What was it that first attracted Passion Pictures to AWS?
Having been in the business of content production for more than three decades, Passion Pictures has expanded its offerings and adapted with every industry evolution. When live action production slowed in 2020 due to the pandemic, demand for animated content soared. Passion Animation Studios, which focuses on telling commercial and long-form animated stories, wanted to rise to the occasion: “We’ve been moving to the cloud, bit by bit, over the last four years and now 90% of our rendering is done using EC2 Spot Instances,” said Passion Pictures’ Head of CG, Jason Nicholas.
“We’ve been moving to the cloud, bit by bit, over the last four years.”
– Jason Nicholas, Head of CG at Passion Pictures
What motivated Passion Pictures to implement virtual workstations?
Although headquartered in London, Passion Animation also has a sizable presence in Barcelona, New York and Paris. Currently, artists across all locations leverage the studio’s on-premises workstations from home, using Teradici Cloud Access Software or HP Remote Graphics Sender (HPRGS). However during peaks, virtual workstations—using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) G4dn instances, powered by NVIDIA T4 Tensor Core GPUs with NVIDIA RTX technology—are employed. “We integrated virtual workstations so we can easily scale up our talent pool, and we’re starting to tie this together by using S3 storage,” Nicholas shared. Now they can quickly bring additional artists onboard and work with the best specialists in the world, on any given project.
At times, the virtual workstations are spun up and have artists working on them within an hour. Nicholas explained what this means for their business: “Success in this industry is no longer dictated by having a huge amount of hardware. Now we can bid on jobs we wouldn’t have otherwise, knowing that we have the resources we need, when we need them, and can shut them down when we don’t.”
“The industry and workflows are evolving quickly, and virtual workstations are immensely helpful for experimentation,” Nicholas noted. “We’ve been looking at moving beyond standard creative applications to incorporate things like open source tools and real-time game engines or switching 3D platforms, and AWS enables us to more easily deploy the right tool for the right job.”
“We integrated virtual workstations so we can easily scale up our talent pool.”
– Jason Nicholas, Head of CG at Passion Pictures
How does AWS support Passion Pictures’ workflows?
By moving the bulk of its render to AWS on economical Amazon EC2 Spot Instances, along with AWS Thinkbox Deadline to manage the orchestration, Passion Animation is never at capacity – even when project timelines shorten or overlap.
At one point, the studio was running seven productions simultaneously, some of which were in 4K resolution. “AWS saved us from a lot of sleepless nights in that timeframe. Instead, we could be confident that we’d meet our deadlines, knowing the resources would be available,” Nicholas explained.
Rendering in the cloud also enables our artists to iterate more freely, ultimately leading to better creative output,” shared Nicholas. “Working with solely on-premises compute, there’s a finite capacity, so inevitably compromises have to be made. Using the cloud, we have far more flexibility. If a client wants to see a project ahead of schedule, we’re able to accommodate that request and be transparent about costs for the expedited rendering needed to do so.”
What’s more, since Passion Animation no longer maintains a large on-premises render farm, the studio is less vulnerable to central London’s notorious power outages. Nicholas explained, “Our hot summers combined with the instability of Soho’s electricity grid and a whole slew of local VFX and animations drawing power to cool massive machine rooms has led to more than one disaster. It’s exciting to not have to worry about maintenance and instead just focus on producing great work.”
To gain further efficiencies with its cloud-based workflow, Passion Animation has also started using Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for intermediate storage to minimize data transfers. As the company grows, and creates more original content, having scalable storage on tap within its established AWS ecosystem will ensure the studio is well-positioned to realize its vision, especially as its current hardware starts to approach end of life.
“AWS saved us from a lot of sleepless nights. We could be confident that we’d meet our deadlines, knowing the resources would be available.”
– Jason Nicholas, Head of CG at Passion Pictures
Going forward, how does Passion Pictures anticipate best utilizing AWS services?
With an infrastructure built around Amazon Web Services (AWS), and accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs, Passion Animation has created and delivered multiple high-profile commercial projects and video game trailers in close succession, while working remotely. At the same time, the studio has begun developing its own longer-form content, knowing it has forged an elastic pipeline capable of handling the rigors of feature film and episodic series production.
Nicholas concluded, “The industry is ever-changing and we need to be prepared to change alongside it. With the pandemic, people have been adopting new technology faster than ever. Like everyone else, I don’t know what the future holds, so we’ll continue to roll with it and strive to adapt and learn as a studio. Having AWS is key for us to be able to do that.”
“Success in this industry is no longer dictated by having a huge amount of hardware. Now we can bid on jobs we wouldn’t have otherwise, knowing that we have the resources we need when we need them, and can shut them down when we don’t.”
– Jason Nicholas, Head of CG at Passion Pictures
How does Hive VFX see cloud computing impacting the industry long-term?
With streaming services such as Netflix firmly established, there’s already been a significant shift in the Media & Entertainment industry. Bernie noted, “I find that people really want a different work environment, especially more experienced people.” Looking to the long-term he predicts, “the cloud will just be the norm”, but even in the near future, he anticipates big changes – with previous entry hurdles of funds and technology being resolved for start-ups through cloud innovation. Bernie commented, “You used to have a few fairly large studios and they did all the work. I think now it almost gets democratized, where everybody can quite easily open up a shop.”
What advice would Hive VFX give to a studio considering the move?
Operating in the cloud works for Hive VFX – Bernie explained why he’d encourage others to embrace the change too: “Don't be afraid. I think so many people for one reason or another, dismiss it. It's essentially a free playground. Why don't you just play around with it a little bit and see what happens? Because you have no commitment whatsoever.”
“If you can come up with a good plan and a good team, you can do it now.”
– Bernie Kimbacher, Founder of Hive VFX
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