Sony Pictures Imageworks was formed in 1992 with five employees to use computers to help plan complicated scenes for live-action films.[5] Located in the former TriStar building, their first work was a previsualization for the 1993 film Striking Distance.[6] In April 1993, the previously unnamed unit received its current name.[7] In 1997, SPI became part of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Digital Studios unit.[8]
To fill the gaps between VFX jobs, SPI decided to partake in a more profitable animation business.[9] Its first independent animated effort was the 5-minute short The ChubbChubbs! directed by Eric Armstrong. In 2002, it won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. Early Bloomer, released in 2003, was the division's second short film and originally made as a storyboarding exercise.[10] SPI completed its first feature animation project in 2006 with the release of Open Season, which was produced by sister company Sony Pictures Animation.
In 2007, SPI acquired Indian visual effects studio FrameFlow to take advantage of lower labor costs.[9][11] Renamed to Imageworks India, a modern facility was opened in Chennai a year later.[citation needed] To leverage New Mexico's tax rebates and talent base,[12] a satellite production facility was opened in 2007 in Albuquerque,[13] becoming the largest post-production operation in the state.[14] In 2010, SPI opened a production studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, in order to take advantage of the local talent pool and government film production incentives.[15] Two years later, the studio doubled its Vancouver facilities.[16] At the same time, the Albuquerque studio was closed down due to declining New Mexico's subsidies and difficulty with attracting artists to move there.[12]
In the beginning of 2014, as part of Sony's cost-cutting move, SPI transferred a portion of its technology team from its headquarters in Culver City to Vancouver.[9] By May 2014, entire headquarters and production had been moved to Vancouver, with only a small office remaining in Culver City.[17] At the same time, SPI closed down its Indian studio, laying off around 100 employees.[18] A year later, over 700 artists moved into a new 74,000-square feet headquarters in Vancouver.[19][20]
On October 6, 2023, Cartoon Brew reported that DreamWorks Animation was moving away from producing films in-house at their Glendale campus to rely more heavily on outside studios after 2024, as part of a layoff by chief operating officer Randy Lake in a series of meetings the previous month. According to the report, SPI was named as the animation service for a then-unannounced DreamWorks sequel (The Bad Guys 2) scheduled for 2025. The film would use a "mixed production model", in which pre-production would be done in-house at DreamWorks along with approximately 50% of the asset build and one hour of production, while SPI would handle the other 50% of asset builds and 20 minutes of shot production.[21]
In an article published by Vulture in June 2023, several animators quit Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse due to unstable working conditions. According to the Animation Guild, while Imageworks is associated with Sony Pictures Animation, Imageworks remains non-union.[26]
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