The VFX Artists Podcast

In this episode, I chat to Yin Wu, a Junior CG Artist at The Mill, Shanghai, about his experience and journey into the Chinese VFX industry. My curiosity of the Chinese industry, leads me to chase for comparisons between the U.K. VFX industry - Finding similarities and differences on topics like work-life-balance and how the industry differentiates itself between Beijing and Shanghai. Yin's s...

In this episode, we chat to Atem Kuol about how he became a VFX coordinator. Starting up as a witness camera operator and venturing into VFX production before embarking on 'Death on the Nile' as assistant coordinator, Atem gives us the low down on his experiences and how he made it into the VFX industry from his early beginnings in the live TV industry. One not to be missed, from anyone...

This week we catch up with Senior Compositor and trainer, Josh Parks for a lively discussion of all things tech, industry and career related. Starting out as "The wildcard choice" for MPC's training program, he has built an impressive career with credits including: Jungle Book, Transformers: The Last Knight, Ready Player One, Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy, Lovecraft Country,...

Part 2 of our discussion with Christina Mandia continues, with this last part focusing on Christina's VFX industry journey, going all the way back to her first interests and influence, education, as well as showreel and general advice for current and aspiring mothers and animators. Christina’s journey as a VFX animator, begun with an entry into the VFX industry as a runner, following the comp...

This week, we have the amazing Christina Mandia, animator at Cinesite London, giving us an insight into how she tackles her maternal role, whilst being a better, more efficient animator. Christina goes on to share some very important information on maternity leave pay for employees and freelancers through the government schemes, as well as employee entitlements. Some really useful info for employe...

In this episode, we chat to Jeremy Lasky & Danny Gonzalez, founders of Perception to learn more about the creation of what's become one of the most influential and important VFX & creative studios globally. Perception has brought us title sequences and HUD's (heads up displays) for films such as Iron Man, Black Panther, Loki, Wandavision, Spiderman Homecoming, Eternals, and many...

Have you got an idea for a game you would love to bring to life? This week we catch up with VFX Supervisor, Mohsen Mousavi and Look Dev Artist, Hugh Behroozy who are doing exactly that with their new venture, Blinkmoon.  We discuss their impressive VFX careers and their time at Scanline, where they met and worked on projects such as Game of Thrones, The Meg, Guardians of The Galaxy and more... Des...

In this episode, we chat to VFX generalist and author, Vicki Lau, about her take on being a female multi-disciplinary artist in the VFX industry. We also find out why she chose to write two books about her experience in the VFX industry, titled 'Why I Do VFX' (The untold truths about working in visual effects) and 'Not your starving artist' (Making money in the arts). Vicki als...

With credits including The Batman, Walking Dead: Worlds Beyond Thor, Love and Thunder its's no wonder  we've been wanting to catch up with Freelance Compositor, Shonda Hunt. But in the end she got in touch with us after we asked about the issues facing mothers working in the VFX industry. So in this two pronged interview Daniel and Shonda discuss the challenges of parenting while working...

In this episode, we chat to Baptiste Jaquemet, a senior Houdini FX TD and generalist, about his journey into the VFX industry and how his journey has led him to work at the studio that inspired his interest in VFX - Weta. Baptiste's journey is an interesting one, and we talk about his early beginnings, his love for Blender, and Houdini, negative experiences in the VFX industry, and his dreams...

In the second installment of our interview with veteran VFX Artist and filmmaker, Sean Cunningham we go into detail about the process used on the 1990's action movie True Lies for the missile sequence - featuring some of the earliest uses of Nuke digital compositing at Digital Domain as well as an early version of SideFX Houdini (Prisms). We talk about his role supervising on Strange Days and...

We go all the way back the 1990's in this 2 part interview with Sean Cunningham, a veteran of the VFX industry whose credits as an FX Artists include films such as True Lies, Strange Days, The Fifth Element, Godzilla, Oh Brother Where Art Thou and who has directed and produced independent feature films in his own right. This journey takes us from the excitement of the Commodore Amiga, missed...

