The Rookies

We are with GridMarkets yet again bringing you some of the most innovative people in the VFX and animation space. I’m Charlie Watson, head of PR and communications at Jellyfish pictures here in London. We're a VFX animation studio and it's my job to steer this ship this evening. The evening in the UK, wherever you are, whatever time zone you're in but for our poor guest it is 1am in the morning, so we're very lucky to have him. We are talking to the amazing Alwyn Hunt, a senior servicing and texture artist and co-founder of The Rookies, which is going to be our main conversation today. The Rookies is a platform for digital artists to get discovered and join a community of like-minded people, but before we get into it with Alwyn we have a couple of presentations from Gridmarkets co-founder and the man who made his webinar possible today Mark Ross, Mark will take us through the power of GridMarkets followed by a short presentation from ben hill from oracle so mark without further ado do you want to tell us a bit more about GridMarkets thanks Charlie I’d be happy to GridMarkets is a provider of cloud rendering and simulation services this chart here shows our pipeline where you download a plugin from us which will allow you then to install a program called envoy which allows you then to submit things to us very seamlessly from whatever 3d software that you are using blender Houdini 4d maya and 3ds max are the are the 3d software that we support the one next to it are the renders that we support so it's very easy to submit from your 3d software and kick off a render of you know one to 100 machines the setup is very simple and you submit as I mentioned directly from your user interface you can use multiple machines and multiple submissions on the CPU side we offer machines from 16 to 96 threads and on the GPU side machines with p100 is up to the 100 options it's a pay as you use pay as you go option so you pay by the machine hour so it's a predictable cost model where you can estimate the number of hours that you will need machine hours you need and you multiply that by a machine hour factor and you can therefore very easily identify what your cost will be we also have put budgeting mechanisms into our offering so if you have a budget threshold that you don't want to exceed you can set that and then we will respect that the platform was built and is supported by artists on a 24x7 basis we have folks all around the world who take care of your submissions and the the platform is secured by the oracle cloud which ben will tell you a bit more about to get started it's pretty easy you go to go to the sign up page there you'll see a create account button which will result in a brief form appearing you enter a few bits of information and that will establish your account once you do that then you download envoy which I mentioned is the tool that allows you to securely upload and download files to our platform it also allows you to monitor your jobs that you've submitted but you download envoy for whether for the version of envoy rather that you're using either for windows Linux or mac once you've downloaded envoy you then install your plugin depending on which 3d software you're using so in this scenario here that I’m showing the plugin for Houdini has been installed when it comes time to submit you after you've worked on your project and you're ready to render it envoy will then be used to gather up your project files and it will submit that to our cloud and it's you know push button easy after you submit you'll get a dashboard which shows the different submissions that you have sent to us and the status of them it will also allow you to control those submissions you can start and stop them if you want to kill them if you need to and from this dashboard you can basically see everything that you have submit to us and the status you can you can interrogate a given submission down to a given frame and see the logs for that frame as well if you need to and then as your frames are completed they are downloaded from our cloud into the folder that you have designated that happens automatically that's it if you're interested in a free trial go to the sign up page use this discount code here 2021 September 14 webinar and you'll get a discount on whatever credits you buy back to you Charlie now the success of a studio as we know is only as good as its security so as mentioned earlier we're going to be hearing from ben hill ben is the director of startups at oracle so please then can you tell us a bit more about yourself and oracle and what it is that you do there yeah thank you so much it's always great to be here talking about OCI and our tireless dedication to security but I totally understand this is simply a primer before The Rookies exciting content so I’ll make it quick so again my name is ben hill I’m the global director in the oracle for startups program we're an accelerator program that provides resources to entrepreneurs to help them launch successful businesses I manage our global cloud architect team and based in Seattle when oracle went about launching our generation 2 cloud offering our approach to security was deliberate and direct we wanted to ensure that it was architected in automated on and best of all free so how do we go about doing this well let's go through some of the basic high points more security by default what does that mean well firstly we designed for isolation we've taken the hypervisor and put it in the network layer so what on earth does this mean well in short the approach separates customer traffic which provides better security and performance and as an added bonus it reduces the risk of hypervisor based attacks also OCI has what's called separation of duties which means oracle admins have no access to a customer's memory space and as it relates to your data and associated storage devices we have full encryption at rest and in motion as well as integrated backups for business continuity and disaster recovery best practices so now let's chat just a little bit about auto detection and remediation capabilities specifically Oracle Cloud Guard and vulnerability scanning services so Oracle Cloud Guard provides comprehensive end-to-end monitoring for cloud environments by continuously collecting and analyzing service configurations audit logs and other information and reporting its fighting as problems based on out-of-the-box security recipes or custom security recipes created by the admin and to complement Oracle Cloud Guard have oracle's vulnerability scanning service which routinely checks hosts for potential vulnerabilities and generates detailed reports with metrics about potential weak points and last but certainly not least most security services are free like multi-factor authentication for user access OCI vault which can be used to store passwords ssh keys and certificates and OCI is open to third-party tools so you can federate I am policies with your organization centralized identity provider as well as s-i-e-m sim systems like Splunk and logarithm via APIs and SDKs so that's all I had quick and quick and short and dirty and to the point so let's get to the exciting stuff thank you ben that was really great thank you so we are here at the main event now I gave a brief overview into who all winners earlier but with a career spanning over 20 years there's a lot more to tell Alwyn started life as a servicing generalist artist racking up incredible credits including two of the hobbit films iron man 3 Tomb Raider Thor: Ragnarök and Alien: Covenant I was working at some of the biggest studios in the world including Weta and NPC Alwyn founded The Rookies in 2009 and we will get to we will be talking about The Rookies in more detail very soon but before we even get to the Alwyn’s lovely face should we have a little look at some of his work that he's done over the years yeah looking back and seeing some of those old films you know takes me back to the London days working at MPC and stuff it just you know I was going down memory lane there for a minute