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What it shows

/trends is the one page that looks backwards in time - the full tracked timeline, week by week - whereas the Dashboard and the Skills / Roles / AI Impact headers reflect the current week. It fills out as more weekly snapshots accumulate.

• Pulse - weeks of history collected, postings this week, and the size of the current snapshot.
• Art Trends - an art-focused digest at the top: the top art skills (orange) and art roles (purple) by share of art postings, plus the studios hiring the most artists this week (green). The numbers come straight from the data and update every week.
• This week's read - a short auto-generated overview of the whole market: the leading skills, the biggest markets, and how much of the work names an AI tool. Data-driven; only the phrasing is written.
• Volume timeline - one bar per ISO week, so you can see the overall hiring rhythm.
• Skills on the move · week over week - the skills whose demand shifted most over recent weeks. The blue number is how many open postings name it now, the line traces the week-by-week move, and the arrow and % on the right are the overall trend (green = rising, red = falling).
• Baseline snapshot - the current week's top skills and roles, the starting point for future deltas.
• Roadmap - deeper trend features (rising/falling skills, role-mix shifts, salary trends) that unlock as the history deepens - most need 4+ weeks, some 6+ months.

What it shows

/dashboard is the snapshot of this week's open postings - everything we collected, in one interactive view. The left rail has four analytics sections; the right rail lists the actual studios and postings behind those numbers, grouped by country. Pick filters at the top and the whole page narrows at once - charts, studios, and postings together.

The colour code (used everywhere on the site)

Navisca uses the same five colours on every page, so once you learn them here they read the same on Companies, Skills, Roles and the rest:

The four left-hand sections

• Demand Overview - six technical category cards (Game Engines, Simulations, Compositing, Pipeline / Code, 3D / DCC, Rendering). The percentage is the share of this week's postings that ask for at least one skill from that category; the name shown is the most-mentioned skill in it.
• Skill Demand - bar charts for individual skills, roles (split into Art / Tech / Other), and job context (Industry, Experience Level, Remote Mode). Each bar splits into Required (solid) vs Nice-to-have (lighter), with the exact counts as NR / NO. Click a name to filter; click the ▶ arrow to expand the exact phrases pulled from real postings.
• Salaries - per-studio bars under each country, normalised to USD. Toggle year / month / hour, switch to the original currency, and filter by Country / Company / Industry. Honest by design: a band with fewer than 5 disclosed postings isn't shown - it would be noise dressed as data.
• Demand Trend - week-over-week curves once there are 2+ weeks of data. Pick a period (Week / Month / 3M / 6M / Year), toggle individual series, or switch to All series to isolate one skill/role/industry from the long tail. The X-Ray button overlays the previous window of equal length as dimmed dashed lines, so you can tell a real move from a noisy week.

The filter bar (top of the page)

• Skills / Roles / Job Context dropdowns each open a searchable chip drawer. Selecting chips narrows everything on the page.
• ANY / ALL toggle - "matches any selected chip" vs "matches all of them".
• Exclude drawers sit next to the Skills, Roles and Company selectors. Chips added there hide postings that contain them. Selected = orange; excluded = red; the two are mutually exclusive (a chip used in one is hidden from the other).
• Hide Unselected - when ON, rows you haven't selected in the Skill / Role / Job Context folders are hidden, and folders with nothing selected collapse, leaving only what you're tracking. Salaries are unaffected. OFF restores everything.
• Clear resets all filters. Every section title also has a "?" that explains what it measures.

Studios & Postings (right panel) - every marker

Studios are grouped by country (flag, name, "N studios · M postings"). Inside each studio block the small markers mean:

Each posting card shows the title, location and date, plus an "N of M" orange chip (matched skills in that specific posting). Buttons on a card:

• Skills ▼ - expand to see all skills; the matched ones are highlighted. Required skills (the top 10 by mention) show solid, secondary skills lighter.
• 📋 Copy - copies the posting as clean Markdown (title, studio, location, skills, source link) to paste into Notion, Obsidian, etc.
• A flag toggle appears on non-English postings (🇯🇵 / 🇨🇳 / 🇰🇷 / 🇩🇪 / 🇫🇷 / 🇪🇸 / 🇮🇹 / 🇵🇹) - click to flip between the English title and the original.
• View → - the original posting at source.

