What to think about when setting up an apprenticeship program
Marie Dealessandri
Features Editor
Thursday 19th May 2022
In March, Los Angeles-based visual effects studio Beyond-FX announced a six-week apprenticeship program to help aspiring VFX artists get a foot in the games industry door.
The part-time paid initiative is one example of what companies can do to help diversify the way the games industry finds its talent. It's a topic the GamesIndustry.biz Academy touched upon related to the UK talent pool last year, exploring the links between traditional routes into games and the lack of diversity in the industry at large, and how to fix these issues.
The industry is also currently going through a talent crisis, with a lot of specialised jobs lacking candidates and studios simply not able to hire easily as a result. It's to address these issues that Beyond-FX decided to create its apprenticeship program.
"We're turning down amazing project opportunities almost weekly simply because we don't have any available artists"
"Throughout my entire career, the video games industry has been starved for VFX artists," says studio CEO, Keith Guerrette. "At the same time, trade schools have struggled to create and support curriculums that teach or produce qualified junior artists. I've frequently sat in meetings with schools expressing the challenge, and have found myself thinking 'These graduates are so close... I don't think they need much more to make them hireable'.
"Now that I'm running a VFX production company, I'm seeing this lack of available workforce with even more clarity: we're turning down amazing project opportunities almost weekly simply because we don't have any available artists. Simultaneously, we can't find more artists to hire that wouldn't require weeks of involved training.
"This
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