Remember three years ago, when all your media-employed friends had to suddenly go from pulling down a dot-com salary to working retail and collecting unemployment? We spoke to a manager at a North Beach postproduction house a year ago, and he told us that even though most of their competition had gone out of business, they were still struggling -- there just wasn't any work. It was a rotten time.

Well, good news: the local media-technology industry may just be on the mend. The SF Weekly did a feature this week on local animation house Wild Brain, and this morning, Gavin Newsom (who introduced himself as "Chief Disorganizer of San Francisco") himself announced that The Orphanage (one of the country's most respected special-effects companies, located down the street from George in the Presidio) is forming its a big new animation studio right here in town.

Gavin's been making strides to lure in more digital-animation-biz, bless his heart (although many production companies -- such as that Reese Witherspoon movie or the Will Smith one -- bring in a crew from LA, rather than providing work to Bay Area gaffers). Chief to that goal has been his DMAC (Digital Media Advisory Council), which is credited for giving the Bay Area a reputation as the place to go for digital work, even over the SoCal studios! Given that greatness, how can we follow Gavin's directive, given when questioned on the Tony Hall issue, to not "talk about the failings of others -- let's talk about my failings"? (You bet, Gav! Give us a call!)

It's hard not to get excited about this news: Orphanage Animation Studios has already raised a couple million for feature-length animated movies, and plans to hire for 200-300 positions including IT, admin, painters, artists, and on and on ... just as soon as they can, um, find a building. "We need to hire everything we need to have a creative company" they said, and when asked about salary they refused to be specific, but said "we have 24-year-olds making over six figures."