Top-right of the panel: an "All Active" button opens a drawer with a "Last Week Posts" chip - switch it on to see only postings that opened this week. There's also a country selector and a studio-name search.

Personalise it with your profile

Two opt-in cards in your account connect your profile to this page (full how-to in the Your account folder):

• Personalize Dashboard with my profile - on each load it pre-applies your saved Skills and Roles as active filter chips and your saved Countries as country buttons. Your Watch list studios get an orange highlight (border + light tint) wherever they appear - they're highlighted, not filtered out, so skill matches still surface other relevant studios and your watched ones stand out among them. If you've already changed filters by hand in the same session, we don't overwrite them.
• Customize Dashboard folders - saves your preferred open / closed state for the dashboard's sub-folders, applied on every load.

What it shows

/studios is the directory of studios hiring in creative tech (VFX, games, animation, motion, post). It has two parts: an Analytics overview at the top, and the full Studios List below, grouped by country. Each part has its own "?" with a legend.

• Analytics · who's hiring now - the top 10 studios with the most active postings this week (bar chart), plus the Studio type mix (how the directory splits across vfx / games / animation / motion / post / mixed; studios we haven't typed yet sit in a greyed-out unknown bar).
• Studios List - every studio as a row inside its country, click to open a card with description, "Known for" projects, salary range, roles in demand, and links (site / jobs / email / full profile).

Row badges & icons

In the Analytics overview, each top-hiring row has two small buttons:

Filtering

The control row combines filters - pick several and the list collapses to studios that match all of them:

• Country, City (enables once a country is chosen), Roles, Skills - each a searchable chip drawer.
• Sort - Hiring (this week) / All-time / Recent / Tier / A-Z.
• A studio-name search and a Reset that clears everything.

What it shows

/skills is the bottom-up view of the market: every tool or skill mentioned across postings, ranked by demand.

• Analytics · demand snapshot - top skills by mention count (split into Top Art / Tech / Mixed where we can classify), each with an orange demand bar and the roles that mention it most.
• Skill cards · click to expand - one card per skill. The head shows postings count, % required, and the top hiring studio; a green badge on the left means it's hiring this week. Open a card for: studios hiring this week, top roles, top hiring studios, top countries, seniority mix, a salary band (p25 / p50 / p75, shown only at n ≥ 5 disclosed postings), active postings this week, and related skills (what appears alongside it, with a similarity %).

Filtering

• Skills dropdown (multi-select) and a search box narrow both the analytics rows and the cards.
• Inside the cards section: filter by Category and change the Sort (by demand / name / category).
• Reset clears it all.

What it shows

/roles is the same idea as Skills, but for job titles. We map messy posting titles onto a set of canonical creative-tech roles, then rank them by demand. Headline counts here are all-time too (the Dashboard shows the current week).

• Analytics · demand snapshot - top roles by posting count, each with a purple demand bar and the skills that role most often asks for.
• Role cards · click to expand - one card per role: typical skill stack, hiring studios, geography, seniority mix, and salary where the sample is large enough. Use the Family filter (Artist / TD / Supervisor / Engineering / Production…) and Sort to navigate.

Scope note: Navisca tracks VFX / animation / games / film-art roles. Adjacent tech titles (data scientist, generic software engineer, HR, etc.) are intentionally not mapped - that's by design, not a gap.

What it shows

/salaries turns every job ad that names a number into a pay picture. For each role we show the median with a 25th-75th percentile band, so you see the middle of the market and how wide it spreads - not a single misleading average. Two folders:

• Pay by role - roles ranked by median pay, each with a range bar. Expand a role for its breakdown by country, plus the companies that disclosed it. Pay by seniority lives in the discipline view below, always tied to a single country (we never blend markets).
• Pay by discipline & seniority - frozen weekly cells (Games / VFX / Animation… × level × country) with Show only / Exclude filters; the forward-looking structure that fills out as more postings disclose pay.

