Sony Pictures Imageworks reviews

-Everything seems very corporate, cold and cliquey. -The new young animators have become entitled and immature and it ends up feeling like you're in high school again. Who gets hired is based on who they know rather than pure skill. It's not about how well you perform either because they don't care about that they just care about bringing in and keeping cheap artists and those who get chummy with the leads and higher ups. Prepare your social game if you want to survive in this competitive studio and don't expect to be given chances at better shots as some of the leads have favorites when casting shots. -There's not much room for growth as an artist as people don't talk to each other much and therefore it's harder to build that relationship enough to be able to ask for feedback casually. The artists are also micromanaged and there's not a lot of room for creative freedom. -Little communication between artists. You don't end up knowing everyone in your team or even talk to them sometimes, everyone just focuses on their own work in their own desk slaving away. -Despite little communication, gossip still spreads around within the studio. -Everything is very political and if you are way down in the chain you will be on the chopping block when it comes to decide whether you stay or not. Most artists get so desperate they end up doing ghost hours to make themselves look good. -Be prepared to get biased performance reviews that don't necessarily reflect your true performance due to biased leads. -Rigs are very poor even though this is feature film, even the rigs from online schools are way better or from other studios. Instead of making animators suffer why not fix it in rigging first, invest more in that before making animators fix all the model issues. -Artist management is terrible at managing the artists and they let go of talented seniors and give the reason that there are no spots but then shortly they hire new juniors from outside. -Overtime can be really stressful although that's a given.

Artist management and upper management sit away and separate from the artists. Most don't care if you just put your head down sit there quietly and do the job, while they reward those who are loud and obnoxious and do very little. They retain some questionable artists that other companies wouldn't hire. For the people staying at SPI for longer than 5 years, they are so out of touch with what's happening outside the industry. When I was there, SPI valued artists more, you see more senior and skilled artists. It was more about quality over quantity. Now we are getting hoards of junior inexperienced artists and what's left of the senior artists get burnt out fast from doing their jobs and training these new artists. The environment got toxic when you promote someone who's not ready so quickly just to "fill the role". Towards the end of 2022, many senior artists were so burnt out and the team I was in was so toxic. Salary: SPI used to be one of the most well-paid companies around, but NOT ANYMORE. Career Opportunities: Nonexistent unless you are loud and obnoxious and become friends with the right people aka upper management. SPI turning into a Marvel sweatshop.