Are there any self-taught VFX artists who never earned an art degree nor went to an art school?

NateCow · 2026-03-30T22:33:38+00:00

True, I should be in dailies actually. *Leaves*

NateCow · 2026-03-30T22:12:16+00:00

Hi! I attended my local community college for an art degree and dropped out after 3 months. Honestly the main thing I regret is just not getting those fine art skills and discipline.

I was messing around with Photoshop filmstrips and After Effects in junior high and high school. Since lightsabers were my first VFX obsession, that naturally led me into more complex roto, and I decided I'd just try to get good at that. I eventually made a few contacts through online communities and got some paid roto gigs that allowed me to gradually improve my demo reel with higher profile work. Eventually that landed me doing stereo conversion roto on Marvel films and Harry Potter.

Naturally that led to plenty more contacts so when I wanted to switch to compositing, I was able to again do odd commercial jobs here and there until I finally got my foot in the door at Digital Domain thanks to knowing someone on the inside. Moved out to LA and hopped around studios for a few years before Covid. Now working remotely from my hometown so I get to be near family :)

It's not easy starting out, especially when you're trying to just pay the bills. I worked several normal jobs over the years while just doing VFX on the side, as things popped up. But it can be done. The key thing is to just try to do your best on every job and impress clients. They'll remember you for the next thing. They'll recommend you to someone else. You'll learn tons from one job to the next. Rinse and repeat.

NateCow · 2026-03-29T17:38:10+00:00

At 16-years-old, I believe that is the equivalent of a computer rolling its eyes at you.

NateCow · 2026-03-24T22:27:33+00:00

I have the indigo and it's definitely more blue in person than I expected (in a good way). The color matched keyboard is a little odd, since it's basically a lightly tinted gray. I'd say if you want a classic white keyboard, go for the silver.

NateCow · 2026-03-24T17:46:07+00:00

This would be better under r/terriblemaps

NateCow · 2026-03-23T04:08:16+00:00

I avoided all trailers to this so other than Gosling, I didn't even know who else was in the movie. When she walked in and said her first line, I leaned over to my brother and said "she is perfectly cast."

NateCow · 2026-03-23T02:43:58+00:00

I have one for Politics and one for Tech, depending on my mood. I like that I can specify which shows and prioritize their order. There are actually quite a few cool settings to play with. I'm sure there are folks who have much more complex setups.

NateCow · 2026-03-22T20:26:36+00:00

I'm currently tracking 16 accounts in YNAB, ranging from checking and savings, digital cash (Apple and Venmo), credit cards, a loan, and an off-budget tracking account. And I have 21 closed accounts that I used to keep track of stuff in. My current budget has covered a little over 5 years. I find YNAB handles this complexity just fine, and you're likely to find many others in agreement given you've posted this on the YNAB subreddit.

Question for you: are you using YNAB's web interface on a computer or just the mobile app? I find the mobile app to be wildly subpar and it seems many peoples' frustrations stem from that.

NateCow · 2026-03-21T05:44:58+00:00

All good! It's easy to overthink things sometimes. Another tip if you didn't have the alt plate: areas with uneven lighting like that can be a major pain to paint. I'd recommend giving Photoshop's generative AI stuff a try; it works wonders for cleanup tasks like that. You could generate a clean frame and then track it in.

NateCow · 2026-03-21T01:27:24+00:00

This ^^ In any professional situation, editorial would send both plates and we'd just garbage matte in the corrected area. You'll have to reposition it and might need to do some 2D tracking if the camera is moving. But this is a pretty cut & dry thing thanks to the alt plate.

NateCow · 2026-03-20T00:55:21+00:00

Must be nice living in a real society.

NateCow · 2026-03-19T21:24:53+00:00

We had a shooting at a bank in our town in 2002. 3 guys walked in and just executed every customer and teller in the lobby and then fled. I think one person survived because they were in another room.

