The L.A. Times has a report on the lack of CG artists in the industry. “Industry observers agree that there are not enough experienced workers to fill the more than 5,000 jobs available in live-action movies, animated features and video game projects”. For example, while New Zealand based Weta Digital (the computer effects company best known for its work on the The Lord of the Rings trilogy and co-owned by director Peter Jackson) “expects to have plenty of work in 2005, when production ramps up for Jackson’s remake of King Kong”, they are “struggling to keep its key staff members from being poached” by American based rivals by trolling for projects in the meantime. Chief Operating Officer Eileen Moran received a “courtesy call from Sony Pictures Imageworks to let her know it was sending recruiters to town, hungry for staff and looking at hers” right before the final deadline for Return of the King. Over the summer she received a phone call “from DreamWorks SKG animation executives who were short-handed for several projects, including Shrek 2. She said she told them, ‘We’d be happy to work with you in November, when we’re ramping down, so that no one leaves here without a job.’ But DreamWorks couldn’t wait. Recruiters came to Wellington and offered to double the salaries of Weta workers if they left New Zealand immediately to take jobs in Glendale, said artists who were wooed. Days later, Moran said, she received a bouquet of flowers from DreamWorks. The card read, ‘Good luck with Return of the King'”!