Looking to break into the world of design or update your skills to meet your clients’ evolving demands?
On Thursday, March 25 at 6pm, you’ll have the chance to attend a free Open House hosted by our world-class one-year Digital Design program, where you’ll discover how our grads create award-winning portfolios that get them noticed by the global design community and hired at companies like AKQA, DreamWorks, and DDB.
Digital Design Open House
Thursday, March 25, 2010
New Location!
VFS Main Theatre, 420 Homer Street
(Corner of Homer & Hastings)
At this Open House, you will:
- Meet Head of Department Brett Forsyth and find out what makes VFS Digital Design the best program of its kind on the planet
- Discover an innovative curriculum that spans motion graphics, branding, interactive design, and everything in between
- Speak with students and graduates about life during and after the program
- See examples of student work that will both challenge and inspire you
Register now at vfs.com/designopenhouse or call 604.631.3591. We look forward to seeing many of you there!
The world is Vikas Mathur‘s film set. The 2006 VFS Film Production alum, born and raised in Hyderabad, has carved out a career in India – but that film industry’s propensity for shooting in all kinds of locales around the world has, in turn, led to a globetrotting lifestyle for the producer and director. At VFS, he produced two well-regarded shorts directed by fellow student Paul St. Amand – Grover’s Mill and One Last Thing. After graduation, he began working as a co-director and producer in the Indian industry, on features like Aegan, Godava, and Kasko. His most recent work is on a high-profile feature that he’s still tight-lipped about. It’s a life he welcomes. ”I would like to be the proverbial gypsy,” he says, “chasing film ideas all over the world and stopping by to do interesting films, wherever these are made!” “Hollywood or Bollywood, it matters little.” He found time in his schedule recently to discuss his career, from India to Switzerland to Thailand. You graduated from VFS in 2006 and seemed to quickly jump into the professional arena. How did that come about? Vikas: Right after VFS, I was offered to produce a music video for a local Canadian artist, after which I went back home. Home is Hyderabad, India. In Hyderabad, I started meeting a few people from the industry. Among them was Mr. Kodandarami Reddy, a Tollywood and Bollywood veteran who then had 93 feature films to his directing credits. In less than two hours we spent together in our second meeting, Mr. Reddy invited me to work with him on a film he was directing and producing. He looked after me like a father figure, consulted me constantly, and respected my opinions, and more importantly, quickly discovered that I had it in me to help him co-direct his movie. This was my first feature film. [ed. 2007's Godava] It was a heady feeling working for that film. At just 22 years of age, I was in charge of script supervision, managing business affairs, scheduling the entire production, and even handling production finances. Despite feeling somewhat over-awed by the responsibility, I realized I was doing everything necessary to run a production, yet just drawing a salary for it. And a thought occurred: ‘Why not run my own productions?’ Vikas Mathur was a co-producer on Kasko, directed by G. Nageswara Reddy What about that producer/director divide? Do you lean particularly strongly one way or the other, or is it just about where the opportunities are? We all understand the appeal of directing, but what kind of rewards can you find as a producer? Vikas: I have co-directed two feature films and just lately finished co-producing my first feature. To deny the producer/director divide is foolish. Slipping into both shoes has been extremely helpful, at least in my experience. Today, I find it easier to understand and appreciate opposing perspectives on merit. Running a film crew is never easy and does require strong doses of merciless objectivity. Sets are expensive, time is money, and creative egos are larger than life. I am nothing without the people I work with. For me, getting the team to work together is like knitting a lot of egos. The flip side is playing the blame game. It delays or shelves a film. That’s unaffordable. Actually, to stand still in the motion picture trade is like walking backwards. What drew you to this industry in the first place? Vikas: Growing up in India, I saw the joy films gave people from all walks of life. I would see students skip classes, people even skipping a meal or something to spend money watching a movie. “First day first show” holds a special fascination! In India, virtually everyone sings film songs, recites popular film dialogue, dresses and tries to ape the hairstyles and mannerisms of their favourite actors. That’s the kind of impact films have on people in India – young and old, men and women – alike! Film stars in South India have fan clubs that