past 12 months. This is having ripple effects in everything we experience, both at work, and in our personal lives. We are making different decisions about our entertainment dollars than we did last year. Consumers are torn between spending $10 on the next cool film, buying the latest game for their console, or saving up for the next great gadget.

Advertisers are still compelled to provide interesting images to hook their viewers - animation is still one of the best ways to do this - in a faltering economy, these images must be continue to be leading edge - or they won't draw an audience.

Filmmakers know that even in a depression people want to go to the movies - providing jobs for many of us along the way. But the stakes a much higher than ever before, and decisions to greenlight a project are made knowing that millions of dollars will hang on the capriciousness of their viewers.

Joe Alter: This is an industry that's very eager to please, so there are lots of opportunities, and lots of pitfalls as well.

Feature animation is generating enormous revenue, but it hasn't quite made it into animator's pockets just yet. The overhead to produce a feature length film still requires big companies to flip the bill, so this kind of thing will repeat itself for a few more years until boutiques can compete with them.

My feeling is the industry has been in worse spots. People ARE going to the theaters to see the films, after all.

Gregg Lukomski: I think the entire industry is trying to rediscover itself and is having some growing pains as we search for where we want to take it next.

DMO: What direction is that? Or has no one figured that out?

Gregg: No one has a clue, so we're seeing projects that are technically spectacular but you're left with the question, 'why are we doing this in CG' or 'is this story even good enough to justify all this effort?'

DMO: Can you give me an example of a company that has figured it out?

Gregg: Sure… Pixar. The stories are solid, the tech is amazing and they are pushing boundaries, but not overextending themselves.

Rowsby: I think the industry is fine, if you're doing stuff in Maya.

DMO: Care to elaborate?

Rowsby: Sure, I worked at a studio that was almost exclusively LightWave. After trying to get bigger jobs in the industry, they continued to fail. Some of that, I believe, is due to how Hollywood works. They love buzzwords. Most of the people that make decisions, don't know much about the software, they just remember the name. LightWave is a name they don't seem to recall, or think is as good as Maya is, apparently. I think this is terribly unfair, but that's the way things seem to be moving as CG becomes more commonplace in the industry.

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