[BackPlaner]

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That's awesome that you worked in VFX during the best years for 3D animators. I worked at R&H briefly in 2005 on the first Narnia movie, but by then the pipeline was all Linux PeeCees and the only SGI systems were strewn about the corners of rooms waiting to be recycled. Was John Hughes BBQ'ing for his employees back in the '90s too?

You had the career I wish I could have had.

Thanks man, yep John was still flipping burgers then. 

I never really burned out on production while I was working there, it was a great environment, especially for the artist. It was only after they went under in 2013 and I started freelancing, working at many different studios really highlighted how different things things can be at different facilities depending on who was running it. Some are great, some were not, and some are gone; I'd love to say they were all as good as R+H but of course most weren't, and some places didn't seem to have much problem with overworking and underpaying the artists. A lot of my friends had to move up to Vancouver to chase the subsidies because most of the film VFX work has left Los Angeles and is being done elsewhere now. When my friend, who was my mentor and close compatriot at R+H (and had by then been working in education for years) asked me to come join him, it just seemed like the right thing at the right time. 

Now I get to show my students how things used to be, I've even brought in some older machines and let them play around on them, which ultimately I think made them extremely grateful for what we have now.