No-one has thrown-in a vote for Dropbox? Pair that with a camera, a voice recorder, and a plain-text editor and you've got everything you need. And when you want to switch tools you just do it. Everything remains forever flexible and accessible. I'll never understand the desire to hide simple things like notes behind a monolithic inaccessible database.

Either this is a joke or I, just, I quit everything.

I work for a VFX studio. It's a bit different from how I imagine design studios are organized. But here's the basics…

We're setup to operate on a project-by-project basis. Typical project turn-around is anywhere from 2 to 6 weeks (commercials). Sometimes (when working on movies) we're on a job for 8 months or so. TV shows last about 6 months.

• 3 Managers (called Producers)
  • Executive Producer (1) - handles client-relations, bidding new projects, and oversees the Producers.
  • Producer (2) - Is primary point-of-contact with clients while jobs are running, directly responsible for all aspects of the job running smoothly, primary (often, only) coordinator/manager. (that's me!)
• Creative Directors (2) - one leads the compositing team, the other runs the 3D team. They are also the technical leads, best (most productive) artists, and supervise the photography of VFX stuff.
• Online editor (1) - preps materials for the artists and assembles edits for output.
• 10 artists - most VFX studios strictly separate areas of responsibility, but we're very flexible. Whatever you're good at ends up being the thing we ask you to do. Animators who can composite, for example, do lots of that in addition to their animation duties. The basic run-down is:
  • Compositors
  • Modelers
  • Animators
  • FX (particles, smoke, fire, etc)
  • Coders (lots of render-farm and software-hacking)

I've used, and enjoyed, Asana.

This is the kind of modular collaboration software that tends to stick with my team.

Thanks!

At the moment: BBEdit, vim, Folding Text, dropbox.

I've tried everything and nothing works as well as the filesystem + widely-supported data-formats. The actual tools I make the data with changes from year to year, but you can take my .txt .jpg .mov from my cold dead hands.

Very interested