The VFX Festival Emerging Talent

For students currently studying within Higher or Further Education and young professionals who are looking to kick start a career. The festival will be filled with inspiring talks, panel discussions, bite-size presentations, careers, and recruitment opportunities.

Recent events

Thank you for attending The VFX Festival Emerging Talent. Escape Studios hosted this part of the festival on 9th and 11th March 2021. A list of sessions and speakers can be found below:

What to expect?

Learn from studio professionals during inspiring talks
Get the latest industry news through selection of presentations
Hear careers tips and advice during panel discussions
Hear about recruitment opportunities and jobs at the newest addition to the festival called 'Marketplace'
Meet and network with artists and recruiters

Tuesday, 9th March 2021

12.25 - 12.30 | Welcome remarks

12.30 - 13.30 | Making a stylised short in Blender with purpose

About session:

Find out more about Blue Zoo’s shorts programme and learn how the latest short is using Blender.

About Speakers:

Grant Berry, Art Director

Grant is an award-winning Director / Designer. He is happiest when working on alternative visual storytelling. Illustration lies close to his heart but enjoys using mixed media to create interesting and standout visuals. Grant Joins Blue Zoo from The Mill where he worked on commercials, Title Sequences and promos.

Mark Spokes, Animator and Short Director

Mark has won awards for both his graduate film and a charity short film for BFX film festival. Most recently to direct the Blue Zoo short film, Sinking Feeling, raising awareness for mental health charity, PAPYRUS UK. Mark joined Blue Zoo as an animator three years ago, after graduating from Bournemouth University.

14.00 - 15.00 | The Last Kingdom, Season 4 VFX - BlueBolt’s Battles, Blood and Extensive Environments

Richard Frazer, VFX Supervisor at BlueBolt

About session:

Gain creative and technical knowledge on the VFX involved in a major TV series.

About Speaker

Richard Frazer, VFX Supervisor

A supremely talented VFX Supervisor, Richard joined BlueBolt in 2015 and had since been VFX Supe on Peaky Blinders Season 3, Jamestown S1-3, The Spanish Princess S2 and is now Supervising on his 5th Season of The Last Kingdom. With a no nonsense approach to technical and budgetary challenges, Richard pulls frequent VFX rabbits from hats on last minute creative needs and can often be found in a swamp or snowy hillside in Hungary with a load of hairy Vikings.

15.30 - 16.30 | Panel Discussion 'How to start in VFX and animation?'

Andrew Brassington, Head of Talent Development at Escape Studios (Chair)
Henry Bull, Head of Recruitment at Framestore
Melissa Spiezia, Global Talent Acquisition and Partnership Manager at The Focus
Lauren Barnes, Senior Talent Resourcer at Blue Zoo
Sara-Laila Francis, Talent Acquisition Team Lead at Blue Zoo
Chloe Campbell, Recruiter at Foundry
Harriet Edge-Partington, Talent and Recruitment Manager at Union VFX
Clare Norman, Business Development Director / Executive Producer at milk VFX
Davi Stein, Technical Trainer at Industrial Light & Magic

17.00 - 18.00 | Concept Art - Behind the Pipeline

About session:

You don’t need to be a genius at math or sciences as a Concept Artist—this is where original ideas and creativity truly thrive! You will:

Learn about our artist’s inspirations.
See amazing concepts from HBO’s Lovecraft Country and other big shows
Learn how concepts can be crude, but it’s more important to show the idea.
See how crucial this role is and how concept art determines a lot of technological and creative processes throughout a project.

About Speakers:

Mai-Anh Tran, Concept Artist at Rodeo FX

Mai-Anh Tran was born in France to a Vietnamese family. She grew up in Paris and studied 3D Animation. She began as a matte painter at Rodeo FX in 2014 and was offered opportunities to do concepts. The freedom to brainstorm and propose new ideas and designs kept her in concept work. Mai Anh finds that concept art really stimulates one’s creativity and also allows for great satisfaction when seeing the final shot looking like you envisioned it. Key projects: Men In Black International, Lovecraft Country for cityscapes, Antman for both concept art and matte paintings, and Deadpool. Her advice to newcomers: “Practice a lot and get inspired by other artists' work, and always be keen to learn new techniques”.

