Hi everyone, I'm a recent graduate from school looking for my first job as an FX artist in VFX Industry. I found out that most FX artist positions ask for few years of production experience using Houdini. I had two interviews last week and I think the reason I'm not hired is mostly because of my lack of production experience. Does anyone have any advice for students who just graduate from school and looking for the first job as a FX artist?
The best way to find out why you haven't been hired is to ask where you applied at. You won't always get an answer, but when you do get one, it's better than a thousand speculations.
Yeah, you work speaks for itself. I think there must have been other reasons/politics as to why you weren't hired, but fundamentally it comes down to whether you can perform the needed job or not. I wouldn't worry too much about it, just keep doing what you're doing and I'm sure good things will come out of it.
Thou I don't post in the sidefx forums often I will chime in on this topic.
I've been living/working here in Los Angeles since 1995 in CGI/VFX.
Your reel is decent. The water sim looks pretty good. The face peel looks standard and the krakatoa and fluid sim explosion are also just standard.
People in Southern CA have seen hundreds of these kinds of reels. Often they are not just from specialist in fx.
They are from people who model, rig, animate, texture, shade, simulate, render in multiple engines etc in Maya and Max as well as having some fx capability in Maya or Max or even Houdini.
So we'll get reels and see what you've shown and about ten other things all together for one person.
Now that being said. When it comes to Houdini specific reels I would say your water sim is detailed BUT it is just going down all over the model. Many reels come in with not only detailed water but also showing the water moving and pushing scene geometry around. The water changing the walls from dry to wet. Water building up against something and filling up and pouring over. All in one shot.
Explosions demo'd at the pro level show not just a plume going up that is nicely lit, but smaller smoke shards with hot pieces flying outward making tertiary smoke streaks as well as an initial shockwave.
The aura looking particles look a lot like many krakatoa demo reels that were being shown in 2011-2012.
Everything you are showing is pretty good but you must know that you are trying to get hired in an industry that has 20+ year vets that have a little of everything on their reel.
Don't get me wrong, Houdini specialists are getting more in demand. BUT… in Oct 2017 a company wanted a pile of leaves that flew up from a car driving by them on the road… then hte shot went into bullet time and pushed DoF on the single leaf. The single leaf then began to change from organic to liquid metal ala Terminator 2 and then the leaf broke up into mercury bubbles and then formed again into a logo. That is more a modern Houdini fx reel factor for getting hired above others with the usual smoke plume, water flood, and particle dissolve reels.
You have a talent here. I am not ripping on your reel. It shows great potential. Hopefully you'll get your break. Just try to think of a couple more details in water sims… pushing things around etc. The extra details help sell you.
there is always a lot of reasons why a company may not hire you after an interview, it doesn't always mean that something went wrong
I wouldn't think production experience is necessarily a problem as that should be obvious from your CV and if company is looking for someone with more experience than you have then you will simply not be asked to come for an interview
2 interviews is not a lot so don't worry too much about that, keep trying
I'd advise you not including work you've done directly following some courses/tutorials, chances are that those shots are easily recognizable and don't necessarily show your skill, so chances are that 2 of your 4 shots are just ignored. However you can easily apply learned knowledge to similar shots which can pass for your own
