Do you ever wonder what went behind creating the wizards flying on broomsticks in Harry Potter movies or the dragons blowing fire in the Game of Thrones series?
What is that green screen that you see all the time in the ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos of almost all movies and especially fantasy movies? If your curiosities run in that direction, becoming a VFX Artist could be your calling. Career choices after the 12th can be very hard to make, partly because there are too many fields to choose from. If a creative job excites you, or if you want to associate with the film industry, then the field of Visual Effects (VFX) is the one for you.
So, without further delay, let’s look at all things you must do to become a VFX Artist!
1. Know your traits:
The first step in making a career choice is whether your personality traits match the requirements of the job. The traits that are suitable for a VFX Artist include:
• Creativity- A creative mind is the most important trait that a VFX artist must-have. Imagination is the first step to becoming an artist.
• Knack for design- Having an eye for colour combinations, a visual sense of what looks attractive on-screen and attention to detail are important in this job.
• Basic understanding of physics and computers- VFX includes playing with motion graphics, vectors, velocity, angles, lighting and many of those words you heard in a Physics class. A basic understanding of these technical concepts creates a stronger foundation.
• Teamwork- At the end of the day, VFX is a collaborative effort with various people working on the same project. It goes a long way to be a team player and coordinate properly with your teammates and colleagues.
• Sticking to deadlines- The VFX industry usually works on a tight schedule, so as a VFX Artist, you will always be expected to complete your tasks within the deadlines given to you.
2. Enroll yourself on a VFX course from a reputed institute:
You can join one of the top institutes for VFX right after your 12th. You can do full-time certificate courses in VFX along with your graduation.
3. Sharpen your technical skills:
This will be the most important aspect of your journey. While you’re taking a course, make sure to learn these software’s:
• Adobe Photoshop
• Autodesk MAYA
• Adobe After Effects
• Houdini
• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Nuke
• ZBrush
• Mocha
Coding skills can be a huge add-on for a VFX artist. Python is the most widely used language in VFX and gaming.
4. Take up independent projects while you’re studying
It is important to have an impressive portfolio to increase your chances of getting placed in a top VFX company. Work as a freelance VFX Artist and start your own independent projects. They will not only give you practical experience but also build up your portfolio.
The biggest advantage of choosing this field is its flexibility. If you’re passionate about visual effects and computer graphics, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a 12th pass-out or a college drop-out. The only thing an employer would be looking for in you is your skillset. With placement assistance, you will have a higher chance of landing a job immediately after the successful completion of your course.
So, choose the institute that offers career-oriented training in VFX, expert guidance and placement assistance to help you accomplish your career goals. Go ahead, take the first step ahead towards your dream career. All the best!
You’ve made up your mind to be a VFX artist and wondering how and where to begin from? Getting into the business of Animation & VFX requires humongous efforts and perseverance. But a career in this domain can be extremely fulfilling, exciting and rewarding when you have received the right training and guidance for it. Choosing the right institute and career coursefor your training will help you with the appropriate resources required to build a rewarding career in this field.
Here are some of the starting steps for you to follow:
1) Choose a software
With loads of new software and updates coming regularly, it could be overwhelming to narrow down your choice to a few. However, it’s extremely important to get a grasp on the one that you can are comfortable with. Check out the trial versions of the ones you think you can work with. For beginners, Blender is recommended which is an open-source free software.
2) Self Learning
Watch a bunch of tutorials and repeat them. Start with the basic effects namely Fire, Water Clouds/smoke, Explosions, Lightning in both 2D and 3D. These are common tasks for every VFX artist and the main aim here is to get the hang of it. The more you experiment, the easier it will be to adapt to your skills. It is recommended to start with the basics like colour theory, composition and modeling and not directly approach specifics like rotoscopy and texturing. Once you have mastered the fundamentals, try and figure out what you enjoy the most and specialise in it. While big-budget projects have the visual effects tasks broken up as specific jobs, indie studios or freelancing would need you to move around these roles quite often.
