Animation is a global game – you have to be a world traveller when the big players are on pretty much every continent. Few know this better than Seema Gopalakrishnan, a Digital Character Animation grad who hails from Chennai, India. After parlaying her time in Vancouver into steady work in Mumbai, she’s now moved to Singapore to work for Lucasfilm’s animation division there.

Wow.

Seema’s enthusiasm is infectious, even over email and half a world away. “It feels awesome,” she told us. “I know there’s still a long way to go, but this step was huge for me.” And who can blame her? But we wanted to know more.

What did you do after graduating from VFS?

I had got a very good offer to work with Prana Studios in Mumbai. I joined there as a Rigging Artist and grew to be one of the lead rigging/pipeline artists. Besides rigging, I was involved in developing tools for the artists, setting up the pipeline, writing scripts to automate various tasks, and so on. It was a great place to apply my skill sets.

How did you come to be hired at Lucasfilm Animation Singapore, and what are you doing there?

I had applied through their website, and then we took it from there. I am working here as a CG Software Developer. It’s been great so far and I am looking forward to more.

And what drew you to VFS initially?

Once I started getting a hang of the animation industry , my main goal was to find the area of specialization most suitable for me. My main strength was programming and technical skills, hence rigging came naturally to me. I had learned a lot about rigging with DVDs, books, et cetera, but I was lacking a good understanding of animation, and that’s when I realized how important it was to learn to animate characters well in order to rig them better!

I wanted to go to a school which offered a short but super-intensive animation program. VFS was the best choice as they had the exact program I was looking for. I talked to lots of industry professionals who had studied at VFS and checked out their student reels. They were awesome! That surely drew me to VFS.

The experience was absolutely wonderful. Besides learning how to animate, I had made some really good friends who have shared a lot of their thoughts and have been an integral part of my reel. They are still my inspiration. I learned a lot from the faculty and other students. It was one hell of a learning experience… that still continues.

VFS has been a backbone to my career growth. Vancouver Film School on my resume by itself has been a big plus from the recruiter’s point of view. Being at VFS was like being in a studio environment, hence my comfort level is so much more when I am in a studio with many different nationalities with many different skill sets working together on projects!