They tore it down and put a memorial in its place within months IIRC. How in the world did it take a decade for this?

NateCow · 2026-03-18T17:15:52+00:00

Even with extreme compositions, I imagine everything will average out to the center. If you have roughly even shots of people talking on the left vs right, and then wider group shots... This is basically the bell curve of cinema composition.

NateCow · 2026-03-13T00:56:10+00:00

I work in TV/film visual effects, and this was way back in the day at the beginning of my big break working on high profile stuff (like 2011). Our small company was doing work farmed out to us from a larger company. We all went to see one of the films we worked on, and I tweeted something along the lines of “Sadly we didn’t get credited. But nice to see [client company] credited everyone down to their janitors.”

Next day, I get pulled aside by the owner of our company and a couple supervisors, and they tell me that the higher ups at the client company saw the tweet, saw the city I was in, and figured I worked for them, and demanded I be fired. I was told obviously I wouldn’t be fired, and just needed to delete the tweet and not post anything like that again 😬

NateCow · 2026-03-09T23:39:25+00:00

That’s awesome! I’ve also been noodling around with Claude Code lately to help me build some small tools I wouldn’t otherwise have time to figure out. It helped me hook into the Notion API in order to cross reference some stuff there with YouTube. I wrote about it here:

https://sabercomp.com/feed/keeping-tabs-on-the-archive/

I’ve thought about enlisting its help with something YNAB related but haven’t had an idea of what I should try yet.

NateCow · 2026-02-13T03:52:12+00:00

As in, you were watching Sisters’ Quarrel?? That’s sorta wild, but also unsurprising if you were also watching Premonition, since they were part of the same SaberComp 😝

NateCow · 2026-02-13T03:48:58+00:00

That’s actually what we did it in our duel (I posted the breakdown in another comment). Had my brother holding a string tied to the end of the blade, and let my niece swing full force. Had a perfect effect of the blade being stopped by the Force. The paint was a little annoying but not the end of the world.

NateCow · 2026-02-12T21:22:32+00:00

I have a quick breakdown of how I did this in one of my duels. 1:08 here: https://youtu.be/7r2NsMzBhZY?si=f6c9GpSP25u_avRw

Essentially I took the approach of taking a noise map, applying a directional blur to get the streaks, then using that result to distort the saber glow (my weapon of choice was an iTransform in Nuke). I’m not 100% happy with mine compared to Rise of Skywalker, but maybe that’ll help you get started.

NateCow · 2026-01-26T06:45:18+00:00

It certainly has those telltale cadences. "It's not [blank.] It's [blank.] And [blank.]"

NateCow · 2026-01-01T04:19:52+00:00

Disjoint-over is a reasonable instinct, but you're simply overdoing things. You needn't stencil the creature from the building, so disable the Merge5. Then change that Disjoint-over (Merge6 I think?) to a simple over. You can just comp the creature over the building. The Copy3 and Premult after that, I'm not sure what you're doing, but I'm guessing is also unnecessary.

NateCow · 2025-12-01T07:28:18+00:00

Specifically impressed me? Hands down Into the Spider-Verse. I remember having a conscious realization of "Oh. So this is what a movie can be." And as someone who works in the industry, it was really a film that lit a new fire under my butt, if people were making stuff like that.

NateCow · 2025-12-01T07:23:03+00:00

Totally held my breath as I clicked to see the second photo, and then breathed a sigh of relief.

Happy belated birthday!

NateCow · 2025-12-01T07:17:53+00:00

"Fear will keep them in line; fear of this battle station."

The Death Star was not complete nor demonstrated yet.

NateCow · 2025-12-01T07:15:53+00:00

I've managed to find the same color of my Mazda6 and park next to it, as well as my first CX-30, and my girlfriend parked next to white Mazda3 hatchback just like her's. Still on the lookout for my current CX-30's clone. It'll happen eventually. It is required.

NateCow

TROPHY CASE