3) Enroll in a course
One of the major factors for getting into a top-notch VFX company is an impressive CV and a job-ready skillset. Learning online from the available tutorials will provide you with a basic idea but a career-oriented course in VFX will help you learn from the experts and work in a studio-like environment. In the era of cut-throat competition, training from a well-reputed animation and VFX institute will secure and ease your access to the industry. Needless to mention that a career course would also help you with the technical and soft skills required to make your mark as a skilled VFX Artist.
4) Demo reel
Show-reels are a culmination of your best works that you could highlight in your profile or while freelancing. Make sure that throughout your training, you keep working towards honing your craft so that your demo reel is impressive and diverse. Don’t forget to keep improving your reel on a regular basis.
5) Learn coding
Artists who know coding are the most sought after by major studios in recent times. Coding could be lifesaving in automating parameters that usually take much longer when done manually. Python is the most commonly used coding language but you could just learn any of the scripts. Although coding is not mandatory for this profile, it will give you a competitive edge over your peers.
As a VFX Artist one can get into the gaming industry, production houses and media and advertising with ease however it takes consistent hard work and relevant work experience to get recognized.
The demand for skilled VFX Artists is constantly on the rise. You can enroll in a course that provides expert training and guidance on the latest software and techniques so that you can develop the skills that the topmost recruiters are looking for. With placement assistance, you will have higher chance of landing a job immediately after the successful completion of your course.
Begin your career in the dynamic and very rewarding filmmaking industry on the right note. All the best!
Animation and VFX are two indispensable tools of modern filmmaking. Although animation has been extensively used in media and entertainment content for several years, it is most of the time falsely considered as a part of VFX. And also in no way should VFX be considered superior to Animation. Both serve different purposes even though they have some overlapping workflow approaches. Both also offer rewarding career options and you can choose the best institutes to get trained in animation & VFX. With promising career courses, you can build a successful career in the media & entertainment industry as an Animator or VFX Artist.
Before we dive into the key differences between them, two let’s consider them to keep things in perspective.
Like any other art form, animation too grew from scratch. It was initially done through sketches on a film, and subsequently with the help of software. However, that was not the case in VFX. It had the advantage of being created on high-end tech right off the bat. Techniques were inherited from the ones used in animation like lighting, modeling and texturing. Despite this, it is good to know that both continue to evolve and grow at their own pace. Now let’s dive into the differences
Application:
Animation in a pure sense is about creating motion in a character. The character could be in the form of a human being, objects or just about anything. It could be a sketch, painting or even a physical model. Animation creates illusions of movement in these characters and thus creating a scene. The concept of VFX is the exact opposite of it. VFX is applied to real scenes or frames. The special effects created on the software are superadded on real elements thus enabling us to manipulate live-action shots with the help of computer-generated imagery. This helps us to achieve tasks that otherwise won’t be possible or might be expensive during production.
credits: Mateusz Butkiewicz on Unsplash
Timing:
In terms of time taken, the animation is usually but not always a laborious process as it is involved right from the beginning of production. VFX is a part of post-production and becomes challenging only when most of the shots of a movie heavily rely upon it as in Sci-fi and Superhero movies. Talking solely about the post-production phase, VFX takes longer even though the number of people involved is higher. It requires an editor, colourist, motion designer, sound designer, 3D artists and compositors while post-production in animation is mostly devoted to sound designing which plays a bigger part here than the former.
Cost implication:
From an economical perspective, the cost of technology is higher in VFX. Animations are flexible in the sense that you can simplify the costs. That being said, if the animation is complex, the requirement for specialized professionals drastically increases and so does the cost. Movies of studios like Pixar and Dreamworks require as much budget as VFX of Disney.
credits: Ryan Garry on Unsplash
Excited to build a career in Animation or VFX? There are plenty of courses available at the best animation & VFX institute. Choose a course that suits your requirements the best and get started!
