A coworker said there simply aren’t many students interested in doing VFX for real-time media–not enough to fill up classrooms, and not enough to fill up job openings. The more I thought about it, the more I realized what that implies:
If it’s true, the growth of the entertainment industry will be severely stifled indefinitely. Visual effects sit at the center of the action, the feedback, the satisfaction of many interactive experiences. We all know demand for these artists (us) is massive, and still rising.
As an observation, he might be right. But I think there’s a solve here: help students discover that they ARE interested in making real-time VFX; they just don’t know it yet. So it’s on us to help them realize what a VFX artist really is. Which brings me to my question:
Who are we?
I’m interested to hear your responses, because I want to create a sort of “personality & interests profile” that we can use to grow our numbers, maybe in presentations, online marketing, or school visits. I think a big reason many people don’t consider VFX as a career is a lack of awareness. For example, animators have done a fantastic job resonating with students: “I get to bring characters to life!” and other sayings really click in a direct, simple way for some people.
Admittedly, this is reminiscent of marketing strategy: know the audience, and build a plan to appeal to them. Unsure where this might lead exactly. Fire away!
EDIT:
I realize a lot of these traits are shared to different degrees across any creative job (thanks to @Partikel for this observation) So I’ll try to distill some that I think most often occur in VFX artists here:
1 - You are driven to create “the spectacle” that elicits an emotional response from others.
2 - You are a generalist, focusing hard on learning all about just one thing for a while, then switching to a completely different obsession later on.
3 - You have a vivid imagination, inspired by natural or otherworldly phenomenon: how they’re structured, what they’re made of, and how they move.
4 - You are split between logical left-brain and creative right-brain thinking, drifting between the two regularly.
Definitely not a comprehensive list, but I’m curious how many of you can identify.