We’re about a month away from the VFS 2009 Summer Intensives! Due to the high demand, extra dates have been added for the Writing for Film & Television, Film Production, Acting for Film & Television, Sound Design for Visual Media, and Animation & Visual Effects Intensives.

The Game Design Intensive and the 2nd date for the Writing for Film & Television Intensive are almost sold out! Don’t miss your chance!

As announced in March, these 5-day creative boot camps put those who are considering attending Vancouver Film School in the trenches of their chosen program, where they’ll gain hands-on experience under the guidance of VFS’s staff of industry professionals.

Check out vfs.com/summer2009 for more information and to register.

Raylene McEachern had a hard time choosing between her passions when she was enrolling at VFS: film, film, or film? But despite already knowing where she wanted to end up, she started off in the Foundation Visual Art & Design program to better prepare herself for the demands of the Film Production program and life as an aspiring entertainment industry professional.

Raylene recently explained to us where her passion for film came from, and what she’s learned so far from two VFS programs. Here’s what she said:

Q: Hi, Raylene. Could you start off by describing your background before you took Foundation Visual Art & Design? What drew you to this field?

A:  I was a high school student at Rutland Senior Secondary and a major jock – no thought about film at all. Then a teacher (Mr. Applegath) brought me into the Video Production program, and I was hooked right from the beginning. I became very involved in the program, and I went on to be a Teacher’s Assistant in grade 11. In grade 12, I worked as one of the top editors for our school news broadcast program, as well as working on the valedictorian video. I was in love with anything to do with film or photography.

VFS visited my school every year and I had them as an option right from grade 10, and once in my grade 12 year, VFS was the only school I applied to. I never had a second guess as to whether I should go into the film industry.

Q: When it came time for you to choose your “stream” in Foundation, why did you choose to pursue film (instead of Animation or Design)?
Read the rest of this story »

James Choi, a graduate of the Foundation Visual Art & Design program and current 3D Animation & Visual Effects student, has come a long way to find the career he’s currently pursuing. From studying Chemistry and Nuclear Science to finding his artistic voice at VFS — and now refining his area of interest in 3D Animation & Visual Effects — James’ story is one common example amongst the many different portraits of recent Foundation students.

He shed some light on what made him decide to change career paths, and where he hopes to end up when he graduates next spring.

Q: Can you talk a little about your background before coming to the Foundation program?
A: I was imported from Korea in 1993 at the age of 10.  I graduated from Simon Fraser University in 2005 with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Chemistry and Nuclear Science, and then worked in various fields, including environmental science, forensics, research, and business management.  I had no training in the fine arts, and I hardly watched films.

Q: What did you discover about yourself during that year in Foundation?
Read the rest of this story »

Not everyone is so sure of their career path right from the start. For some of us, it takes time and some exploring to discover where our talent will lead us – and that’s half the fun! VFS’s Foundation Visual Art & Design program offers these opportunities to students like Samson Wong, who took the knowledge he gained from Foundation and applied it to a year in 3D Animation & Visual Effects.

Now, Samson’s working as a Compositor on feature films with top Hollywood talent. We had a chance to ask him a few questions about how he got from here to there.

Hi, Samson. Thanks for taking some time out of your schedule to do this. Let’s just start at the beginning. What initially drew you to this career field?

I grew up in an artistic family.  Both of my grandfathers are Chinese painters, so is my dad and mom.  During my childhood, I spent most of my time on drawings and music without getting any proper instruction in any art school.  At the age of 23… I knew I wanted to do something artistic and creative.  I started working as a freelance graphic designer with a little knowledge of Photoshop. At that point, I found out that even though I have some great concepts, I could not express them to audiences properly.  So I started doing research through the web… and I decided to start with the Foundation Visual Art & Design program.

How did your year in the Foundation Visual Art & Design program prepare you for the 3D Animation & Visual Effects program?

