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Shannon Wiggins — Director of Placement & Alumni Relations, Gnomon School of Visual Effects

With over 20 years’ experience in the industry, Shannon Wiggins knows how to get employed at the biggest VFX and games studios. Shannon’s early brushes with behind-the-scenes effects from Star Wars influenced her to learn Softimage and Nuke, and work in roto and paint for companies including Digital Domain, ILM and Dreamworks. Today, she heads up placement and alumni relations at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects.

In this podcast, Shannon shares how Gnomon achieves an incredible 97% employment rate for its students, and offers indispensable advice on preparing a winning reel and being ready for the interview process. She also talks about some of the big changes she’s seen over her 10 years at Gnomon — and the skills students need for the VFX of the future. 

Links:

 Gnomon — School of Visual Effects, Games and Animation >

Shannon’s Gnomon presentation on how to land your dream job >


Chapters:

 5:47 Shannon’s motivation for doing VFX

21:02 How Gnomon gets students placements

31:02 Being approached by studios for interns

36:10 Changes since Shannon started at Gnomon

42:50 Developing relationships with alumni

49:37 Gnomon School success stories

52:44 How students render work from home

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About the author

Christopher Nichols

Chris is a CG industry veteran and Director of Chaos Labs. He can also be heard regularly as the host of the CG Garage podcast which attracts 20,000 weekly listeners. With a background in both VFX and Design, Chris has worked for Gensler, Digital Domain, Imageworks and Method Studios. His credits include Maleficent, Oblivion and Tron: Legacy.

Originally published: December 7, 2020.
© Škoda Design

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