What it shows

/ai-impact is the AI-tooling view of the hiring data. Top to bottom:

• Pulse - three headline numbers: % of postings mentioning any AI tool, postings-with-mention vs total, and how many distinct tools we detected.
• Top AI tools mentioned - ranked bar list; the right side shows the top roles using each tool.
• The role-level view - which roles name AI tools, plus the emerging AI-creative roles - now lives on AI Integration.
• Capability matrix - per-category table, tools as rows, capabilities as columns. Cells read ✓ yes / ◐ limited / ✕ no. Hover a column header for its definition.
• Traction leaderboard - per-category ranking on a composite 0-100 score (capability coverage 40% + adoption 25% + posting mentions 25% + recency 10%): "where does this tool stand in its lane right now."
• Capability coverage by category - ten cards, one per category, top tools ranked by how broad their capability coverage is.
• Global leaderboard - every tracked tool in one ranking with the same composite score, plus a chip filter to pin specific tools.
• All tools tracked - the full browsable catalog. Filter by category, sort, and click a card for vendor, description, badges (free / hosted / open-source) and the full profile.

Compare tools side by side

Each category links to a curated comparison at /ai/compare/<category> - an overlay radar of the top tools in that lane (Video Gen, Image Gen, 3D, etc.). Each capability is an axis; a polygon point on the outer ring means full support, near the centre means none. It's the fastest way to see where two tools genuinely differ rather than just which scores higher.

What it shows

/ai-integration is the role view of the AI question - "how is AI woven into my craft." Top to bottom:

• Roles that name AI tools in ads - ranked roles with the top tools each one names (moved here from AI Impact).
• The other side: emerging AI-creative roles - the narrow but real layer of brand-new generative-AI creative job titles.
• AI vs your craft, by role - one card per role with two bars (the two readings below). Open Per-craft detail for how AI sits with each part of the work, and the tools the role uses.

The two readings (kept separate on purpose)

• FACT - from job ads. How often studios actually name an AI tool in postings for this role. Measured, updated weekly.
• OUR ESTIMATE - what AI can do. How much of the craft AI can technically handle today: our reasoned read, not a measurement. Shown as a band where it genuinely depends (FX, animation).

The gap between them is the point. We never blend them into one score - that would dress an opinion up as a measurement.

MY PROFILE

/account/ opens with four chip-input rows. They all work the same way:

• Click the dashed + Add pill, start typing - it autocompletes against our catalogue (strict match, so typos can't slip in). Click a suggestion or press Enter to add a chip; click × to remove one. There's no Save button - changes save instantly.
• Skills and Roles - what you do.
• Watch list - studios, skills, roles or AI tools to keep an eye on. Pick the axis first, then type; each chip shows its axis label so a "Houdini" skill isn't confused with a "Houdini" watch.
• Countries - the markets you care about.
• Can't find something? Each editor has a "Suggest adding it" link (10 per day) - we review suggestions by hand and add legitimate ones to the catalogue.

Profile → Dashboard (two opt-in cards)

• Personalize Dashboard with my profile - pre-applies your Skills / Roles / Countries as filters on the Dashboard and highlights your Watch list studios. The card's left border turns orange when it's on.
• Customize Dashboard folders - set which Dashboard sub-folders open or stay closed by default, with Open all / Close all shortcuts.

Profile → Personal radar

Your profile also powers your Personal radar. The Skills, Roles and Countries you save here feed straight into it - nothing extra to switch on. The radar then reads this week's market through them and shows every matching option that's open right now: how each of your skills and roles ranks in demand, which studios are hiring for you, what to learn next, and your pay versus the market. Edit your profile and the radar updates with it.

Alerts

Saved searches that watch the market between weekly snapshots.