run into thousands. Stars have also launched political parties with great success. I looked through the lens of a camera at the age of seven. It left me absolutely awestruck. That feeling reappears every time I peep through the camera lens even today. Everyone depends on films for entertainment. Films make people laugh, cry, think, dream, inspire, love, despair, hate. Making films is absolutely the most vital motivational force of my existence. I just love it! When I’m on set, I’m happiest. It gives me great sense of fulfillment! It took a lot of effort to persuade folks at home to allow me to study design in Singapore and film at VFS. Looking back, I feel all that was worthwhile. Vikas Mathur on location in Switzerland to shoot Kasko Your work has a strong international bent – shooting everywhere from Thailand to Switzerland to Hong Kong to New York and, of course, India. What kinds of challenges are there in making these productions happen on an international scale? Vikas: The film industry in India is rather globalized. Indians have been shooting part of their films at foreign locales for decades, especially the all-important songs. I love to travel and my association with the production and directing teams of the Indian film industry took me to different parts of the world. Logistically, there is a lot more planning and work that goes into making schedules and travel arrangements for the cast and the entire crew and I often find myself as a “bridge” between Indian and foreign crews when we shoot abroad. The arrangement seems to be working seamlessly. So, that’s fine by me. And it helps me re-bond with VFS alumni who I work with on my films abroad. Recently I worked with Film grads Alex Joho in Switzerland, Thomas Cantley in New York, and Rohit Sharma in Northern India. Catching up and working with old friends is always enjoyable. Fundamentally, has working in the industry given you a different perspective on film, and film in India in particular? Vikas: I would say that films are contextually grounded in cultural niches. Working in different parts of the world has enriched my perspectives considerably. I feel quite comfortable working in North America, Europe, South Asia or the Indian subcontinent! For a filmmaker, India’s diversity is surcharged with ideas that have found expression in mainstream/commercial and artsy/serious streams of filmmaking, each with their own dedicated audiences. We’re told you worked on a “big banner production” that’ll be coming out this year… What can you tell us about it? Vikas: Right now, it’s very hush-hush! I’ll be able to talk about it bit later. In that case, we hope you’ll be in touch when you can. Thanks, Vikas! Anyone interested in finding out more about Vikas’ work and career should visit vikasmathur.com.
Head of Department Alastair Macleod offered the following summary of the afternoon: “Lyndon talked about his experience starting out as a stop-motion animator, and his how he made the transition to 3D computer animation. He gave some great advice on the challenges of being a successful animator and tips for new animators who are starting out.” Lyndon also spent time chatting with students about their own projects, eliciting the following reactions: “Lyndon, in a short time, gave me some very valuable advice on how to better approach my animation and push the limits of my character performance,” said 3D student Daniel Rojas. “This will dramatically help me to improve my final reel. His help is greatly appreciated.” “It was great to meet an Animation Director and hear him talk about his work,” fellow 3D student Dennis Otte said. “He was so chilled out and smooth, you can tell he has a lot of experience. He was really straightforward and gave us some good pointers. It was impressive, the variety of projects he has worked on, everything from the robots in The Matrix to Alvin and The Chipmunks.” “The visit from Lyndon was amazing and truly inspiring,” said Digital Character Animation student Ana Santos. “With honesty and sympathy, he talked about whatever we asked him, which just made us want to get to work right away and give our best, so that in the near future we can get our first job in the animation industry.” Many thanks to Lyndon Barrois for his time and energy!
After a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony lead by VFS Managing Director Marty Hasselbach and Head of Entertainment Business Management Jessica Leigh Clark-Bojin, EBM students, faculty, and staff explored their new home. Now located in VFS’s always-bustling campus at 198 West Hastings Street — along with the Makeup Design, Writing, and Acting departments — the new EBM campus is both spacious and welcoming. Students have a comfortable lounge for impromptu meetings, and large classrooms for lectures and group collaborations. Click here to view more photos of the new campus on VFS’s flickr page, or check out the Opening Day video below for student reactions and exclusive interviews.
