Last semester I looked into the job of a Technical Artist, I thought it would only be fair to research into the role of a visual effects artist, particularly focusing on environments and effects similar to the ones I’m looking to create.
The career of a visual effects artist is reasonably well known as it they are often known for long working hours when it comes to meeting deadlines. There are also many smaller studios which take on freelance VFX artists and employ their own. Multiple visual effects studios might often be hired to work on the same film at one time.
There are a huge number of visual effects breakdowns, but this video containing work from Marco Lozzi was very interesting to see the wide variety of the types of shots a VFX artist might work on. I was often pleasantly surprised to see the number of real life locations that included CGI composited into the background.
A huge part of VFX particularly in environments is trying to keep the additions consistent with both lighting but also texture. With the advent of High Definition movies, there were a good few years during the early 2000s where CGI was very noticeable because it stood out from surrounding textures. A good VFX artist understands and aims to try and keep the consistency between the CGI and live action shots.
I also found a nice Visual Effects pipeline of how VFX fits in within a film’s production schedule: http://www.andrew-whitehurst.net/pipeline.html