Since 1981, SFPG has been Northern California's pacesetter. We were among the first to take the leap to computerized design and production, and we've never looked back. In 1998 we reorganized as an animation and special effects service for Web and multimedia developers, video producers and video directors.When SFPG first opened its doors in 1981, state of the art technology was one-inch videotape and digital was what your clock radio's readout had. We originally set out to be a video post-production facility. Over the years we broadened our focus to special effects and design. We've been a place of firsts the entire time -- the first to offer Avid on the West Coast, the beta test site for Dyaxis, a pioneer in offering SGI platforms for post-production and design in a production setting and one of the first to branch into a new medium that now lives under the wide umbrella of 'interactive.' The merging of SFPG with Some Interactive in 1996 enlarged our talent pool and capabilities to fully embrace the amorphous world of 'New Media.' We started doing WWW sites, interactive kiosks, CD-ROM's and interactive television applications. All the while, though, we were still geared up as a facility, which confused a lot of people, ourselves included. And to pay for all that equipment we had to compete for business with the video production companies and independent producers in town. Finally in September of 1998 we organized a mondo garage sale and get out from under all our "traditional" video gear. We pulled off yet another merger, this time with desktop video boutique Shotwell Studios. The Shotwell team had been honing their chops working on SFPG founder Joel Skidmore's educational websites. And they had developed a technique for creating animations for the Web which could be economically ported to CD-ROM and broadcast quality video. Shotwell's Drew Fiero became president of SFPG and brought along his expertise in generating AfterEffects sequences for video and film. Now we're free to do what we like best -- creating content. Whether it's providing special effects and animations to video producers and directors, or creating content modules for Web and multimedia developers, we're working entirely on the desktop now (and taking care not to knock over the pencil cup).