The Big Studio Pipeline
CGI effects can be executed by a small boutique studio employing 10 to 20 artists or by a huge corporate studio such as Disney. Since the first edition of this book many small effects houses have disappeared. The majority of blockbuster visual effects today are created in house by the major film studios. The student who wishes to enter the visual effects field and work for a big studio may be dismayed when their portfolio piece falls far short of the quality seen in a film like "Pirates of the Caribbean". What one has to realize is that the Maya you use in school is not the Maya used by a big studio. The step-by-step tutorials you learn are good for a foundation but do not reflect the working modality of a Warner brothers or Disney. The big tent pole pictures like Iron Man or Pirates are incredibly complex and require a way of working that is little understood by outsiders. To give you an idea of how big studios operate is a breakdown of the sophisticated working methods used by the modern day motion picture studio.