CIS Vancouver just keeps getting bigger and better projects. Early in 2008, industry giant Deluxe acquired Rainmaker Visual Effects and rebranded it CIS Vancouver, and over the last year it has provided visual effects and animation work on a number of big-budget features including Tropic Thunder, Changeling, and Twilight, in addition to a multitude of television and commercial projects. Things are busy, but the increased demand for the company’s services is not exactly surprising to the people who work there.

Things have been moving at a steadily increasing pace for the last six years, according to Jason Dowdeswell, head of Digital Studio at CIS Vancouver.

These days, the company is typically handling seven or eight projects simultaneously, with the help of much-used software including Autodesk® Maya® and Autodesk® Inferno®. Dowdeswell and CIS Senior Vice President and General Manager Dennis Hoffman got on the phone with Autodesk to talk about the team’s more challenging projects, its transition to the Linux® operating system, and its plans to significantly restructure its production pipeline and digital asset management system.