Scotland’s Largest Animation/VFX Studio Axis Has Collapsed With 162 Jobs Lost

Axis Studios, Scotland’s largest animation and vfx company, has collapsed, leading to the loss of 162 jobs and the cessation of all production. Four employees are staying aboard to help manage the studio’s closure.

The company’s collapse is attributed to “severe cash flow problems.”

The Glasgow-headquartered company was founded 24 years ago by Richard Scott, Dana Dorian, Stuart Aitken, and Graham McKenna. At its peak, it employed over 400 workers.

It was widely known for its work on game cinematics and trailers, which sometimes became as iconic as the games themselves, such as the company’s trailer for the zombie survival videogame Dead Island (2011). Recent titles for which Axis created cinematics or trailers include Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Palia, Clash of Clans: Hammer Jam, Halo Infinite, and Valorant.

Axis also produced episodic content, animated features, and vfx for film and tv. It made the series Lost in Oz for Prime Video and the feature Scrooge: A Christmas Carol for Netflix, as well as multiple episodes of Netflix’s Love Death + Robots (“Mason’s Rats,” “The Tall Grass”), and vfx/compositing for the Tom Hanks film Otto and Aardman Animations’ A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.

The company has been placed into administration, in which an external liquidator has come aboard to manage the company and determine its future.

“It is a great shame to see a creative business in Scotland close its doors,” said Alistair McAlinden, head of Interpath Advisory in Scotland and joint administrator.

McAlinden went on to add:

Axis has been a studio of choice for key production companies and has produced content for household names such as the BBC, Netflix and Blizzard Entertainment. The Company experienced a high demand for its services during COVID as animation and visual effects for tv, film, and videogames skyrocketed.

Unfortunately, however, Axis has more recently been impacted by a decline in customer projects, as well as increases in labour costs which have resulted in severe cash flow problems. The directors worked tirelessly to explore alternative solutions, but ultimately had to take the difficult decision to seek the appointment of administrators.

Axis is the second major U.K. animation studio forced to shut down in recent months due to its financial situation. The Manchester area stop-motion studio Factory Transmedia closed shop last April due to “challenging market conditions.”