Visual effects studios play a key role in film production.

Most modern big-budget movies and television shows will rely heavily on visual effects to transport actors and audiences into outer space, the distant past or the deep sea.

And the appearance and non-vocal performances of characters and creatures, fantastic and otherwise will often be partly or fully the creation of animators and other specialist staff.

As well as purely animated films and TV, many live action releases are in large part the work of the employees of VFX studios.

Many staff work film-to-film on fixed-term contracts, so redundancies may not reflect the total impact of the business’ troubles on jobs.

According to animation news publisher Cartoon Brew, external an email sent over the weekend by chief executive Caroline Parot said “external headwinds” had exacerbated problems caused by factors including post-covid recovery.

She also said the US writers’ strike which led to a slow-down in demand for VFX work causing “severe” pressure on cashflow.

Those same issues will add to the anxiety of staff and may fear re-entering what has been a relatively lean jobs market for VFX professionals.

“Render in peace” one self-described 13-year veteran of The Mill wrote on Reddit, external – a reference to the computationally intense process of producing final, film grade images, a process known as rendering.