This partnership means students throughout VFS will have full and easy access to music that can really make their work pop. 5 Alarm’s huge library of high-quality music is already used extensively by students in 3D Animation & Visual Effects, Classical Animation, Digital Character Animation, Acting, Digital Design, Film Production, Foundation, Game Design, Sound Design, and Writing as they create and polish their films, reels, and other projects. 5 Alarm has contributed music to such productions as Transformers, A Christmas Carol, and HBO’s True Blood – and that’s just a tiny selection. “VFS partnerships are very important to the student experience,” explains VFS Managing Director Marty Hasselbach. “5 Alarm Music is great example of an opportunity for students to have access to a phenomenal music library which truly enhances the work they create while they’re here. It also becomes the perfect go-to resource after they’ve graduated and enter their own production world.” Cassie Lord, General Manager at 5 Alarm Music, tells us: “We’re excited to partner with VFS and believe that providing professional tools to students is a valuable asset to their education. Understanding music rights can be cumbersome and we want to aid their understanding of music licensing and gain an appreciation for production music.” Everyone here at VFS is very proud to make this partnership official, and we look forward to seeing the results in action!
‘Intervain’ is Magdalena Dadela, a 2005 graduate of our 3D Animation & Visual Effects program and an active and well-respected member of a number of online communities, notably Pixologic’s own ZBrushCentral. She’s a talented 3D modeler who works at Ubisoft Digital Arts in Montreal, what the venerable game developer calls a digital cinema creation studio. Her work was last seen in Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, the well-received 36-minute film Ubisoft created in the run-up to the splashy debut of their game Assassin’s Creed II. In light of the partnership, it seemed like the perfect time to catch up with her and find out a bit more about her background, her VFS experience, and her life as an artist. First of all, let’s talk about your experience heading into VFS in 2005. Did you have an art background already before you started the program here? Magdalena: I had no experience before I went to VFS. I’d only opened 3ds Max twice and made some primitive spheres and that’s about it. I did know Photoshop very well, because I’d learned it on my own to do some website design. I wasn’t educated as an artist, either – my degree is in English Literature. What prompted me to study at VFS was a Pixar movie, Finding Nemo. When I first saw those turtles I had an epiphany – I simply had to do this for a living. After that, things just snowballed and through a very lucky set of coincidences, a year later I landed in Vancouver. A model based on James Tissot's The Fireplace, created by Magdalena Dadela using ZBrush Did you expect to be focusing on modeling when you started the program? Magdalena: No. In fact, I was convinced I would be an animator before I got there. For the first three terms, modeling had no appeal to me. I found it boring, and, well, I wasn’t awfully great at it. Having a friend in the class who already did a lot of modeling before coming to VFS was also rather discouraging at first. Animation was worse, though. I really didn’t enjoy it. So after about three months, I decided to change my initial intentions and go for visual effects instead and I was convinced that’d be my final decision for quite a while. Then in the last few weeks of Term 3, just as we were about to choose our stream, I had a bit of a breakthrough moment in my modeling class. I started to enjoy it and got better at it. So in the end – the last week possible – I chose modeling. The fact that there was a very good modeling teacher had a lot to do with it as well. I always advise those who ask me about VFS not to even think of choosing a stream before they’ve tried a bit of everything first, because they might be surprised. An environment in Assassin's Creed: Lineage Your most visible recent work was on Assassin’s Creed: Lineage, which took a lot of people by surprise. There was a lot of anticipation about the game, but Lineage came out of left field for many, and it was very impressive. What can you tell us about the project and your work on it? Magdalena: The project was great fun and it was a bit of a challenge. We didn’t have that much time to work on it and there were three long episodes to be done – from the ground up. There was a lot of work for the modelers, which is always enjoyable. For me, it was also a challenge because I’ve never worked on sets before. I am primarily a character modeler and though I have done some statues and sculptures on Lineage – like a church altar or a square fountain – the sets were my main focus here. We had to rebuild all of the original game assets completely because they had no details at all other than in the textures and would not hold up on a big screen. Apart from modeling all the buildings and interiors – there were five of us working on this – I also worked on texturing some of them. Magdalena: The door scene was a challenge because it involved an extreme close-up. We were working in HD, which means very high resolution textures and a lot of detail which would be seen close up on a big screen. Because there was a sudden change in the camera move, there had to be a lot of adjustments done to the textures and modeling in a small amount of time – so from a simple job, it got a bit more complicated overnight… It’s mostly a time thing – as is always the case in this industry – which means longer hours and some stress but still a lot of fun. How were you first exposed to ZBrush?