Read the rest of this story »

Tyler Egeto’s come a long way from the Prairies. The Foundation Visual Art & Design and Digital Design grad’s trajectory has taken him from, well, essentially flipping burgers in Saskatchewan to Vancouver, where he now works as a designer at visual communications and interactive design agency Mod7.

Tyler exemplifies an unsung part of the Digital Design curriculum – interactive design. So much more than just ‘design for coders’, it’s actually an incredibly broad, forward-thinking, and experimental stream that marries the technical and creative sides of design, with results that are often astonishing.

Tyler’s own final project,which you can see on his portfolio site, is an “alternative way” of displaying information, “where data changes visually over time and users interact with it.” It was work like this that made Tyler the Canadian UX Blog’s Design Student of the Month while he was still at VFS.

Earlier this month, Tyler spoke to a packed house of aspiring designers at our Digital Design Open House. But we wanted to dig even deeper and find out more about what got him to where he is.

Tyler, let’s start with the most open-ended question imaginable – your professional journey. What’s your origin story?

Before VFS, I hardly new what design was. I was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where I spent a large part of my time split between city life – if you can call Saskatoon city life – and being a farm kid, playing in wheat fields and herding cattle. Leaving high school, I was unsure about what I wanted to do career wise, so rather than enrolling in a post-secondary school, I entered the workforce.

After a few years of cooking in a restaurant, I decided to further my education, going back to school. That resulted in a rather short stint of university, at which point I realized I didn’t really want to do what I was studying. So I started looking around at other opportunities, and that is when I came across VFS. A little less than a year later, I moved out to Vancouver to participate in the Foundation Visual Art & Design program.

What drew you to Foundation? Did you have a strong idea of what you’d eventually be pursuing?

Foundation for me was the result of talking to the VFS advisors. Originally, I wanted to enroll in the 3D program, but while talking with them, they introduced me to the idea of taking the Foundation program first. This was suggested because prior to VFS I had no experience in the art and design field, so it was a great opportunity for me to be introduced to a wide variety of skills and form a strong base on which I could build from when I did take the 3D program. Luckily for me, I listened to their advice, because while taking the program, I realized that 3D was not the right field for me, but rather it was the design classes that I really enjoyed.

What can you say about the transition from Foundation to Digital Design?

Read the rest of this story »

The December '07 issue of Soldier, the official magazine of the British Army, featured C2i's handiwork on the cover.

Yuris Mangolds, who graduated from both Foundation Visual Art & Design and 3D Animation & Visual Effects at VFS, carved out his own kind of professional niche by founding C2i Studios. C2i’s primary market is the military, animating state-of-the-art robotic machines, and it also provides services to the architectural and medical sectors, among others.

Yuris entered the Foundation program with a purpose – he knew he’d be pursuing the 3D program afterward – but it also formed the very beginnings of an impressive professional and personal network. Through C2i, he’s worked with six other VFS grads at various times, hailing from Foundation and 3D alike.

We asked Yuris about C2i’s origins, some of the highs and low of the work he’s doing, and how a two-year VFS experience has bolstered his business.

What was your background before going into 3D? What first drew you to the industry?

My background prior to VFS was in architecture, mechanical engineering, and CAD in general. I also worked on level design for video games as well as traditional art, video editing, and graphic design. I was fortunate to learn that 3D would be my career path at a very early age, and have dedicated most of my life to pursuing it.

Like many students, you began your VFS in the Foundation program. A few years on now, what do you think that experience offered you?

The experience in the Foundation program gave me time away from the computer to focus on traditional art. I also learned valuable concepts about composition and visual storytelling for photography and film.

Let’s skip ahead past VFS here. How did C2i Studios come about?

C2i really found me. I was offered a job making a short concept of operations animation which turned out very well. Soon after, I became in high demand and needed to bring in more people to work on the projects as they increased in scale.

I understand you have clients in the architectural and military sectors. Could you elaborate on the kind of work you’ve been doing under the C2i banner?

