Arthur Lobo
Arthur Lobo
VFT Program-2010
What education did you have before you took the Visual Effects for Film and Television course?
I took a 3DS Max course and went on a internship for more then a year.
After that I came to Canada to take a digital character animation course at Vancouver Film School. I came back to Brazil and worked on a TV broadcast for a year and a half, but that was not exactly what I wanted to do. One day a friend of mine showed me his work on Nuke and from then on I decided to go for that.
Searched a course that best matched what I wanted and found Seneca College.
Tell us a bit about your experience at the college.
I went to Seneca to focus on VFX Compositing. I really liked the environment. The teachers are high standard professionals, they were always prompt to help, even when was not during the classes, I remember how fast and effective their replies were to my emails regarding problem solving on my shots etc..
During the course we had a lot of technical and artistic classes that helped a lot to develop our personal shots for the student reel.
One thing that I am very thankful is that we had the opportunity to work for a Independent Feature Film called Exit Humanity. This for sure opened doors on my career.
After the course I was called to work at Soho VFX ( Toronto-ON ) thanks to Joe Raasch and Mahmoud Rahnama, who both refered me.
How do you use the education you got at Seneca in your job today?
At my job I use what I learned at the Visual Effects course all the time. We've learned all the processes to compose our entire shots, and I can say that we learned pretty much everything I am asked to do, like Keying, Roto, 3D Camera/ Object tracking, 2D tracking, Stabilization, 3D Projection, Realistic compositing CG on live action, colour correction and so on.
What advice would you give potential students who are thinking of taking the course?
Use the course time to study as much as they can and try to create the best shots they can, keep it simple so then you can create a stunning shot. Look for reference of what the companies are looking for when they watch a reel and create the portfolio based on that.
It's not an easy thing, hard times will come, but don't give up, persist and you will be proud to see what you are capable of doing !!
Compositor at SohoVFX
(Written in 2012)