The Switch, a film created in the 6-month VFS Digital Character Animation program by Deepak Zachariah Mathew, has hit the elusive 2 million view mark on YouTube! We caught up with Zack, an unassuming and very talented man who hails from India and is currently an animator at Ubisoft Singapore (his work was recently seen in Assassin’s Creed II) a few weeks before The Switch made it to its first million views. Congrats, Zack! And in case you missed it the first time, dear readers, here’s The Switch:
You can read more about it here. But as an added bonus, Jorge is teasing us this afternoon with a few behind-the-scenes shots on his blog. Check it out!
They only just graduated from VFS Digital Design this past December, and Kasey Lum and Jorge R. Canedo Estrada (aka Jr.canest) have already had a hand in a high-profile project for Google. Today, Google launched a series of videos explaining its Google Voice service. Kasey and Jorge were responsible for creating the overview video we’ve embedded below – you know, the big one that introduces everything Google Voice is about. Huge congratulations, guys! Here’s what Jorge had to tell us about the project this morning: They saw some videos we made, including [an infographic created at by Jorge, Kasey, Marisa Torres, Alexander Badr, and Vincent Lui] Growing Up, and months ago they emailed me to see if I was able to work with them for an animated video explaining what Google Voice is. We stayed in touch until it became official that I was the one that was going to do it. I wanted to add something to the video so I immediately thought of my good friend Kasey Lum, who is an amazing designer and we had worked together before and it was great. So I told him about the project and he jumped in. It took about a month. They sent us the first script and we conceptualize the whole thing, different storyboards, and finally started working in the animation and so on… I was in Mexico, Kasey in Canada, and everything was via the internet, including the relationship with Google. Links:
Remember Classical Animation grad Todd Ramsay? He’s the mastermind behind the animated series of shorts Honkbarn, which we’ve written about a couple of times. Well, now that the Winter Olympics are underway here in Vancouver, we’re starting to hear about more and more alumni who were involved in the games in one way or another. We’re hoping to bring you some of those stories soon, but to kick things off – Todd collaborated with Canadian filmmaker Sheona McDonald on Momentum, a short film commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad’s Digital Edition (“CODE”). See a little more about it on Todd’s blog, then check out the film!
The International Life of Vikas Mathur
Prime Focus Animation Director visits VFS
VFS’s Animation & Visual Effects department (including the 3D, Classical Animation, and Digital Character Animation programs) recently hosted a visit from Lyndon Barrois (Happy Feet, Speed Racer).VFS Opens New EBM Campus
VFS and 5 Alarm Music Forge Partnership
We’re very pleased to announce an official partnership between Vancouver Film School and 5 Alarm Music, America’s largest independent production music library for film, television, radio, and commercials.Magdalena Dadela, ZBrush Ace
When we were getting set to announce the official partnership between VFS and Pixologic, makers of the industry-leading ZBrush, one of the first names that came to mind was ‘Intervain’.
You mentioned on your blog that you can be seen in a Lineage behind-the-scenes video working on a door, something you call “an adventure”. How does something so simple become so challenging?Zack Mathew, The 2 Million View Man
Google Voice: Behind-the-Scenes Goodness
As we mentioned this morning, Digital Design grads and all-around awesome designers Jorge R. Canedo Estrada and Kasey Lum were responsible for creating the video What Is Google Voice? to lead off a series of videos (by Google) explaining the service.Digital Design Grads Create Google Voice Video
Kasey Lum’s Online Portfolio
Jorge R. Canedo Estrada’s Online Portfolio
Classical Animation Grad Gets in the Olympic Spirit