A career in Gaming|VFX|Animation? Here’s your guide to choosing animation as a career option
VFX
India’s Visual Effects domain, or VFX industry, has been growing from strength to strength in recent years and has ushered in a new era of success for the Media and Entertainment industry on our shores.
A career in VFX is today a rewarding and creatively satisfying option for young minds and the job opportunities in the VFX industry are booming. However, while this success, and projected growth of the industry, has a lot of aspiring VFX artists excited, oftentimes students don’t know what different roles are on offer in the VFX industry in India.
So here’s a breakdown of the 7 different key positions that are available to VFX professionals in India.
VFX Career Opportunities in India
1. Layout Artist
Usually part of the pre-production and previsualization process, a layout artist, as the name suggests, lays the foundations for how the visuals will eventually look. Typically, a layout artist is tasked with interpreting the script and storyboard and creating templates for how to transfer the script or storyboard into the visual medium. Everything from scene creation to camera angles and more falls under this remit.
2. Compositing Artist
Well done visual effects merge seamlessly with the rest of the background and don’t distract the viewing experience at all. One glitch though, and it can ruin the entire experience for the viewer. A compositor’s job is to ensure that this seamlessness between VFX and live action is intact, and any visual disturbances are eliminated.
3. Lighting Artist
Lighting is one of the most crucial aspects of any film production – live action or animated. A lighting artist is in charge of understanding the behavior of light and its interaction with real-world subjects and translating that into the visual effects world. Lighting plays a very important role in visual continuity and even the storytelling process, and a lighting artist has to be able to deliver the perfect amount of illumination to make a scene pop.
4. Rendering Artist
When it comes to VFX career opportunities in India, rendering artists are in high demand across major VFX studios and production houses. In a similar vein to lighting artists, rendering artists are responsible for turning the 3D models into the real world-esque visuals we see on the screen. A delicate and highly technical job, rendering artists make sure that the project is transformed from an idea to a visual.
5. Roto Artist
A rotoscoping artist or roto artist has the difficult and imperative task of tracing all those areas of a frame where CG meets real life, in order to provide compositors with a framework from which to begin their work. A job that offers a great foundation in VFX, and often a starting point for VFX professionals, there is a great demand for roto artists today.
6. Matte Painter
Do you know those beautiful, almost magical tapestries that only VFX films seem to have? A matte painter has a huge hand in their creation. A matte artist takes visual reference cues such as photographs, sketches and other references and turns them into realistic VFX scenes that all the action will take place in.
7. Match Mover Artist
A match mover is typically an expert in both 2D and 3D as he or she has to work at the confluence of both worlds. An artist that works in CGI, tracking movements is an important part of the match mover’s responsibilities, as in this role, you would be typically responsible for ensuring that the computer-generated graphics integrate properly with the live-action footage, and proportions, movements and more all have a natural, seamless look and feel.
Do you wish to be a part of the ever-evolving VFX world? The VFX industry in India is thriving and the VFX career path promises a whole bunch of career options for you – explore bouquet of VFX courses that can help you achieve your ambitions.
Animation
A career in animation is one of the most-sought-after career options these days. And why not? With high salaries, career growth and an opportunity to showcase your creativity, a career in animation could be the right choice for today’s youth. With movies like Bahubali, Kung Fu Panda, Ice Age, and others being a rage among children and adults alike, the prospects of animation industry look bright.
job in animation can be defined as the art of breathing life to a character or an object. A blend of entertainment industry and technology, it is concerned with the design, drawing, layout, and production of graphically rich and attractive multimedia clips.
Here’s a list of probable job roles in animation:
1. 2 D Animator
2. 3 D Animator
3. Key Frame Animator
4. Image Editor
5. Modeler
6. Character Animator
7. Texture Artist
8. Layout Artist
9. Lighting Artist
10. Story Board Artist
11. Background Artist
12. Clean Up Artist
13. Rigging Artist
14. Rendering Artist
15. Digital Ink and Paint Artist
Aptitude and skills required to get an Animation Job
GAME DESIGNER
This job is every gamer’s dream. The lead game designer can be equated to the director of a movie. Nowhere else does one need to be both creative as well as technically minded as a game designer. The game designer imagines and outlines the entire game and often has to pitch the idea to video game producer before starting the development of the game. Once a game is approved, a team of game designers works together to develop the characters, levels and various other aspects of gameplay.
GAME PROGRAMMER
This is the oldest known profession in the history of video games. Game programmers push the limits of known technology to bring a video game to life. Game programmers need to be extremely innovative while writing code as gamers are constantly demanding better graphics, more innovative gameplay or more special effects.
GAME TESTER
The game tester repeatedly plays parts of the game and testing the environment to see if there are any snags in the gameplay. This allows game programmers and game designers to adapt their work throughout the game to circumvent the glitches according to the feedback from the game testing team. Basically, the quality assurance and game testing team tell the game designers what is working and what isn’t. Game testers need to have engineering skills, pay minute attention to detail and the ability to communicate effectively. It’s a pretty important job role that probably doesn’t get the respect it deserves.
EDUCATOR
This is probably the newest amongst all gaming professions. Gone are the days where a game was created by one or two people and the job roles in the gaming industry are becoming increasingly specialized. What was once created through trial and error or experimentation now has a serious methodology behind it. A degree in some aspect of gaming is now almost a prerequisite for entering the industry leading to a demand for experienced individuals to teach the next generation of aspiring game makers.