In this episode, Kofi chats to Filipe Magalhães, Realtime supervisor at NVIZ about Unreal engine and all things realtime. We do a deep dive into Unreal engine in the use for  previs, VFX, and Virtual production, compare it to Unity, and retrace Filipe's journey into the industry. Following up on that, we discus the education, diversity and representation in the VFX industry, neurodiversity an...

On today’s episode, we have Jamie Bakewell in the hot seat to discuss all things previs and postvis, starting from his journey into the industry , to the decisions which led to the creation of his Previs studio in the midlands  - Bigtooth Studios. Jamie’s incredible first job with Aardman, soon after graduating in 2009 from Staffordshire University led him to work on The Pirates! In an Adventure w...

This week Daniel caught up with Layout Artist who has 7 Oscar Nominated films, as well as an Emmy and a Goya  under her belt! Many of our Spanish speaking audience may already be familiar with Carolina as she runs an incredibly popular VFX and film Youtube, blog and Twitter account as Okingrafia. Carolina is a Lead Layout Artist at Scanline, most recently on projects like Free Guy, Moonfall and Et...

In this episode, we conclude our two-part episode with Michael Morgan, a U.K. based senior character animator and animation mentor about his journey into the industry and working with some of the most highly respected studios in the world. Michael has over two decades of experience in the VFX industry, and has contributed to some of your favourite movies and characters on the big screen, ranging f...

In this episode, we chat to Michael Morgan, a U.K. based senior character animator and animation mentor about his journey into the industry and working with some of the most highly respected studios in the world. Michael has over two decades of experience in the VFX industry, and has contributed to some of your favourite movies and characters on the big screen, ranging from Marvel's Black Pan...

In this episode we meet with Arpita Venugopal, Head of FX at One of Us and a highly accomplished Houdini Artist. We talk about her career in FX and how it has increased her appreciation for the beauty in the World. She gives advice for showreels and applications based on her role as a Head of Department and in recruitment. We discuss managing artists, her favourite projects, her plant-based Instag...

In this episode we chat to Maik Pham Quang, a Matchmove lead at Framestore London, about his career progression, as a runner, through to becoming a matchmove lead, with a decade's experience, to transitioning and changing departments to pursue his interest in the lighting department as a lighting TD. Maik tells us about how it is leading and managing teams, managing pressure and expectations,...

In this episode we complete our rundown of 2021. Daniel and Kofi discuss some of the themes raised in the episodes, as well as clips. Topics include VFX Editing, Previs, Realtime and Unreal Engine, discrimination and racism in the industry, independent filmmaking, Nuke, Blender, Unreal, VFX software development, Costume Design, VFX Editing, game cinematics and more! Chapters 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:0...

This has been a rollercoaster year for many of us and The VFX Artists Podcast is no exception. A toddlers decision to play with toy cars at 3am changed the fate of 2 VFX artists who met up to reflect on how far the podcast has come in less than a year. With guests ranging from Matchmove Artists to Compositors, VR Developers to Stunt Performers, Character Modellers to VFX Supervisors, On-Set Data c...

This week, on The VFX Artists Podcast, we speak to Beaumont Loewenthal about his journey to the industry and delve into his path to VFX assisting and editing at some great studios, on some very familiar feature films, to becoming a VFX editor on Star Wars Andor at Lucasfilm. In this episode, we discuss routes to entry into the VFX industry, and discuss the differences between an editors role compa...

This week, on The VFX Artists Podcast, my curiosity with how movies are made and brought to life, brought me to a discussion with London based film director, writer and producer Marcus Flemmings. On this episode, I find out about Marcus’ background and journey to becoming a film director, talk about his new film Blonde Purple, out on November 30th, and discuss realities of inspiration, competition...

This week we talk with Christy Anzelmo, Chief Product Officer at Foundry and before that Director of Product for the Nuke family of projects. We take a tour of her career, beginning in the fashion industry before moving in to VFX, her role in leading development on one of the most widely used compositing softwares in the industry, and on the uses of Foundry products outside of VFX in product desig...

In this episode, we chat to Floyd Billingy, a U.K. based realtime supervisor and environment artist for the games and VFX industry about his transition into the industry, how he became an environment artist and a realtime supervisor, as well as how black artists perceive and feel about working in the gaming and VFX industry. Floyd's career is colourful, and it's led him to be part of art...