Picture this: you’ve just finished your BA in Law at Cambridge, and you’ve been offered a job at a large corporate law firm in London. It’s your logical next step, it’s reliable, and your friends are doing it.

Then you suddenly pull up sticks and jet to Vancouver for a year to learn animation.

And then you become a Jedi Master.

That’s the story of Clara Tung, a recent grad of the 3D Animation & Visual Effects program at VFS, and a new addition to the roster of the Jedi Masters Program run by Lucasfilm Animation Singapore: the first step in the next stage of learning for her, and her professional career as well.

“I’m so fortunate to start my career in a place where I’m surrounded by people who have amazing calibre and experience, not to mention an endless supply of eye-popping things sitting right there on their screens!” Clara says. “Being junior and just out of school means that I will get to learn lots by just being around them.”

“Clara is passionate about animation,” explains Jacqueline Tan, Deputy General Manager at Lucasfilm Animation Singapore. “Her desire to learn and increase her skills was paramount to her being chosen for the program. Not only is she talented, she has a great attitude, and the studio is always looking for people like her.”

In the Singapore studio, she’s joining a sizable group of fellow VFS grads: “We have hired 20 so far,” says Tan, singling out VFS’s approach to art fundamentals versus a completely tech-driven education. “We are also looking for candidates that are team players with problem-solving skills,” she says. “VFS is a great recruiting ground.”

Lucasfilm Animation Singapore was established in 2004 as a go-to digital animation studio for the storied Lucasfilm, and the studio’s already had a hand in big film, TV, and game projects – perhaps most notably the animated TV series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, now in its second season. The Jedi Masters Program is the main training pipeline for the studio, Tan explains. “It is a six-month, paid apprenticeship program that combines classroom training with hands-on mentoring. The first part of the program is spent in classrooms learning the basics, followed by aesthetic and artistic fundamentals. The last part of the course is the production mentorship, wherein apprentices work on actual projects such as a TV episode, a game level, or a VFX shot.” The apprentices often find full-time employment at the studio when their six months are up.

Clara, who grew up in Singapore, was getting close to her VFS graduation when she heard about an opportunity to apply for the Jedi Masters Program. “Near the end of my VFS course, my program manager Vanessa [Jacobsen] told me about openings on the latest Jedi Masters intake,” she says. “I was so excited about it that I think I submitted my application while my demo reel shots were still rendering.”

But she was still unsure if she’d be accepted, and returned to London to start at the law firm, which had let her take a year while she chased her crazy dream at VFS.

When it all changed again, it only took an instant.

“The day I got a call from the studio offering me a place in the program, I left the firm and booked my flight to Singapore.”

Two close brushes with a life in corporate law, and you almost have to wonder if it was meant to be. But for Clara, pursuing law was always a decision based on practicality. It wasn’t where her deepest passions were.

“I’d always loved drawing and telling stories. I wanted to be an animator after I read The Making of Finding Nemo,” she says. So coming to VFS represented one last kick at the can, so to speak. “My VFS year actually started as a sort of goodbye to my dream job, just so I could appease myself that I’d at least given it a shot before starting my legal career.” Her time at VFS resulted in a short film, Green Fingers (watch it here), and the reaffirmation of everything that drew her to the field in the first place: “The reward of seeing an inanimate object come to life, and to make people think and feel for it! Also, the amazing excuse that [animation] is to study, replicate, and exaggerate movements that our bodies are designed to achieve so gracefully, without us even having to think about it. And finally the fact that it is a creative and communal discipline where you get to – or need to! – work and exchange ideas with other creative people, and reap rewards for being slightly insane.”

For Clara, the Jedi Masters Program at Lucasfilm Animation Singapore is a natural extension of that drive to keep on learning. “I’m alternately thrilled and terrified!” she says of diving in with her more experienced peers. But as she settles into her apprenticeship, she’s already finding a degree of familiarity – even comfort.

“Starting work, I am impressed and happily surprised to see that the production process is similar to what we practiced at school,” she says. “Just taken to a higher level.”

Find out more about the Jedi Masters Program at Lucasfilm Animation Singapore at lasjedi.com. To see more of Clara’s work, visit her website, claratung.com.