The call of Hollywood is loud for would-be special effects artists from all over the world. Industry veteran-turned-educator Stephen Lohan however wants to change this. Lohan's vision is to turn Ireland into a new global centre for special effects creativity by providing young artists with top-drawer training from some of the best in the business.
Lohan has worked in the field of VFX (visual effects) for the last 20 years. In 2013 he set up Image Ireland, a dedicated VFX studio based in Dublin.
This month he is taking another step with the launch of an online training academy that will bring some of today’s most influential visual effects artists together to run online workshops and mentor promising students.
“The existing education model for VFX in Ireland is underwhelming,” he says. “As recently as 2011, a report by Screen Producers Ireland showed that 89 per cent of studios would not employ Irish students. The net result was that Ireland started falling behind in its ability to gain the trust of movie producers.
“Studios didn’t and still don’t have enough Irish talent to complete complex VFX shots. I saw an opportunity to change both the training model and the distribution model for VFX content creation and to bring the two worlds together in one studio.”
It has taken Lohan two years to put the online academy in place and has cost him about €250,000. On top of this, he has spent hours building his panel of tutors and industry professionals. In the last two years, Lohan has also been working on developing an MA in Applied Visual FX and is in talks with two institutions keen to run his course.
“My vision is that VFX students and artists shouldn’t have to look to Hollywood for employment. Instead I want to create an indigenous community of formally educated VFX artists that will create a stable industry base for them here.”
Lohan is a strong believer in giving young talent a chance and is pricing his training accordingly. “We want talent to prevail and do not want to lose it to an inability to afford massive fees,” he says. The academy is adopting a subscription-based approach and annual membership will be about €350. Students can also pay monthly.
One of Lohan’s main aims this year is to create and produce a piece of original content using academy students as the VFX post-production team. To do this he is establishing an incubation hub that members will be invited to join based on their experience and skills. Students chosen to work on the first production will receive a tuition scholarship to the value of €10,000.
Lohan has lined up a roll call of international artistic talent to train his students, including Iain McCaig, one of the principal designers on Star Wars. Other tutors include Justin Fields, Glen Southern and Antony Ward, whose credits include Jupiter Ascending, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and The Wolverine.
“It is our intention to train artists to develop their own content and to tell their own stories,” Lohan says. “Distribution of this content is key and Image Ireland is currently developing a model to do this.”
Lohan says that everyone is a potential VFX artist. “It is a common misconception that visual effects is for artists only. This could not be further from the truth. Some of the best global VFX artists working today have come from areas such as industrial design, architecture and computer science.”
As VFX is a global business, Lohan expects the academy to attract talent from around the world. He believes his academy’s real-time mentoring and the reinvestment of membership revenues to fund content creation, will be a big draw for potential students.
