Moving Day!

I've been working from home today and will be tomorrow as well. ReelFX is in the middle of moving to our new facility a few miles down the road from our old location. We're moving to Mark Cuban's old Yahoo/Broadcast.com building. The place is pretty big. Lots of room to grow. A little sterile, though. We'll need to do something about that.

I worked at Big Idea when we made a big move from downtown out to the suburbs. It had the same kind of feel. We moved from a scrambled mess across several floors of a fringe downtown converted warehouse to a more open floor space that was cubicle/office furniture friendly. When we moved into our new space at Big Idea my good friend Bryan Ballinger and I decided to add some color to the dreadful corporate grey cubism that greeted us. We had an edict from the powers that be that we were not allowed to put anything on the walls above a certain height. They were trying to keep it from looking like the ecclectic mess downtown. So instead we strung a clothes line above the entrance to our little section of cube land (not on a wall, ust suported by a building beam and a 2x6 plank) and proceeded to drape hundreds of the ugliest, stupidest, gaudiest neck ties you've ever seen from it. I mean these things were criminally bad. I think we did that the second day we were there. I still remember seeing the founder of the company slowly walking into his office, just looking at us while we were up on a step ladder hanging hundreds of ugly ties on a line in his brand new, clean, well ordered facility. Directly across from his office. We said "Hi, Phil" and kept right on hanging the ties. Welcome to your animation studio, I thought.

I think that was OK. When we accidentally blew off the Yoohoo chocloate drink bomb, spraying fermented Yoohoo all over the office like a geyser, we feared for our jobs. That's another story I'll tell someday. It's a classic. But after a while people grew to love the ties. They were a regular stop on tours through the studio. They added personality to the place.

So in that spirit here a few of us ReelFX animators will be hitting the garage sales this weekend to try and scare up some cheesy furnishings for the lounge. Desk toys aren't gonna cut it, kids. I'll be bringing my futon from home. Might bring my super el cheapo pool table as well (complete with warped cues). We had a pretty decent pool table at Blur. It was a great way to get away from the work and relax for a bit. Of course I didn't like losing to Jason Taylor everyday, but I made up for it during Quake games. Heh. Anyhow, John Berry's bringing his alligator statue. I might do some shopping on eBay to pick up some odd decorations to spruce things up a bit. Found some blindingly yellow felt fabric the other day that I'll probably scarf up and use to dress up the skyline. Yeah, we're gonna make sure we have a lounge kickin'. We're looking for a circa 1980 cheap-o keyboard and a purple crushed velvet pimp jacket. We'd like to have it so that any visitors will be required to do their best Robert Goulet impersonation. Either that or they have to leave a tip in the martinni glass. We've already got our eye on a spot in the new building for the animator's lounge. One thing I learned from the Big Idea move back in the day is that in the chaos it's squatter's rules. First one to pee on the fire hydrant owns the fire hydrant. Metaphorically speaking, I mean.

I'm sure if any management people are reading this they're getting ready to shut me down. ;o)

Heh. I wonder why they put us animators waaaaaay in the back away from everybody else at the opposite end of the building from the client suites? We're not that loud and crazy. Oh wait, yes we are. Heh. Should be fun. I'll try and grab some pix of the new space next week. I wanna wait til we have it all decked out first.

-k