In the last 20 years, vfx has come to represent a significant sector within the media and entertainment industries. Naturally, educational institutions followed suit and are now training future visual effects professionals.

Pursuing a career in visual effects continues to be as demanding and competitive as ever. The good news for today’s young talent is that there are many ways to become a visual effects artist and all of them work, each one for different reasons and for different people.

For most of the 20th century the visual effects industry was relatively small, and most of the few professionals lived in a handful of cities with significant film or TV production. In addition to its limited market, the visual effects industry was also very specialized and rapidly changing. For that reason, universities, film and art schools did not bother developing or offering specialized professional degree programs in visual effects. As a general rule, universities preferred to develop specialized degrees for the “proven” artistic specialties that had been around for centuries (painting and sculpture) or even a few decades (design and photography first, filmmaking and animation later). For decades and for hundreds of individuals, the only way to get started in a visual effects career was to somehow get any entry-level job in any vfx production. Much has changed in the last 20 years. Visual effects today represents a significant sector within the media and entertainment industries, and educational institutions are actively involved in the training of future visual effects professionals.

What is a Visual Effects Artist?
Visual effects today is a complex professional field with many specialties, it is not a monolithic field where everybody does the same task. The generic term “visual effects artist” is used quite often even though it fails to specify the multiple specialties within the profession. But in a general way, a visual effects artist is someone who creates special imagery and effects mainly for live-action movies, TV commercials and series, and also for a few high-end computer games and performing arts events.

All vfx artists share a basic understanding of filmmaking, imagemaking, engineering, storytelling and magic. But at some point in their careers, all vfx artists develop and master a unique specialty that leans toward one of these four areas. Not all “medical doctors,” for example, do the same. A heart specialist, a general practitioner, a brain surgeon and a dermatologist, they all share a basic understanding of medicine but each one has a specific skill that they use in their day-to-day jobs. The same is true in visual effects. It is not unusual for a vfx artist to have a main specialty and a secondary skill. This is, in fact, reflected in most CVs and resumes of vfx artists.

Many of today’s visual effects professionals have trained in a variety of fields: visual arts, animation, engineering, programming, film, design and a number of crafts. This seems to have worked so far because the practice of visual effects requires a combination of art, technique, craft and science.

All vfx artists share a basic understanding of filmmaking, imagemaking, engineering, storytelling and magic. Image by Joe Cortopassi. © Gnomon Inc.

An easy way to split vfx artists by specialty is by looking at whether the artist, technician or craftsperson uses digital technology or not. Hence, the distinction between digital visual effects and practical or special effects. Most visual effects today involve digital tools, but a fair amount of effects are still created with physical materials; for example, scale models, prosthetics, animatronics and explosions.

What do Visual Effects Artists Need to Know?
We can better understand what the visual effects artists of tomorrow might need to learn by looking at the types of tasks required in today’s leading vfx productions. When doing this, it is best to look at the entire spectrum of productions ranging from high-budget Hollywood studio movies to low-budget independent movies. At the risk of simplifying, we can reduce the specialties of visual effects artists today to a few principal areas: concept development and storyboarding; visual development; image painting and retouching; model-making; compositing and wire-removal; tracking, rotoscoping and match-moving; programming and scripting; practical effects; 3D CG (computer-generated) production, including modeling, rigging, lighting and rendering; CG character animation; CG effects animation; and effects supervision. There are a few other vfx specialties that have always been or have become essentially technical: motion control, for example, and will not cover them in this short article.