Written in Partnership with Maria Williams
Since co-founding in 2005, Cameron Slayden has operated Microverse Studios, an animation company with a twist: they only produce animation about extremely complicated cell biology and molecular science.
Cameron says, “When I started the company, having a brick and mortar office was really important to me. It was all part of creating a customer experience that inspired confidence that we were professionals and could do this very unique job that we do.”
While the company was first finding its legs, they produced scientific animations for documentary series on National Geographic, History, and other TV channels.
“It was important that all of the animators be in one place so that they could use the studio’s computing resources. The turnaround times were bananas, too, so being on site made the production process very nimble. There was no efficient cloud computing back then, so we had to FTP over painfully slow internet lines or hand-deliver hard drives. It was very primitive.”
As the company became more established with its target clientele (biotech and pharmaceutical companies, mostly), they migrated away from television and focused on projects that really needed the expertise of true scientists– Microverse Studios animators all have masters degrees. For several years, they operated out of a physical studio, with an in-house computing array and all animators commuting to work on-site.
The Pros of On-Site Creative Work
“When we were all together, the atmosphere was very collaborative. One animator would discover a new tool, and immediately share it with everyone else. The studio as a whole benefitted from everyone’s experience. It was also a lot of fun. Nerf guns, pizza, video games, and general hang-out time made the studio feel like we were back in grad school. We had one big white board with all of the projects on a Gantt. Everyone could always see it, and so everyone knew what everyone else was doing.
When I was first starting out, having a separate location where I worked also made it easier to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Once I was done for the day, there was no way for me to get sucked back in and lose time with family.”
The Cons of On-Site Creative Work
“The biggest problem I’ve heard of studios experiencing was something we luckily never ran into, and that’s clashing personalities. We were lucky in that everyone’s temperaments were super open and supportive. However I’ve heard horror stories in which one person made everyone else’s lives miserable. Thankfully, we never experienced that, but during crunch times people did occasionally find themselves on edge. When everyone’s working in the same space that can make things tense.
Another drawback for on-site work was that it was easy for people to steal your time. Someone might have a funny story to share or want to talk, and normal rules of politeness dictate that you listen at least some of the time when someone walks up to your office or cubicle.
There was also the commute. One of our artists lived across the street and could walk to work, so he had it pretty easy. I had a 30 minute drive each way, and other animators had even longer commutes. Commute time is expensive especially now, and the hours add up and eat away at time you could have spent on living your life.
There were also the costs surrounding maintaining an office, such as utilities and rent. They weren’t that much, but it’s not nothing.”
In 2011, after shutting down television operations to focus entirely on biomedical visualization, the nature of the work and the deadlines fundamentally changed.
Cameron continues: “Once we were able to operate on timelines and with clients that focused on quality over turnaround time and cheapness, the pace of work changed. VPN became a thing, and animators started to work from home and still use the studio farm. Eventually, it didn’t make sense to maintain the studio, so we closed up shop and everyone dialed in remotely. That changed everything.”
The Cons of Remote Work
“At the time, the biggest problem was that we were worried how it would look if everyone worked from home. The world wasn’t ready for a virtual studio, and so while we were straightforward with our clients, we didn’t bring up our working situation unless asked.
Additionally, this was before Slack came out. Everything had to be done via email or skype or phone. Video calls were possible, but pre-Covid they were still pretty awkward. Most of my interactions with clients had always been over the phone anyway, so this was no big change there, but real-time communication with team members was a little clunky. Nowadays, there are great tools that let us stay in real-time communication wherever we are. We’d use them even if we weren’t remote.
Managing work-life balance can be more difficult when everyone works from home. We sometimes have tight deadlines, and if you’re not careful you can burn out your best workers. Sometimes it seems like they want to burn themselves out, so we have to make sure to build in down-time. The goal is to make being a scientific animator at Microverse Studios a dream-job, so that none of our amazing artists ever want to leave.
One thing I do miss about on-site work is the team bonding. We have weekly meetings and we see each other at professional functions once or twice a year, but those tiny interactions that let you create real human connections are reduced to zoom meetings and messaging on Slack.
However, I’d say the biggest con to remote work as a business owner is the tax situation. Each state has its own tax rules, and some states will tax your entire business income if you have even a single employee working there. You have to be careful to jump through all the tax hoops.”
The Pros of Remote Work
“At Microverse Studios, we treat our animators like adults. They can choose their own hours, they don’t have to ask for time off. Since the first day we went remote, that job became a lot easier. Because our work is entirely results-oriented, we have never taken an interest in tracking our employees’ time. Because we’re remote, the employees can experience true autonomy without feeling like they’re being watched or judged.
After Covid, telework also became much more mainstream, so it became obvious that we had actually pioneered a successful system long before the rest of the world had been forced to catch up. Now the tools for the tasks that are critical to scientific animation are extraordinarily robust. We’d use them whether we were on-site or not, and they work anywhere and from any device.
Perhaps the most important benefit of remote work is that you can hire employees from anywhere, and they are never tethered to a single place. That kind of freedom adds to the sense of autonomy that each member of Microverse Studios experiences, and as a result we can attract and retain the best talent. This is very important to us, because our value proposition is entirely based on the quality of our work.
And while we’re not in each others’ personal spaces, we do constantly interact. One of our team mentioned that in the first month working at Microverse Studios, she’d interacted more with her coworkers via Slack than in her entire time on site at her previous job. ”
Allowing remote work is a heavy decision for any company to make, and it’s important to weigh the impact it will have on company culture and productivity. In the scientific animation field, it seems to be an ideal fit, allowing creatives to thrive and maximizing efficiency.
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