9781422271612

Chapter 1

What Do Visual Effects Artists Do? What Are Visual Effects? When most people hear the term visual effects (VFX), they picture spectacular scenes in summer blockbusters—like when the Avengers faced down Thanos in an all-out battle for the future of the universe in Endgame (2019). And it’s true, whether you’re talking about superheroes or spaceships or dragons, big-budget movies are absolutely dripping with VFX. But there is a lot more to the VFX field than making the Hulk appear big and green. Films and TV shows that look perfectly realistic may, in fact, have a surprising amount of VFX going on behind the scenes. It might seem as though characters are riding on horseback or performing in a crowded arena or simply driving down a highway at sunset . . . but all of those backgrounds may well have been created by VFX artists. Meanwhile, other industries are coming to depend more and more on computer-generated imagery (CGI). Video games, for instance, couldn’t exist without the contribution of VFX

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