C2i mainly creates concept of operations animations dealing with new and emerging unmanned vehicle technology for the US Army. We’ve also done concept art and product visualization for military robotics firms as well as a variety of classified projects. While the projects and content we do can be extremely “cool,” the biggest disadvantage is that I’m unable to show people our best work.

Apart from its hush-hush nature, what are some of the challenges specific to that kind of work?

Read the rest of this story »

Wondering about what it’s like to take a full-time one-year VFS program, but want to try it out before making a big decision about your educational future?

Introducing the 2009 VFS Summer Intensive Programs – 9 five-day programs beginning July 2009 that will allow you to experience our acclaimed one-year programs in a week of learning, doing, and having fun.

The curriculum will be delivered by VFS’s faculty of respected entertainment industry pros, and participants in each program will come away from their week with hands-on experience and real insight into what a one-year program at VFS can offer.

VFS Summer Intensive Programs include:

Experience VFS (a week sampling all of VFS’s programs) – July 20-24
Acting for Film & Television – July 6-10
Animation & Visual Effects – July 13-17
Digital Design – July 6-10
Film Production – July 13-17
Game Design – July 13-17
Makeup Design for Film & Television – July 13-17
Sound Design for Visual Media – July 6-10
Writing for Film & Television – July 6-10

Also, after completing a VFS Summer Intensive Program, students enrolling in a full-time VFS program will have the cost of their Intensive Program applied toward their tuition.

Summer Intensive Programs are open to anyone 17 years of age or older. Spaces are extremely limited and are expected to fill quickly. For full details and to register, visit vfs.com/summer2009. Hope to see you in July!

Nadia Lohan already knew what she wanted out of VFS: to study Game Design and ultimately bring her art to the game industry. But she also knew she needed a little time first, so instead of diving right in, she began her VFS tenure in Foundation Visual Art & Design.

Students have countless reasons for beginning their studies in the one-year Foundation program, whether it’s to strengthen and develop vital art skills like life drawing or to simply get a chance to dive into multiple disciplines – film, design, animation – before committing to one for the long haul.

For Nadia, it paid off. She had hopes of working for game industry heavyweight Ubisoft. After graduating, she instead signed on with Vancouver upstart Action Pants as a Front End Artist.

Well, if you follow the game industry, you probably know that Action Pants was recently acquired…

…by a little company called Ubisoft. Life’s a funny thing.

We asked Nadia to turn the clock back a couple of years and revisit her time in Foundation, to see how it all began.

People go into Foundation for a few different reasons. What was yours? Did you always know you’d be going into Game Design?

My reason for going into the Foundation program was that I just didn’t feel ready enough to go into Game Design. I had only graduated high school a year before and didn’t have any post-secondary training, so when I looked into the program, I thought that it would be a good way for me to develop a broader range of skills to bring to the table in Game Design. And honestly, I’m really glad I took it. I learned a lot of valuable things not just from my instructors, but from my fellow classmates as well.

And yes, I always knew that I would be going into Game Design. In fact, when I was a little girl I constantly emailed companies like Nintendo asking them what sort of courses I should take in school to get in the game industry. It was awesome because they always replied!

Part of Nadia's Discovery Project in Foundation: a hypothetical game world.

Let’s talk about the Foundation program itself. How did you find the experience?

As a traditional artist, I was opened up to the world of digital media and felt like there were so many more things to explore, and different ways I could grow because of it. It was the first time I really learned that the process is just as important as the result… if not more! I’m really glad that I took the program, because not only did a learn a lot, but I met a lot of really good friends there.

Any highlights from the year that really jump out at you?

One of the best times of Foundation was doing my Discovery Project. Essentially, it’s a project that’s assigned to you for a whole term in which you have no limits to what you want to accomplish, or discover.

I chose to make my own concept art for an imaginary game world, but in order to do that, I had to come up with backstory for everything in order for it all to make sense as to why it all looked the way it did. In fact, it ended up being a lot more work than I thought it would be. And that was the point where I actually learned how important my process was.

