Well, it’s that time - the VFS Blog team is going on holiday like everybody else. But in case you’re looking for something to read (or you’re new to our blog), here’s a roundup of twelve of our favourite VFS grad stories of the year. Choosing was no easy task!

We hope you’ve enjoyed our blog over the past year as much as we’ve enjoyed writing it.

See you in 2008!

January. Seas of Europa - Alive & Swimming. A post-mortem on one of Game Design’s most beautiful student projects.

February. Makeup Students Giving Back. Grads of the Makeup program volunteer for Variety Telethon.

March. 10 Things I Learned at Praxis. A Writing grad walks us through her experience as a Praxis Screenplay Fellow.

April. There Is No “Try”. A video interview with one of two Sound Design grads hired at Skywalker Sound.

May. A Pirate’s Life for Grad. A video of 3D grad Ben Sanders, who worked as an animator on Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Happy Feet, and The Golden Compass.

June. Feeling the Leo Love. Grads of Film Production, Makeup, Sound Design, and Classical Animation make noise at the 2007 Leo Awards.

July. The Design of Happiness. Mark Miller, a Digital Design grad, on life after school.

August. Down & Dirty With Skate. Game Design grad Chris Klein talks about his role on the well-reviewed new game Skate.

September. Film Grad Knows Promotion. Paul St. Amand, a graduate of the Film program, on getting his documentary Parallels seen by the world.

October. When Contacts Pay Off. Entertainment Business Management grad Nick Soukthavone takes another step toward the career of his dreams.

November. Grads Win Stop Motion Prize. Several Classical Animation grads and one instructor win a Stop Motion Animation contest.

December. Wisdom from Whistler. Acting for Film & TV graduate Holly Dignard (Whistler) on life as a working actor.

Head of Writing Maria Jacquemetton’s work on the hot new drama series Mad Men is being recognized in abundance this season! The show is up for Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards (Best Dramatic Series, Best New Series, and Best Episodic Drama) as well as two Golden Globes, including Best TV Drama.  The show was also recently hailed the top new series of 2007 by Time magazine. Congratulations, Maria!

The finalists for awards at the 10th annual Independent Games Festival are out, and our own Game Design program is well represented.

Grad Brandon Van Slyke helped design Snapshot Adventures: Secret of Bird Island for Large Animal Games, which is a finalist for IGF this year in the Design Innovation category.

And Foamzilla, the VFS project by grads Johan Eickmeyer and Mark Barazzuol, has been named a finalist in the Student Showcase. At VFS, small teams of students develop an original concept and build fully-playable level designs in three months for their final project. (Johan later developed a tabletop spin-off of Foamzilla. You can read about it here.)

The festival and award presentation happens in February at GDC in San Francisco. Congrats and best of luck to all the nominees!

VFS Festivals & Awards - 2008 

Just a reminder, this is last call for submissions to the graphics contest - the deadline is tomorrow, Friday, December 21st! Send us your artwork, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a complete set of Total Textures CDs, valued at $1000.

Over on our YouTube channel we’ve set up a Digital Design themed playlist to acquaint the community with many of the impressive final projects students create in the program, including the latest to go viral, Duelity. Meanwhile, the program has developed its own website to celebrate the best projects of 2007. Check out these slick student portfolios to get a sense of the variety of projects that Digital Design students undertake in the one-year program.

Congrats to Ana Steiner, her final project has made the homepage for YouTube Canada today. She chose to complete the Makeup Design program with an entire day spent meticulously painting and airbrushing a woman to look like a Russian nested doll, a holiday favorite. VFS filmed the whole process and posted it to our channel. Check it out.

More photos of her final project can be found here.

VFS Managing Director Marty Hasselbach and Co-Founder Richard Appleby accepting a certificate at the 2007 B.C. Export Award

Not long ago, VFS was named a Top 25 Exporter as part of the 2007 B.C. Export Awards, which are administered by Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) and the B.C. Ministry of Economic Development. VFS was also one of three finalists for the Professional & Services Award.

We pride ourselves on our international reach and reputation. We’ve made our students’ work freely available online to a global audience on YouTube, Joost, and beyond, we’ve partnered with companies like Adobe and EA, and our website is available in 14 languages.

It all shows in our student body - fully 50% of which is made up of international students. For example, students in a graduating Classical Animation class this year hailed from as far afield as China, India, Korea, Australia, Bulgaria, and Egypt. That says it all.

To accommodate and foster this global student culture, we’ve responded with international foreign language orientation and an ESL education partnership with the Vancouver English Centre. We’re also developing a task force to work with Immigration Canada to help companies more quickly and efficiently hire foreign graduates.

In short, we export the VFS experience by importing talent from all over the world. And for that, it’s a great honour to be recognized.

Take a look at this video profile of VFS produced for the awards:

We know it’s a crazy time of year, but we want to remind all the VFS students and grads out there about our Artwork Competition. Check the link for the lowdown, but the short version is - we’re looking for high-res stills of student work made at VFS. Send in your work, and you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a complete set of Total Textures CDs, valued at $1000.

Thanks to those who have entered so far. And to those who haven’t, the deadline is Friday, December 21st!

Animation grad John Iskandar knows a thing or two about giant bugs. He’s responsible for the next nest of giant alien insects for the upcoming third installment in the Starship Troopers franchise. Third? Yes, the Paul Verhoeven sci-fi cult classic inspired books, comics, video and role-playing games, a cartoon, toys, great quotes, and a low-budget sequel that never saw theatrical release. Starship Troopers 3: Marauder promises to deliver the quality that fans expect.

“Sony wants this movie to be as good as the first,” John told us. “So my supervisor wants all of our animation to be done like Phil Tippet did in the first. He’s an amazing VFX artist, and the fact that when I complete a shot, it makes me feel good that my animation can be compared to his.”

Do you want to learn more? Read the rest of this story »

Many of the VFS grads who contributed to The Golden Compass also had a hand in tomorrow’s big release: the live-action Alvin & the Chipmunks!

Pearl Hsu, Effects Technical Director on the film, is a graduate of the 3D program. Like many of her generation, Pearl has nostalgic feelings for those squeaky-voiced critters…

About the experience of working on the film, Pearl says:

“I worked on the food effects coming off of the chipmunks as they eat, and also the water castoff when Alvin comes out of the dishwasher (the chipmunks are very good at putting themselves in funny situations). As a fan of the TV series, it was very exciting to see the chipmunks come to life and know that I was involved in it getting to the final render.

What I enjoyed most about working on Alvin, and at Rhythm & Hues in general, is the chance to learn from talented professionals. In Alvin, I was given a chance to branch out from effects work and try my hand at lighting and compositing. Doing so made me appreciate the amount of effort that goes into the movie at every stage, and the level of talent that I’m surrounded by every day. But, the best part of it all is seeing the finished movie on the big screen. The chipmunks are incredibly cute, and their songs are addictive!”

Pearl has gone from working on itsy-bitsy heroes to the biggest of the all — she’s currently hard at work on 2008’s Incredible Hulk.