• Click + New alert, name it, pick criteria (skills / roles / countries, each with type-ahead).
• Toggle it ON. A daily check at 09:00 UTC emails you when new postings match (AND between fields, OR within a field).
• Edit or delete each one; up to 5 per account. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe.

Settings

• Weekly email - off by default; turn it on to get Monday's issue in your inbox.
• Country - your primary country (a single code, e.g. US / GB / JP) used for salary and report defaults. Different from the multi-Country chip-input above, which lists the markets you track on the Dashboard.

What it shows

/radar takes the Skills and Roles from your profile and reads the current market through them. It is analytics about you - not a job filter (that's the Dashboard's Personalize feature). Every number is jobs open right now.

• Your skills & roles - for each one: how many open jobs need it, a demand bar, where you rank across all tracked skills (e.g. #10 of 88), and a small weekly trend line once there's enough history. Names link to the full skill / role card.
• Who is hiring for you - studios with the most open roles that fit your profile. The number on each is how many of that studio's current vacancies match you - each vacancy counted once, even when it needs several of your skills.
• What to add next - skills that frequently show up in the same postings as yours but aren't in your profile yet: a data-driven "learn this next".
• Your salary vs market - pay range (low · median · high) for your roles in your countries, with the sample size. Needs Countries in your profile and a large enough sample to be honest.
• AI in your work - how woven into AI your role is, read two honest ways we never blend into one score: FACT (how often ads for that role actually name an AI tool, measured) and ESTIMATE (how much of the craft AI can do today: a range for broad roles like generalists, a per-craft read for multi-skill ones). List several roles and the most in-demand shows by default; flip any on or off and we remember your choice. The other side points to emerging AI-creative roles next to your craft (the opportunity side), linking through to AI Integration.

What it shows

/activity is a short read on how the board moved in the last 7 days - nothing more. Three folders - Studios, Roles and Skills - each split into two independent columns: Recently opened (left) and Recently closed (right), as a top-20 list with counts and bars. The two columns are separate top lists, read on their own - so you can see at a glance how much opened, how much closed, and who is behind each side.

It shows posting activity, not hiring or layoffs - a posting closes when it disappears from the source (filled, ended, or moved somewhere we don't track). The skills shown are those carried by the week's openings and closings, not skills appearing or vanishing on their own.

• Is VFX dying?The honest answer in numbers on the downturn and whether AI is taking the work.
• How to get into VFXWhich crafts have open entry seats and what software studios actually ask for.
• VFX salary reportReal pay bands (p25 / median / p75) by craft role, from disclosed pay.
• What to learn for VFXSkills and software ranked by live demand, not opinion.
• AI tools for VFXWhich creative AI tools studios actually name in job specs.
• VFX vs gamesThe two fields compared on tools, pay, geography and the kind of work.

• 2026-07-02
  Trends, sharper at the top see it

  The top of Trends now opens with a short read on the market - the leading skills, the biggest markets, and how much of the work touches AI - then an art digest: the top art skills, art roles, and the studios hiring the most artists this week. No more noisy week-to-week wiggles.

• 2026-06-29
  Activity, rebuilt as a weekly pulse see it

  The Activity page now answers one thing clearly: how much the board moved this week. Three folders - Studios, Roles and Skills - each split into recently opened and recently closed, with the top names and bars behind every change.

• 2026-06-28
  Salary, now per country see it

  Pay no longer blends very different markets into one misleading number. Every role and skill shows a salary band per country (highest-paying first), and the homepage leads with a typical-artist figure from our main markets.

• 2026-06-26
  VFX vs games, by the numbers see it

  A new guide puts the two fields side by side on live data - the software each one asks for, what they pay (and why the gap is mostly engineers), where the work is, and how technical it gets. Every figure updates itself each week.

• 2026-06-23
  Five plain-language guides see it

  New reads that answer the big questions straight from the data - is VFX dying, how to get into VFX, what it pays, what to learn, and which AI tools studios actually name. No hot takes, just the numbers from live job postings.