LogInTeachers are blaming CGMA's parent company Domestika for withholding payments and planning to close the school entirely.
It appears that Computer Graphics Master Academy (CGMA), one of the most renowned and respected online art academies out there, may be going through the most turbulent period in its history, with recent social media posts made by CGMA teachers and instructors suggesting the school could be on the verge of closure due to actions taken by its parent company, the online learning platform Domestika.
While the debacle seems to have been brewing behind the scenes for quite some time now, one of the first and most critical public statements came from Sophie Noel, a Senior FX Artist at Sony Pictures Imageworks and instructor of the Fundamentals of Houdini for 3D Artists course at CGMA, who shared her comments on LinkedIn.
In her statement, Noel accused Domestika of mistreating CGMA instructors, saying it has been ignoring them for weeks, hiding behind inaccessible email addresses and AI-run phone numbers, and withholding their payments for the Summer term, with some teachers reportedly still waiting on payment from the Spring term. "This is nothing less than theft. These practices must be denounced for what they are: unethical, exploitative, and absolutely unacceptable," Noel wrote.
On Discord, she further stated that Domestika is trying to shut down CGMA entirely – a claim that may seem out of the blue but will become more relevant and substantiated later in this report:
As a brief note, CGMA was acquired by Domestika sometime around February 2023, as indicated by the now-defunct cgmadomestika.com website, which you can still access via The Wayback Machine.
The first reports and rumors suggesting this purchase was not particularly beneficial for CGMA appeared as early as 2023, with some users claiming that Domestika conducted mass layoffs post-acquisition and left many course creators unpaid and with their courses scrapped, indicating that the "unacceptable treatment" Noel describes is, unfortunately, nothing new.
Speaking of layoffs, shortly after Noel published her statement lambasting Domestika, another CGMA tutor with over seven years of experience teaching there, Pat Marconett, also came forward, announcing the cancellation of his courses for the foreseeable future. In his Instagram post, the former instructor reiterated Noel's claims about Domestika withholding payments and added that the company had fired most of the support staff, which prompted Marconett's departure.
And a day later, Tyler Edlin, an Illustrator and CGMA instructor, also put all of his courses on hold indefinitely, noting that the reason teachers are not being paid is Domestika's involvement in an ongoing legal dispute – a new detail connected to the earlier claim that Domestika is trying to close CGMA.
No payments, layoffs, legal disputes, the potential shutdown – all of those scattered details start to come together thanks to an alleged email from CGMA, shared with 80 Level by a source who wished to remain anonymous.
In it, the team explains that they discovered a dissolution filing for CGMA dated November 14, 2024, which apparently was not approved by the sole shareholder – Domestika – and is now being contested in court. Please note that at this time, the email's authenticity cannot be definitively, 100% confirmed, so it should be taken with a grain of salt.
What can be confirmed, however, is the filing itself, which you can access via this handy website to see for yourself.
Although the email claims that Domestika did not approve the dissolution filing, the document signed by Domestika's Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Emmanuel Fragelus, indicates that CGMA was de jure dissolved in late 2024, and that the dissolution was carried out "by a vote of ALL of the shareholders of the California corporation."
The contradiction between the email and the document appears to be the central issue in Domestika's ongoing legal dispute, which is, in turn, driving layoffs and the withholding of payments.
It gets even more confusing with another document showing that CGMA was later reestablished on September 12, 2025 – this time in Florida instead of California – raising questions about CGMA's legal status from November 2024 to September 2025.
At the moment, neither CGMA nor Domestika has officially addressed the debacle. The report will be updated if new information surfaces down the line, so stay tuned.
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