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Fast-track your career in visual effects
AFTRS has partnered with world-leading visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to offer world-class training for Australians in the rapidly expanding screen speciality of visual effects. The Graduate Diploma in Visual Effects brings together the vision, craft and technical skills and expertise of ILM, and the educational expertise and creative excellence of AFTRS.
The course prototypes an innovative model of integrated training that combines the best of on-the-job training with formal education: blending real-world learning driven by leading industry experts, with the critical thinking and adaptive creative skillsets vital to thrive in today’s digital world.
Students will explore the processes by which images are created, manipulated, and finished in a digital environment, and learn the skills required to create high-quality virtual worlds and enhance stories with visual effects, with a focus on the concepts and principles of the VFX pipeline.
The Graduate Diploma in Visual Effects runs full-time over one year, through on-campus classes, coupled with feedback, mentoring, industry guest lectures, project-based learning, and structured around an immersive series of practical classes and workshops.
This course will commence in 2024.
Is the Graduate Diploma in Visual Effects right for you?
This is a hands-on program designed to upskill emerging and early career practitioners and digital artists with technical and creative skills to building a career in Visual Effects and become production-ready visual effects artists in the Australian screen sector.
In this program, students will gain core knowledge and skills required to work in the visual effects industry, understand screen language and conventions, and work on fast-paced projects.
Upon completing this course, students will be able to apply a deep understanding of cinematic storytelling to the art of visual effects, evaluate technical and aesthetic elements of visual effects, problem solve and innovate on professional projects in a group environment, and collaborate effectively and ethically across diverse creative projects.
This course is best suited to a candidate that has previous qualifications or has equivalent professional experience.
Career opportunities
The AFTRS x ILM Graduate Diploma in Visual Effects is designed to meet the needs of the growing visual effects industry through practice-based study. This course is structured around visual effects design and development, storytelling principles and professional practice.
Potential employers in Australia and New Zealand include Industrial Light & Magic, Animal Logic, Rising Sun Pictures, Luma Pictures, Weta, Flying Bark Animation, ALT VFX and a growing number of games design studios in Australian and worldwide.
Potential careers:
- Compositor
- Pipeline Technical Director
- Concept Artist/Matte Painter
- 3D Generalist
- Layout
- Texturing
- Surfacing/Look Development
- Rigging/Technical Assistant
- Modelling (props, etc.)
- Data Capture (motion/facial capture)
- Environment Assistant
- Assistant Technical Director
- Stagecraft (virtual production)
- Pipeline/Engineering
- Render Wrangler
Meet Your Lecturers
Alexander Hoetzer
Alexander Hoetzer is an experienced visual effects artist with almost 20 years’ experience in a range of screen industries, across…
Conny Sepulveda-Fauser
With a strong passion for filmmaking and almost 30 years of experience working in the industry, lead compositor at Industrial…
What you will learn
This course is designed by industry professionals to prepare students for production roles within the ever-growing visual effects industry. Focused on contemporary best-practice, and using industry standard tools and techniques, the Graduate Diploma in Visual Effects will equip students with the ability to engage both craft and industry at a high level with a view towards establishing career-long learning and skills development practices.
Through professional-led tutoring and guidance, this course will equip you to be able to:
- Apply a deep understanding of creative and cinematic storytelling to the craft of visual effects
- To create audience-engaging visual effects through the application of high-level craft-skills
- Evaluate technical, aesthetic, and creative elements of visual effects
- Apply an adaptable skill set to problem-solve and innovate on professional projects in a group environment
- Collaborate effectively and ethically across diverse creative projects
Over the program of teaching, focused productions, bespoke mentorships and sophisticated interaction with the professional visual effects crews, graduates will emerge with the high-level artistic and technical skills required to engage in the booming screen industry at both a local and international level. With modules drawn from professional productions and techniques, this course is designed to allow students to reach their maximum potential by specialising in a craft area informed by their own interests and ambitions.
Course outcomes include:
- High-quality 3D modelling and asset production
- Professional 3D lighting and CGI rendering
- 3D Layout and scene setup
- Photoreal compositing for visual effects
- On-set visual effects protocols and practices
- Contemporary visual effects and hybrid production practices
- Production management and team building
- Professional practice and ethical conduct
Upon completion of the course, students will amass a network of industry contacts and achieve a portfolio of works demonstrating professional skills, proficiencies and attitudes.
DISCLAIMER: Changes in circumstances may impact upon the accuracy or currency of information. While AFTRS takes all due care to ensure that the information is accurate, it reserves the right to vary any information described here without notice.
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