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Visual Effects for Film & TV

BECOME A VFX ARTIST

January, April, July, October

24 months 8 terms

Online

APPLICATION CHECKLIST

Program Director
What You'll Learn
Mentors
Experience
Students
Journey

What You’ll Learn

Term 1
Term 2
Term 3
Term 4
Term 5
Term 6
Term 7
Term 8

TERM 1

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Term 8

PHOTOSHOP FOR DIGITAL PRODUCTION

This is a foundation course to prepare the students for working with Photoshop as it relates to digital production for the Visual Effects. Students will be exposed to the toolset specific to the workflows that are used in the VFX industry.

INTRODUCTION TO 3D MODELING

This course is an introduction to the fundamentals of 3D modeling with Maya. Students will be introduced to the interface, clean geometry concepts, various 3D modeling workflows, as well as basic UVW unwrapping and rendering. Tutorials will focus on applications of these tools in the film industry. Students will be presented with technical and artistic challenges to create technically correct, properly scaled, and compelling 3D assets.

TERM 2

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TEXTURING AND SHADING 1

This course will use some of the material covered in Introduction to 3D Modeling. Students will develop textures and shaders using Maya Hypershade. They will learn how to use image-based textures to develop 2D and 3D imagery, followed by setting up basic rendering for testing and understanding how light affects materials.

COMPOSITING 1

This course will introduce students to the fundamentals of compositing using Adobe After Effects. Variety of tools will be introduced to demonstrate techniques such as keyframing, colour keying, 3D layers and more. The tutorials will focus on software demonstrations and concepts. Students will receive project critique and industry tips, while they explore various compositing methods through their assignments.

HARD SURFACE MODELING

This course is built on the material covered in the Introduction to 3D Modeling. Appropriate Maya toolset will be covered. The tutorials will focus on the technical and aestetic problems that are faced by the professionals while modeling environments and man-made objects. Majority of the course will be dedicated to exploring and cementing polygonal modeling and UVW unwrapping. Students will model a variety of assets culminating in a complex final asset such as a mech, robot, vehicle or vessel.

TERM 3

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TEXTURING AND SHADING 2

In this course students will learn to develop textures using Maya Hypershade and Substance Painter and Designer. The tutorials will focus on demonstrating the technical underpinnings of materials and their structure along with the emphasis on the storytelling potential of textures. Various weathered and aged looks will be discussed and demonstrated.

COMPOSITING 2

This course is built on the material covered in Compositing 1. Students will learn more complex techniques on colour correcting, camera tracking, keyframing, matte painting, and 3D workflows.

DIGITAL SCULPTING

This course will focus on sculpting organic and hard-surface models using ZBrush. Students will learn the interface, essential toolsets, and efficient workflows to effectively and confidently create digital sculptures and models. They will utilize powerful sculpting brushes to explore various artistic processes. Production methods are also covered, such as import, export, and map generation.

TERM 4

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SIMULATION AND PRE-VISUALISATION

This course will introduce students to the workflow on how to pre-visualize (previz) VFX shots using Unreal Engine. This methodology boasts an advantage for previz work as it is faster and less resource consuming than previz using traditional methods.

COMPOSITING 3

This course will introduce students to Nuke, the industry standard compositing software in film, television and animation. Students will begin working with Nuke’s node based compositing workflow and manipulate various types of images and footage and combine them to create completed shots. They will learn the interface, grading and colour correction, green screen keying, rotoscoping, and tracking.

TEXTURING AND SHADING 3

This course will focus on advanced texturing techniques with Foundry’s Mari. Students will become familiar with Mari Workflow essentials using the relevant toolset. Through the weekly tutorials they will gain enough skills to texture assets fit for TV and film production.

TERM 5

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MOTION AND MECHANICS 1

In this course the students will be exposed to the foundations of asset preparation for motion and they will develop strong skills using Maya. The tutorials will focus on setting up characters for motion (rigging) and powerful tools such as the Graph Editor and more. Students will complete rigging projects. The skills will build in complexity over the duration of the course.

COMPOSITING 4

This course will delve into Nuke’s 3D compositing workflows, set extension, matte painting integration, and 3D camera tracking. Students will generate more complex shots.

MATTE PAINTING

In this course, students will start with a compositional sketch of the environment, then create a base model and architectural elements to draft the matte scene. Photoshop will be used to paint in the details, and finally, the whole shot will be assembled using Nuke.

TERM 6

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MOTION AND MECHANICS 2

This course is built on the material covered in Motion and Mechanics 1. Students will gain exposure to a more complex and dynamic motion/rigging techniques for both bipedal characters and vehicles while developing a better understanding of the subtleties of motion mechanics and physics. Students will also work with motion capture data.

COMPOSITING 5

This course will dive deep into creating photoreal CG elements together with amospheric effects. Students will learn how to generate the effects and to integrate them into live action footage to create seamless and compelling shots for film and TV.

PARTICLES AND DYNAMICS

In this course will dedicate itself to SideFX Houdini, a powerful application used for various aspects of VFX shot generation and assembly. Students will learn the interface, basic wokflows, and will focus on generating such effects as snow, rain, smoke, debris, rock slides, and explosions amongst others.