It is a matter of great pride to cherish the silver jubilee of Arena Animation Sayajigunj successfully completed 25 Years of Academic Excellence. Arena Animation, Sayajigunj is a Pioneer in Animation and multimedia education at Baroda city for more than two & half decades . Arena trains students in the latest industry relevant courses backed by alliances with world leaders. Arena has an extensive network of centers all over India, we stands No.1 in Gujarat and in Top 5 pan India. We have trained over 7000+ students locally since its inception in 1996.
We are into fostering good value system in terms of giving education services in a new technology & opening a world of opportunity for students by providing them with a superior education along with professional hands on training in the field of Multimedia & Entertainment.
Arena Animation has a spectrum of courses for all kinds of audiences ranging from career courses to professional courses as well as short-term courses that offer students a plethora of career opportunities such as
Animation
VFX
Gaming /AR-VR
Web & Graphics
UI-UX
Broadcast
Multimedia
Digital Advertising & Marketing.
Arena Animation Sayajigunj’s purpose is to help student build career into creative industry and enhance the individual skills by our experts and mentor them to get professional legitimately as per their interest.
We truly believe that along with prominent efforts and add on skills there are unlimited opportunities to grow mentally and professionally by giving them the culture that pays for your performance and stimulates the passion from within. We are highly proud of each of our Students and make them a skilled and responsible citizen for the country We want you all to GET TRAINED AND GET HIRED & rejoicing the success by placing the students in renowned MNC companies, Studios & Advertising company building creative careers in movies and producing future entrepreneurs for the country.
As an aspiring VFX Artist, you must have seen tons of behind-the-scenes footage of movies that use advanced VFX techniques to create fascinating visuals for the audience. Something common in all of them is the usage of blue and green screens. Sci-fi, period and fantasy genre movies use them all the time. Before we dive into it further, first let’s understand the concept of chroma keying. It is the process of shooting video on a solid colour backdrop which is later replaced by the required footage or CGI. It isn’t strictly a post-production process as shooting on a screen on set is the first part of the entire workflow.
But why only blue or green? Blue and green are on the opposite ends of the color spectrum. Red and orange which correspond to the skin tones, so by using blue or green you have lesser unwanted effects when keying a person on screen.
Should you choose the blue or the green screen for chroma key compositing? This essentially depends on the lighting of scene to be shot. If it’s a daytime background, then green in the ideal choice as it blends seamlessly. Blue as you’d have guessed is best for replicating nighttime. Apart from that the choice actually isn’t that simple.
Blue is a higher frequency colour than green and thus gives a more distinct keyed image with greater contrast.
The blue screen is also the most common choice of the compositor as it has less depth than green screen and so it does not stand out in the real world. The blue screen can be created using silk or fine fabric coated with an emulsion of fine particles of a light reflecting material. Most people like to use velvet for this purpose, but fabric such as muslin can also serve as a good option.
Talking about the counterpart, green color is processed the cleanest with the most luminance. The result is that you will be able to pull a clean key with the least amount of noise, and often, without a complicated lighting setup. Conversely, because of green’s brightness, it can also lead to more ‘spill,’ meaning the green color may reflect and bleed over on your on-screen talent. It isn’t that big of a problem and one of the easiest ways to avoid it is to ensure distance between the actor and the screen.
credits: (c)Disney Studios
Now it may seem as though blue is superior to green, which to some extent is right. But it does have its own downsides too. Blue screen will require twice as much light as green screen thus it’s an expensive choice. This difference in luminosity results in less colour spill than green. You would not want your post production to be messy after all.
In conclusion even though blue gets the upper hand, the green screen is still the most popular choice for chroma key compositing since it’s cheaper and has lesser depth with respect to its surface. Nevertheless, you may need to use both screens in various circumstances. The ideal solution is not just one.
Fascinated with the behind-the-scene intricacies about film-making? You can become an integral part of the process too. Get trained in VFX fundamental and advanced techniques at Arena Animation.
Check out the career courses in VFX here and take the first step ahead in your career pursuit.