Florence Durante, Concept Artist

Concept Artist Florence Durante grew up near Paris, France and began her career as a photographer then moved on to digital retouching and after a one- year internship, evolved into a matte painter. After a few years working in France, the UK and Australia, she set the goal to move into concept art and took some basic art classes—art foundation, drawing, and painting—and began to catch up. Her journey is primarily self-taught with hours invested into personal projects and asking for feedback whenever possible. Her advice for anyone entering the industry is to always be a good student and never stop learning. Key projects: Matte Painter - The Martian, Gravity, Pan, Blade Runner 2049, Fantastic Beasts 2. ; Concept Artist - Game of Thrones season 7, Fantastic Beasts 3, Crawl, Lovecraft Country, WandaVision and lots of upcoming TV shows.

Deak Ferrand, Concept Artist

Deak Ferrand, the renowned artist at the helm of Rodeo FX Los Angeles, brings more than 25 years of experience as Art Director and Senior Matte Painter. With his cinematographic vision, he captures clients’ ideas and develops them into refined and detailed images, like the recent creature work he did for the highly anticipated series Lovecraft Country.

As Senior Matte Painter, Deak has most recently created artwork for Lovecraft Country and the film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, as well as the Sy-Fy series Krypton, Game of Thrones seasons 4 through 7, and Amazon’s Jack Ryan, for which he received a 2019 VES award. He’s also been an Art Director on HBO’s Watchmen and VFX Supervisor on Jack Ryan. With a portfolio of more than 90 feature films and series, Deak has worked with world-class directors.

18.30 - 19.30 | Q&A with Roger Guyett, VFX Supervisor moderated by Saint John Walker, Deputy Dean / Director at Escape Studios

About Speakers:

Roger Guyett

Roger Guyett is an Academy Award-nominated and BAFTA-winning Visual Effects Supervisor with 25 years of experience in visual effects and on set supervision. Roger Guyett has worked on films such as J.J. Abram’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Star Trek Into Darkness, Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, Jon Favreau’s Cowboys and Aliens as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Guyett’s vast knowledge and unmatchable experience has been recognized by the Academy, BAFTA, and Visual Effects Society. His work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned him a BAFTA and Visual Effects Society award.

Saint John Walker

Saint has been working at the interface between the animation, computer games, and visual effects industries and higher education, with a mission to produce better quality talent to feed the UK's creative industries. Saint has been authoring and updating the well-respected Core Skills of VFX Handbook and Student Primer. As a member of Access:VFX, Saint has worked on a number of projects to encourage more diversity and inclusion in visual effects and animation.

Marketplace

The ‘Marketplace’ which runs alongside The VFX Festival Emerging Talent will provide great opportunity for attendees to meet studios and hear about their work, as well as open or upcoming vacancies. Live sessions with studios representatives are scheduled between talks and presentations to provide you a chance to experience full programme of the event.

12.00 | Meet Industrial Light & Magic

Founded by George Lucas in 1975 to create the special effects for his space epic Star Wars, no other facility of its type existed at the time. Now with locations in San Francisco, Vancouver, London, Singapore, and Sydney, ILM remains one of the leading effects companies in the world, serving the motion picture commercial production and attraction industries. From its astounding innovations in the original Star Wars trilogy to its groundbreaking CGI work in blockbusters like Jurassic Park, Star Trek, and The Avengers, ILM has changed and expanded the possibilities of what a film can be.

13.30 | Meet Blue Zoo

The UK’s leading animation studios, producing some of the most well-loved kids shows on TV, award-winning commercials, and animated short films renowned for unique visual storytelling and innovation. Blue Zoo has twice won the BAFTA for Independent Production Company of The Year and is a proud winner of the 2019 Best Places to Work in TV .‍

15.00 | Meet The Third Floor

THE THIRD FLOOR is a visualization studio dedicated to supporting the production of next-generation media content for feature film, television, commercials, video games, virtual reality and themed attractions. Working hand-in-hand with directors, producers and key crew, the company’s artists use specialized skills in storytelling and computer animation to create digital versions of shots and scenes to streamline physical production and post.

