3D World Interviews Eddie Leon
10.01.2008
It's reshaping the 3D industry – yet facts, figures or even-handed discussion about it are almost impossible to find. 3D World delivers five-point plans to help freelancers and studios flourish in the new era of outsourcing. By Mark Ramshaw
Few, if any, issues affecting the computer graphics industry are quite as contentious as outsourcing. Call it sub-contracting, and nobody bats an eyelid – but mention the ‘O’ word, and those who fear it begin sweeping statements about job losses and poor standards of work; while the studios that do use it often put the shutters up, believing that to admit to outsourcing might call their patriotic loyalty or the quality of their work into question.
Outsourcing is simply defined as a method where some processes in a project are handed to a third party. Because the motivating factors are often ones of cost and efficiency rather than a need to access additional or distinctive skills or talent, outsourcing tends to go to specialised studios in countries where prices are more competitive, due to cheaper business costs, lower salaries or better tax
breaks. And, although the global economy is a complex, ever-changing thing, the trend is inevitably for work to migrate from the richer West to the poorer East. No wonder it’s so controversial.
“Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon,” says Eddie Leon, president and CEO of Spine3D. The architectural visualisation firm has outsourced for several years and now maintains a studio in China. “Manufacturing industries have done this for decades, and the IT industry has also done this successfully. It’s a given fact that the beginning stages of any industry’s supply change will begin overseas.”
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