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In the heart of Baja California, not too far from the cloud data centers and urban studios that dominate the global visual effects industry, Boxel Studio was quietly building something bold. Known for their work on high-profile episodic and feature projects, Boxel had already earned a reputation for delivering Hollywood-quality visuals from a team distributed across borders and time zones.
But as demand scaled and expectations grew, it became clear that the future of the studio wouldn’t be built on traditional infrastructure, it would need to live in the cloud. This wasn’t a leap of faith. It was a calculated transformation, driven by vision, necessity, and the quiet, relentless work of a few key leaders who understood that cloud technology isn’t just about faster renders or virtual machines. It’s about trust. It’s about people.
At the center of this evolution was Armando Ricalde, Boxel’s Chief Technology Officer. A seasoned VFX supervisor and executive coach, Armando doesn’t fit neatly into the box of a typical CTO. His leadership blends engineering clarity with a deep understanding of team dynamics. Before taking on the technical helm, he served as Boxel’s Chief of Leadership and Organizational Learning, reimagining how culture and communication worked across a globally dispersed studio.
“The cloud isn’t just about compute,” says Armando. “It’s about connection—to your team, to your purpose, and to the story you’re telling.”
His strategy was clear: design a hybrid cloud pipeline that empowered creative talent while giving producers the visibility and scalability they needed. But he also knew that technology alone wouldn’t get them there.
“We designed workflows that respected the artist’s rhythm,” he explains, “while still giving production what they needed in terms of speed, scale, and security.”
Helping bring that vision into reality was Sergio Montoya, Boxel’s Head of IT and the quiet force behind the studio’s infrastructure backbone. With two decades of experience in everything from GCP deployments to 100G fiber upgrades, Sergio had long been the studio’s first responder and forward scout. When the pandemic hit, it was Sergio and his lean team who kept remote production alive through sheer creativity and grit. But as Boxel grew, the DIY approach began to show its limits.
“It was never just about fixing things,” Sergio says. “It was about building systems that made the creative flow invisible. Artists need to hit the ground running. Tools have to work securely, instantly, and without friction. CenterGrid’s provisioning model lets Boxel align workstation availability directly with project demand, scaling resources up during peak production and dialing back when fewer seats are needed — optimizing both performance and cost.”
That mindset is what led Sergio to partner with CenterGrid, a cloud services company based in Ohio, known for turning complex IT into creative enablement. Working closely with CenterGrid’s COO, Christopher Beard, Sergio led a full re-architecture of Boxel’s production infrastructure. Together, they built out scalable virtual workstations, hardened cloud storage policies, and developed custom provisioning flows that allowed artists to log in from anywhere and be production-ready in minutes.
“Sergio brings sharp systems thinking, relentless curiosity, and a calm, problem-solving mindset to every call,” says Beard. “He makes complexity look simple and that’s what studios need in a cloud partner.”
But this wasn’t just about building better infrastructure, it was about creating real partnership. Chris Beard and his team didn’t just deliver services; they became a working part of the Boxel ecosystem.
“We love working with Boxel for many reasons, but I’d like to highlight three,” Beard shares. “First, there is mutual respect that we are creatively building something together. We are not viewed as a transaction to them, we’re a partner that helps make amazing happen. We want to hit the project deadline as badly as they do, and we’ll own up when we impact their schedule.”
“Second, they’re truly hard workers. Their visuals are top-notch, but what’s equally impressive is how they manage workflows, data, automations, and strategic planning. It’s mastery of the craft while staying innovative.”
“And third, they came to CenterGrid with an open mind. They value maneuverability, and we amplify that with our customer-focused approach. This team is energized to try new things, fail fast, and evolve, whether in the creative space, technology, or how to run their business. They’re not bound by dogma, or overpriced public cloud contracts that slow them down.”
This deep collaboration helped Boxel shape infrastructure around the artist, not the other way around. From intelligent storage strategies that used hot/cold tiers and symlinks to minimize duplication, to rendering bursts that scaled dynamically per project, the system was built to flex with the demands of real production.
What We’re Building Together
Boxel Studio Team From left: Weverton Alves, Andres Reyes, Freddy Chavez, Juan Carlos Galindo
Smarter Deployment of Workstations
Golden images tailored to each department allow artists to get started quickly, with all the tools they need pre-configured and optimized.
Intelligent Storage Architecture
High-speed centralized storage supports workflow-specific hot and cold strategies. Symlinks reduce duplication while maintaining naming consistency, vital for VFX production pipelines.
Flexible Rendering Power
Boxel is implementing a dynamic cloud render strategy with burst capacity and VM configurations adapted to each project. Monitoring dashboards provide real-time visibility.
Optimized Connectivity & Monitoring
Upgraded networking, including static IPs and routing improvements, supports fast, stable data transfers. Artist feedback helps fine-tune profiles and balance performance under real-world workloads.
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CenterGrid: A True Extension of the Studio
The impact wasn’t just technical, it was personal. Boxel didn’t just find a vendor. They gained a creative partner.
“Their team is very professional, not to mention great human beings,” says Armando. “Chris Beard is present in every meeting. Their support and commitment to making our projects a success are always present. They truly feel like part of our studio.”
That alignment is now shaping Boxel’s roadmap well into the future. The studio’s 2025–2026 growth plan is ambitious: fully virtualized workstations for 100% of artists, complete decommissioning of on-prem infrastructure, and annual cloud storage expansion by over a petabyte.
It’s not just a scale-up, it’s a level-up.
“We’re not building a cloud studio,” says Armando. “We’re building a creative engine that just happens to live in the cloud.”
And yet, for all the high-performance storage, virtual machines, and cloud-native rendering queues, what makes Boxel’s transformation remarkable isn’t just what’s under the hood, it’s how it feels for the people behind the pixels. Artists now log in from wherever they are, load their tools in minutes, and begin creating with confidence. Producers can monitor progress in real time. Teams collaborate across continents as if they were side by side.
It’s infrastructure that enables flow. Systems that scale with empathy. And a studio culture that proves the cloud can be more than compute, it can be connection.
Final Word: Speed of Creativity
For Boxel, cloud isn’t just a tool, it’s a creative enabler.
“This partnership allows us to move at the speed of our creativity,” said Montoya. “In a fast-changing industry, we need partners who can evolve with us. CenterGrid has shown they can.”
As the pipeline becomes fully cloud-native and virtualized, Boxel is poised not just to meet the demands of modern content creation, but to exceed them with agility, intelligence, and a partner that grows with them.