16.30 | Meet Union VFX

Union VFX is a boutique visual effects facility founded in 2008 by Adam Gascoyne and Tim Caplan, providing a creative service for feature film and television productions. Located in the heart of Soho, London, our studio is an environment where originality and innovation flourish. Our team of exceptional supervisors, producers and artists share a combined wealth of experience and passion for filmmaking, which has established Union’s reputation for imaginative solutions, quick turnarounds and stunning results.

Thursday, 11th March 2021

10.55 - 11.00 | Welcome remarks

11.00 - 12.00 | A walk through of the VFX work on the Smyths Toy’s Commercial

Harin Hirani, Head of 3 at FreeFolk

About Session:

Learn how a full CG ad comes together at an independent studio.

About Speaker:

Harin Hirani

Harin Hirani is Freefolk’s award winning Head of 3D, most recently delivering over 200 shots on Netflix’s ‘Cursed’ and hero shots for the critically acclaimed HBO series ‘The Third Day’. He also led the team for TNT/Paramount’s ‘The Alienist’, winning the Emmy for Outstanding Visual Effects.

12.30 - 13.30 | Arm & Hammer - A breakdown of the animation process and techniques used

Chris Welsby, Senior Animator at Moving Picture Company (MPC)

About session:

A presentation on how the animation was approached to deliver believability, humour and character in the performance. How we approached the use of human reference and applied that in an animalistic way.

About speaker

Chris Welsby

Chris has twelve years’ industry experience under his belt, in addition to an MA in animation, his longtime passion. Joining MPC in 2017 after a stint at Framestore and Passion Pictures as a senior animator, he has built an impressive portfolio of animation work. Most recently, projects that Chris have been involved in bringing to life includes Arm & Hammer ‘Once Upon A Time’, XBOX ‘Us Dreamers’, Heineken ‘Solar Power’, O2 ‘Christmas Bubl’, JEEP ‘Bird’ and Virgin ‘Up, Up and Toupee’.

14.00 - 15.00 | Developing Outcasters

Matt Jones, Associate Technical Artist; Rachael Tarr, Associate Audio Designer; Owen Ruddle, Associate Gameplay Programmer; Javi Galvan, Technical Designer; Alice Forbes, VFX Artist, Neil Alphonso is the Studio Creative Director at Splash Damage.

About session:

Attendees will learn what it’s like to work in a AAA studio making a quirky game like Outcasters. We have a member from audio, gameplay – code, games design, Tech art and, VFX.

About speakers:

Neil Alphonso

Neil Alphonso is the Studio Creative Director at Splash Damage, and plays a key role in nurturing the studio's home-grown games, such as Outcasters, which is exclusively on Stadia. During his successful 12-year career at Splash Damage Neil has been integral in bringing titles like Dirty Bomb, Batman: Arkham Origins multiplayer and BRINK to fruition. Before joining Splash Damage Neil worked on Killzone 2 at Guerrilla Games and on the original Tom Clancy's: Splinter Cell at Ubisoft.

Matt Jones

Matt Jones has been at Splash for 3 years now as an Associate Technical Artist. Matt first joined Splash to work on Dirty Bomb, joining the project as a fan of the game. After Dirty Bomb production finished, they moved onto Gears: Tactics for a year and is now currently Sole Tech artist for Outcasters.

Rachael Tarr

Rachael Tarr started in the games industry at Splash Damage as an Audio Production Tester and has worked her way into the audio design team, having shipped Gears Tactics and Outcasters during the 3 years she has been working there.

Owen Ruddle

Owen Ruddle is currently an Associate Gameplay Programmer and graduated from the University of the West of England's Games Technology course in 2017. Since then he has worked for two studios, The Polygon Loft and Splash Damage. In those tenures he worked on two released titles Double Pug Switch and Outcasters.

Javi Galvan

Javi Galvan worked as a Software Developer for almost two years before becoming an associate Gamplay Programer at Splash damage where he worked his way up to becoming a Technical Designer.

