Role: 3D Artist at Important Looking Pirates VFX
Graduated: 2015
I am currently working at Important Looking Pirates, that does VFX for movies and TV series. My tasks usually involve rigging, coding tools and plugins.
In addition to working on cool projects with very skilled Pirates, I like to spend my free time building games, learning new programming languages, drawing, sculpting,
animating, creating music, and so on. Creating things has always been a very big part of my life.
When I saw gscept's education, I thought it would be a perfect fit because the games and VFX industries seemed to have a perfect balance between being technical and artistic. It was three very intense years with little more than sitting in front of a computer screen. gscept was very generous to let each student get their own computer during the study period, and we could sit at school for as long as we wanted. I also met many friends during my studies that I still hang out with and they have been a great help when it comes to job-seeking, as many of them work in the industry today!
After my studies, I got a job at Framestore in London where I worked as a rigger at Guardians of the Galaxy 2, among others. It was two tough and hard years where I developed a great deal. After London I flew back home to Sweden and started working with advertising at Milford Animation. Milford is a small animation company that makes super nice commercials. It was great to work in a slightly smaller team, and I learned a lot during my time there. After working with rigging and pipeline at Milford, I decided to return to VFX and applied to Important Looking Pirates.
If you were also very boring to play LAN games with, and preferred to sit in Photoshop instead of on Steam, then I can really recommend applying to the VFX/games industry! But also, of course, if you have a burning interest in games and film. It takes a lot of time and hard work to reach the required level, but it is a very fun and challenging job and the industry is filled with nice people!
It can be difficult in the beginning to know exactly what you want to focus on and depending on what you want to work with, it can also vary. But I would recommend trying to get a good foundation so you know all the steps in the pipeline, but then focus on one area and become really good at it. If you have a burning passion for animation, go for it and go crazy!
There is plenty of time on the side of school assignments, to go pull at animation curves. If you want to sculpt, check out ArtStation.com and try to get your works to the same level!
And as a final piece of advice for prospective students: open up Google straight away and get started on 3D tutorials. Start learning now, because to learn something new is something you will have use for throughout your career! Good luck and hope to see you!