At a certain point in their year, Foundation students specialize in a certain stream depending on what area they want to pursue afterwards. What was your focus?

It was a tight race between the Animation stream and the Digital Design stream. I ended up choosing the animation stream because it dealt a lot more with things like character and environment design, or how to compose a frame properly. That certainly translated over well with what I was doing in Game Design. The Digital Design stream also would have been a good choice in that they dealt a lot with Flash and ActionScript, which is a program you may or may not use a lot in Game Design.

Foundation students most often end up in Digital Design, Film Production, or Animation & Visual Effects – both 3D and Classical – but you went a different way… not that you’re not the first to do that. What do you love about being an artist for games in particular?

Nadia's concept art for Synchrony, the final Game Design project on which Nadia served as 2D and 3D artist.

The art in games has always been so inspiring to me. It’s what pulled me into games as a young girl and really made me think about a career in the game industry.

I think the reason I love it so much is because I want to be able to give that same feeling to someone else when they play a game I helped with. And actually seeing something you helped to make inside an honest-to-goodness game is really an awesome feeling.

What, to you, is the pinnacle of great game art?

That’s a really good question. There’s a lot of games out there that have great artwork that I wish I could mention, but for the sake of brevity, I’m going to say Final Fantasy X. It was because of the artwork that I was drawn into the world of RPGs, which is my favourite genre. In fact, the CG was so good that I remember thinking for years after that there weren’t that many games that could compare to the quality of it. On consoles, at least!

And your personal influences?

I’ve always looked up to people like Tetsuya Nomura, Hyung-Tae Kim, Nik Ainley, and Scott Robertson. Just to name a few.

Thanks, Nadia, and good luck at Ubisoft Vancouver! Canadian high school students interested in taking the Foundation program at VFS should check out the 2009 Cross-Canada High School Scholarship Competition, where they could win one of three full-tuition scholarships.

Announcing the 2009 Cross-Canada High School Scholarship Competition! For the first time, we’re extending this competition nationwide, as we search this great country for its most talented, creative, and passionate graduating high school students.

Aspiring filmmakers, animators, artists, and designers will have the opportunity to win one of three full-tuition scholarships to the Foundation Visual Art & Design program: a great way to broaden your artistic horizons, experience new kinds of visual media, and make the jump into one of our other acclaimed full-time production programs, like Animation & Visual Effects, Digital Design, Film Production, Game Design, and many more.

Applications are open and will be accepted until May 29, 2009, and the three winners will be announced in June. For full details about the 2009 Cross-Canada High School Scholarship Competition, including the application form, visit vfs.com/kickit.

Ironically enough, 3D and Foundation grad Daphne Angela De Jesus has no qualms about using the skills she honed at VFS for evil – The League of Super Evil, that is. She spent the fall doing contract work on the show (currently still in production) as a Compositor for Vancouver’s Nerd Corps Entertainment Inc.

“I’m happy to have worked on [The League of Super Evil],” she says. “I definitely liked this particular project because the show is very funny! We watched the new episodes that were finished with post-production about every two weeks during dailies, and I really enjoy this show.”

She worked as a compositor the whole time she was there. “Compositing is putting together rendered 3D images and doing necessary treatments to achieve the final look – like color correcting, tracking, rotoscoping, finding illegal colours, banding, crashing, or reporting animation or render errors,” she describes. “I found the job very easy since it was work that I have trained myself to do at VFS.”

“The experience at Nerd Corps wasn’t a big surprise because the [VFS] 3D program is structured like a studio environment. [Nerd Corps] was very similar in that a lot of your coworkers are in a big room like the Ant Farm, where you all work together.”

“It was a good learning experience. First jobs aren’t supposed to be glamorous,” Daphne reasons. “It’s a first kick in the rear so that the next one doesn’t seem to hurt as much.”