Last Pixel makes move during downturn

RATHER than scaling back its operations during the current economic downturn, Perth-based 3D animation and visualisation firm Last Pixel has taken the opportunity to diversify its business.

Fortuitously, Last Pixel had already started exploring opportunities to work in the television and film sectors, but prior to the economic meltdown was too busy to actively engage clients away from its core business.

Last Pixel specialises in 3D modelling and animation, visual effects and post-production, predominantly generating fly-throughs, renders, motion graphics, visual treatments and edits for property developers and architectural firms.

Established by Rick Grigsby and Anthony McIlwain in 2003, Last Pixel has worked on more than 500 projects and more recently began to take on a variety of projects, from commercials for Toyota and Honda, right through to large scale green screen film shoots and character design and animation.

Having attracted a team of like-minded creative professionals, the synergy in the studio has brought along a level of passion and skill sets that flows through the company’s pipeline and into its projects.

That diversity of skills allowed Last Pixel to expand its business while the global downturn hit and clients put projects on hold.

“The global downturn made a massive dent in our customer base, projects going on hold, lack of new projects being approved,” Mr Grigsby told WA Business News.

“This effectively quartered the amount of architectural projects from the same time last year and there was unpredictability of projects coming in.

“This strained cash flow and waiting on outstanding invoices because instead of projects walking in the door we had to be a lot more focused and targeted in our approach.

“We had made some moves into diversifying the business into related fields such as mining and energy, engineering and product visualisation, and visual effects for TV.

“But because we’d been so busy we hadn’t made big moves into these areas.

“The GFC was a good prompt to make a concerted push to attract more of that type of work as well as other areas such as medical animations, etcetera.

“We were looking at what other areas our skills could be applied to and figuring out who the customers were and what we could add to their projects.”

Creative director David McDonnell said the company did not want to slash staff during the downturn and instead used the lull in the workload to develop staff skills and in-house projects that could be used in the future.

“When the situation changed we were able to adapt, we wanted to do TV and film for so long that during the GFC we developed that part of our business and we were then cautiously able to make the crossover,” he said.

Mr Grigsby said that, as a result of diversifying Last Pixel, the business was more secure and better able to ride out the “financial bumps”.

“We’ve had to develop new skills and hone others. Some of the [new] projects have been the most interesting, challenging and rewarding projects we’ve worked on to date,” he said.

“We’ve developed new pipelines and workflows that allow us to work more efficiently.

“With lower budgets from the clients we’ve had to work smarter and also really communicate better with our clients and come up with creative ways to show their project that aren’t going to be too expensive.”

Due to the global financial crisis, Last Pixel believes it is important to understand the business’s finances and cash flow intimately to help the directors know when they need to act.

“Be aware of other opportunities related to your business and how you can make the move to be part of those areas,” Mr Grigsby said.

“Having a broad skill set among your staff allows you to be more adaptable to market changes.”