Alice Forbes

Alice Forbes joined Splash Damage just after university. She started out as a VFX intern. At Splash she worked on Gears Tactics and Outcasters. Now she is the only VFX artist on multiple projects.

15.30 - 16.30 | Panel Discussion 'How to start in games?'

18.00 - 19.00 | Art vs Story - Kris Pearn in a virtual conversation with Saint John Walker, Deputy Dean / Director at Escape Studios

This session is hosted in collaboration with VIEW Conference

Kris Pearn will discuss the relationship between art and story. How the "what if" meets design, two parallel objectives hurtling towards the same goal: the AUDIENCE. In Animation, a pretty drawing cannot save a bad story, and a great story is invisible until drawings (some good and some bad) give it shape. Whether it's a sketch or a painting or a sculpture, art is the soil that warms life into the seed of story.

About Speakers:

Kris Pearn

Kris Pearn was born and raised in Canada. After graduating from Sheridan College, Kris has spent most of his life making cartoons for both film and television. His credits include: Open Season, Surf’s Up, Arthur Christmas, Shaun the Sheep, Pirates: Band of Misfits, and Home to name a few. He was Head of Story on Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, and co-directed Cloudy Two. He has most recently written and directed the Netflix animated feature The Willoughbys based on the novel by Lois Lowry. Kris has been nominated for several Annies, teaches when possible, has given a Ted Talk called “The Optimistic Opportunity of Failure.” He still loves to draw.

Saint John Walker

Marketplace

12.00 | Meet DNEG

One of the world's leading visual effects, animation and stereo conversion companies for feature film and television, with studios in London, Vancouver, Mumbai, Los Angeles, Chennai, Montréal, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, and Goa. DNEG brought home the Oscar for ‘Best VFX’ for four out of the last five years. In total, we’ve been honoured with 5 Academy Award wins, 5 BAFTA Awards and 10 Visual Effects Society Awards for our visual effects work on shows like ‘First Man’, ‘Altered Carbon’, ‘Blade Runner 2049’, ‘Dunkirk’, ‘Ex Machina’, ‘Interstellar’, ‘Inception’ and ‘Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2’.

13.30 | Meet The Focus

The Focus, a careers hub for professionals enabling them to advance in their career and make the best of their experience in the VFX industry. Supported by a team of experts, The Focus provides career guidance, learning opportunities and industry insights, while offering access to a portfolio of award-winning VFX studios around the world including MPC Film, MPC Episodic, MR. X and Technicolor Pre-Production.

15.00 | Meet NVIZ

We’re passionate and committed to making things easier for filmmakers that want the complexity removed from the VFX process. We provide integrated and streamlined solutions that enable directors, cinematographers and supervisors to make effective decisions, helping them to achieve their creative vision. Whether it be visualising complex stunt sequences, providing responsive on-set imagery or creating striking CG creatures, we have experience in all areas. We are Nviz.

15.30 | Meet FreeFolk

Established in London in 2003, Freefolk are a team of Emmy winning creative VFX artists, technicians, producers and problem solvers. Working across TV, film and commercial projects Freefolk provide a full service post-production and VFX offering including 2D and 3D visual effects, high-end colour grading, shoot supervision, animation, design, concept and direction. Freefolk opened their second studio in New York in 2016.

16.30 | Meet Foundry

Foundry designs creative software technologies used to deliver award-winning visual effects and 3D content for the design, visualization and entertainment industries. Whatever you can see, we innovate and design the technology to make sure the world can see it too, exactly as it was imagined. From the mind’s eye to the big screen, from paper napkin to product, we solve at scale for the most complex creative visual challenges, turning incredible ideas into reality.

17.30 | Meet AXIS Studios

A multi award winning animation and VFX studio. Specialising in diversity, we’ve built a global reputation for creating commissioned and original entertainment experiences in Film, Television, Games and Theme Parks. Spanning three UK studios, we share a fascination for the possibilities of art and technology, and a passion for discovering where imagination can take us next.

The VFX Festival Emerging Talent

Recent events

What to expect?

Tuesday, 9th March 2021

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Thursday, 11th March 2021

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