Xiaoyan Chen

VFT Program-2021

What education did you have before you took the Visual Effects for Film and Television course?

I graduated in Landscape Design from a Chinese university. After graduation I worked in different industries trying to find one that suits me the best, then I found my interest in visual effects. Despite the fact that I have zero knowledge in this field, I taught myself a bit of Blender and then made a demo reel to apply for this program, which was highly recommended by my friend Jennifer who is a graduate of this course.

Tell us a bit about your experience at the college.

My experience at this program is even better than I expected. I started my program in early 2021, because of COVID and all the quarantined policies, I couldn’t make it to Canada at that time. Fortunately all the courses are online and recorded, so I was able to learn everything in China with a 12 hours time difference. The program is pretty overwhelming in the beginning, it covers all the basic knowledge we need to know in various occupation directions so we could decide which one we are more interested in to focus on in the second semester, gratefully all the professors are so helpful and responsible to alleviate our burden in this journey. Meanwhile online learning is a great help since we could always find answers in recording whenever we went into problems. As a zero background student, I gained more than I expected in this program, not only did I learn so much about software, but also I had learned more about this industry and made connections.

How do you use the education you got at Seneca in your job today?

I use all the knowledge I learned in this program on a daily basis. As an fx artist, I do all kinds of fx at work including: RBD, particles, pyro, flip, energy fx,deformation fx, etc. The most important thing I think this program taught me is how to become a problem solver. It really changed my way of thinking when I went into trouble at work and it helps me a lot to get more challenging shots.

What advice would you give potential students who are thinking of taking the course?

This program is the best I had in my 20 years of life. Don’t hesitate to join! Also don’t be afraid even though you have zero background knowledge, give it a shot and try to put 100% of yourself in this program, try your best to absorb as much as you could and I promise you won’t regret it!

(Written in 2022)