*Update: two numbers corrected*
Have you seen Transformers 3? Star Treck Into Darkness? Flight? Looper? Underworld Awakening? Boardwalk Empire? Well then you’ve seen the handy work of Atomic Fiction. With around 35 employees based in Emeryville, California — Atomic Fiction is by no means small in production value. With a slew of huge projects already under its belt, it is a well known name in the visual effects community. Setting itself apart from the rest, Atomic Fiction is one of the first studios to tap into the cloud with AWS. Co-Founder Ryan Tudhope stopped by theCUBE to talk with co-hosts Dave Vellante and Jeff Frick at the #AWSsummit this afternoon.

The cloud immediately gave Atomic Fiction instant access to big-company infrastructure at a fraction of the cost. Here is the kicker, just like your electricity bill, they pay for only what they use. So all of that computer power they aren’t using…they aren’t paying for. The cloud is proving to be a true game changer in the visual effect space — one that is letting Atomic Fiction render at a fraction of the traditional cost to a big shop. All of that rendering is critical as a visual effects company. Tudhope likened it to “paint drying for an artist”, when it needs to be done, it needs to be done. The cloud allows companies to treat computer power like a utility; you use it when you need it, how you need it, and only when you need it.

In explaining visual effects, Tudhope used the term “look photo-real” when discussing what the visual effects they make have to look like. “The last 10 percent is an order of magnitude harder than everything before it,” said Tudhope. Noodling (as we learned they call it) is fine-tuning their craft, and in its rendering efforts Atomic Fuction sees huge spikes in the last 30 days of production. As an example he said that Atomic Fiction could render over one million core hours in the AWS cloud for a project. Of those a million plus hours, half would be in the last 30 days of production. If you had to built a localized render farm for the project, you’re going to use a large percentage of the farm for only a small portion of the total project time. The rest of the time? Your localized render farm (which you’re paying for) is going largely unused.

Interestingly enough, he described the visual effects industry as a whole as very friendly. Largely a project based industry, a lot of companies share talent between projects. The reason Atomic Fiction went to (and bet) on the cloud was more of a people thing than a technology thing. By not absolving the costs of traditional rendering infrastructure, Tudhope and his co-founder Kevin Baillie were able to build out a team of rockstar awesome people. Cost cuts where in the machine costs of rendering, not people costs of talent. I’d say Atomic Fiction is on to something…