Seamus Morley, director of Techimage.

That the U.K. vfx industry continues to expand and increase its presence in the global marketplace can only be a good thing, but this accelerated growth inevitably brings with it fresh demands on the education and training sector. There are only a finite number of experienced hands out there, and the practice of enticing professionals from Europe and beyond just doesn’t provide a large-scale solution.

The challenge then is to draw on the centers of education and training within the U.K. for the next wave of talent. But with an industry so young and quickly evolving it’s little wonder that that this puts further pressures on education. For one thing, U.K. colleges and universities, famously resistant to change because of tradition and/or bureaucracy, are used to servicing industries that operate using well-established practices and so the same coursework is relevant year after year. Tailoring longer term courses to the moving target that is post-production is quite another matter.

Clearly what’s needed is close synergy between the education sector and the industry itself. “Formal education doesn't give an accurate reflection of the real pressure of day to day production, nor does it give you an idea of a film production pipeline,” suggests Lara Hopkins, producer with Framestore CFC. “Also we find that the students have an ability to learn the high production standards required reasonable quickly, but they have to start in a relatively junior role so that the quality required can be taught. The students also rarely have a creative 'eye' for the high quality images required in film production. This comes with experience.”

This is something Seamus Morley, director of Techimage (www.techimage.co.uk), fully appreciates. The company responsible for U.K. sales of industry standard applications such as 3D Equalizer, Houdini and Pixar’s RenderMan has long worked to help bridge the gap between these three sectors.

“We’ve always focused on trying to provide a complete solution for clients,” says Morley. “Dealing with the software side of things is obviously great, but what our clients need are people that can use that software. So for us it was just a short step to recognizing the benefits of working with centers of education.”

Front of Poole Hall at Bournemouth University.

Its longest standing relationship is with Bournemouth University, whose computer animation course is widely acknowledged as the best in the U.K., and who Morley believe is most acutely responsive to the needs of the industry. “In the early days they were working with a proprietary 3D system, which was quite procedural in nature,” he recalls. “Because of the similarities, Side Effects’ Houdini therefore appealed to them. Their adoption of RenderMan was then a natural extension of that.”

Where Bournemouth has led the way, others have followed. Morley cites Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, the University of Teeside, the University of Exeter, Leicester’s De Montfort, London Guildhall, Glasgow School of Art and the University of Dundee as others now producing well-rated 3D computer animation or post-production-related courses. This, in turn, has demonstrably given the industry a supply of better-prepared graduates.

“Five years ago studios needed to take a chance on people who were perhaps not as well proven as new recruits are now. The quality of the people the universities are attracting is rising, too. They now have more stringent grade requirements, so they’re also operating as a more effective filtering system.”