TERM 7

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PORTFOLIO – WEBSITE, DEMO REEL 1

This course is the first part of the process that will devote itself to coaching students through developing and polishing one last major project that will test and showcase all skills gained throughout the program.

COMPOSITING 6

This course will feature scripting and time sensitive workflows to compliment the Portfolio/Demo Reel project that the students will begin working on.

CROWDS AND SIMULATIONS

This course will add the skills of using and developing complex visual effects like crowds. Students will create a variety of different shots containing these visual effects.

Term 8

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CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Coaching and direction will be provided for the effective presentation of the skills gained along with self-promotion tools.

PORTFOLIO – WEBSITE, DEMO REEL 2

This course is a continuation of the Demo Reel and Portfolio 1. In it the students will finish the their Demo Reels and the portfolio/website. During this time, the students will begin looking for industry connections and jobs.

DEGREE PATHWAY

Meet your Mentors

Roxanne Resh

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Courses taught: Photoshop for Digital Production, Previsualization and Simulation, Portfolio

Roxanne is the VFX program director and she has worked in the visual communication industries since 2001. Her work included a diversity of projects in both web and print which spanned from web design to architectural visualisation.

She took a break from graphic design to pursue a Bachelor and a Master degrees at the University of Toronto, only to return to the 3D work in the film industry.

Over time her artistic tendencies have blended heavily with the tech and her specialties emerged in the texturing, CG materials, environment design and setup, and rendering areas of the industry work.

Roxanne has been developing learning materials and teaching 3D modelling, texturing, and Unreal Engine since 2017.

In addition to teaching, she enjoys research into Virtual production and CG environment assembly.

Contact: [email protected]

Valere Grams

Courses taught: Introduction to 3D Modeling, Hard Surface Modeling

Valere Grams has over ten years directing art and creating visual content for many media platforms such as video games, television and film. He has extensive experience in managing art teams for major projects, as well as establishing visual direction and development pipelines.

Classically trained in traditional animation and anatomy, Valere has worked as a character artist. He has even worked in medical imaging.

Contact: [email protected]

Rafael Drelich

Courses taught: Houdini

Bio: Rafael is a VFX artist and designer, currently stationed at Mr.X in Toronto where he crafts destruction simulations, explosions, particles and dynamic effects for movies and TV series. Rafael’s recent work lineup includes “Ad Astra (2019)”, “Da5Bloods (2020)”, ”The Old Guard (2020)”, ”Raised By Wolves (2020)” and other productions.

Rafael started his audiovisual journey at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, working with motion graphics and animated 360 content creation.

He graduated with Bachelor of Design from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro in 2016, followed by a post-graduate training in Visual Effects from George Brown in Toronto in 2018.

During his year at SideFX, the home of Houdini, Rafael specialized in natural phenomena effects and simulations.

Jaime Torres

Courses taught: Compositing 1, Compositing 2, Digital Sculpting

Jaime Torres has more than 20 years of professional experience as a filmmaker, animator and, VFX supervisor. Presently, Jaime balances his work as an educator with his position as Co-founder and Co-owner of Ghost FX Production Studio in Toronto. At Ghost FX, Jaime is responsible for the creative direction of the company’s design and animation aspects. In addition to his contributions to the Toronto Film School, Jaime has also lectured on animation and film at Fanshawe College where he served as a member of the New Media Programme Advisory Committee and a student portfolio work critic. Jaime has worked with clients such as: Disney Entertainment, Storyline Entertainment, Much Music, MTV, Space, TSN, BMW, IBM, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and Sony.

For this work, Jaime has received many accolades including being recognized as Globe and Mail/ Bravo TV’s Top 5 Animated Shorts winner, and First Place in Video Editing (North America wide) by Computer Arts Magazine.

Jaime’s personal interests include art, photography, music and baking cookies.

IMDB – https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5054014/

Contact: [email protected]

Tyler Figueira

Courses taught: Texturing and Shading 1-3

Tyler has been working in the 3D Animation Industry with a focus on modelling and texturing for 16 years. He attended the Toronto film School in 2004 and The Academy of Realist Art in 2006. While working mainly in children’s television, Tyler has also worked on feature animation, documentaries, and commercials. Tyler has always loved art and he always strives to not only learn, but to share the knowledge he acquires with other artists along the way.

IMDB – https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6099168/

Contact: [email protected]

Stefan Bernscherer

Courses taught: Matte Painting

Stefan Bernscherer is a freelance environment artist, matte painter and compositor with a background in 3D, Stefan is both a specialist and a versatile generalist, covering all aspects of post production needs.

Stefan has worked on several tv-shows and feature films in his 9 years in the business, ranging from Hollywood blockbusters to artistic independent films.

Stefan started out as a 3D generalist doing medical animation as well as commercials, but compositing caught his attention and while learning how to comp, he specialised in Matte Painting.

Stefan has worked in several European countries as well as in Canada, leaving a position at “Digital Domain” in Montreal for freelance.

Stefan is passionate about teaching and has previously taught both primary and secondary school photography and multimedia production in Denmark, as well as Multimedia Animators at a Danish Technical College.

When not working or wrestling his 4 kids, Stefan enjoys concerts, mud races, movies, and loads of coffee.

Contact: [email protected]

IMDB – https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7777410/

Bernscherer.dk