but yeah I feel old when I see that so I guess that comes to my first question like what is your journey what where how have you arrived at what you're doing now I mean you started off as a working artist about your helping budding artists and up-and-coming artists how did that happen yeah well actually no I started off as a chef I actually when I left school I grew up in in the deep south of the south island of New Zealand and you know CGI and computer graphics and 3d wasn't even a thing when I was sort of coming out of education and and really you know there wasn't a huge amount of opportunities growing up in in you know deep south of south island you know I was either going to be a you know a butcher or a farmer or something like that but I actually ended up in the kitchens and trained as a chef and did an apprenticeship and when it moved and I actually moved across to London when I was quite young and ended up working with Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver and all the chefs yeah working in these Michelin star kitchens but then sort of came back to Australia after that but during that journey you know when I look back on that sort of career you know it taught me a lot of things about being able to deal with pressure and you know high pressure situations being able to multitask you know and actually just being able to sort of fend for yourself at quite a young age in a foreign country was you know was it was all experiences and then I sort of came back to Australia after sort of reaching the sort of the pinnacle of cooking back then and and decided to study art fine arts and use my port portfolio to actually get me into art school because I actually specialized as a pastry chef and then got into food sculptures and chocolate and all sorts of things but it was from my food that I got into to fine arts and then studied that for a couple years and really didn't know where I was going with that either you know I was just I knew even in the cooking process it was always about the creative process that I really loved so yeah so I studied that for a couple of years and then that's when you know I sort of got into photography and that's when photoshop and you know sort of photo manipulation through you know photoshop I sort of came onto the scene and now that was the early days of cg and that's when I sort of started seeing some courses and I was like well this is pretty crazy stuff and ended up you know sort of begging and borrowing money so I could do a 3d course and yeah did that for a couple of years and that was one of the first courses that was being you know that was run in Sydney at the time and I really came out of that with nothing you know like it was lecturers were sort of regurgitating information through big textbooks and I didn't even have a demo reel by the end of this two years and you know that kind of you know when I see what's going on and sort of training institutes around the world now some of those sort of you know I guess bad habits of training is still there and we still see students that are really not equipped for industry and I think they you know when you look back at why we created The Rookies and I’m a co-founder so my other co-founder is Andrew McDonald you know these they were the reasons why you know we were just we just needed to create a platform to help young people that were going on this journey of getting into computer graphics I mean that's to start I mean it's one thing thinking of this is something that has to be done and there's one thing the other thing is actually starting that and providing that platform to young people I mean was that was it your own story that inspired you I mean I didn't realize you were a pastry chef working with the likes of Gordon and Jamie I mean that's an incredible there's an incredible story and journey to that path and I guess it's knowing that it's never too late that's something that was that would drive behind you during The Rookies there was a couple of reasons for doing The Rookies and it was during our time in MPC you know in London when I was working at MPC we got approached by one of the universities Bournemouth University actually and they asked us to give you know feedback to final year students and and so we realized that actually you know because there was like this sort of disconnect between students coming out and trying to get into industry and we actually recognized that there was there wasn't anything out there helping people so we created back in the day which was called the cg coach and we had a bunch of mentors that came online it was we had this pretty cool platform and you know it was kind of ahead of its time to be honest but we had this platform where you know mentors would come on and they would critique you know final year students and really introduce them to industry standards and try and lift the level of these students as they were sort of graduating so you know and the other thing that we recognized at that point was that there was a there was quite a few schools around the world that were touting themselves as being the best schools in the world for things like visual effects and games etc. and it was you know when you looked into it it was you know based on some pretty flimsy you know information so we wanted to create a platform as well that you know celebrated schools around the world and students more importantly because you know students are there the sort of the final product of what comes out of these training facilities and so we created at the same time the cg student awards which is now known as The Rookie awards but really the whole idea behind that was to really identify where the best students were coming from and you know being able to celebrate that so there were a few reasons you know when I look back at why we created it it's really changed along the road you know The Rookies has been going for over 10 years and we would like I said we were known as cg coach and cg student awards so it but the you know the underlying message has always been the same it's really about helping young people creative young people get into the industry you know creating opportunities so could you talk a little bit more about what that looks like in the form of The Rookies now what is what does that platform look like and how does it help those students or good students or people who aren't who haven't trained but have just exceptionally talented how do they use The Rookies to amplify themselves yeah there's essentially two main areas to the to The Rookies platform at the moment actually there's a couple of other initiatives that we're working on below the surface but when you look at it from sort of public facing it's essentially a portfolio site right so when people you know when you look at it you think of you know companies like ArtStation or Behance or you know there's you know there's a hundred sort of portfolio sites out there but our uniqueness is that it's only forum students it's not for industry professionals it's only for great you know recent grads and young people trying to get in so you could be a first year you could be even a high school student you know starting to think about it really it's that's our demographic we don't want to you know I guess corrupt the actual portfolio area with industry professionals we want it to be a safe area for young people to be able to start they're building their confidence and you know building their portfolio and getting that sort of global exposure and I guess global network that they need to start as early as possible so the portfolio area once you're on there you know you can be you know participating in in regular contests that we have set up and everything that we do on The Rookies platform is really about trying to help you lift your standards or creating a portfolio piece for you so you can you can do that either through the contest or being active on our discord channel where we have industry professionals in there giving feedback and advice and then the second part of that is The Rookie awards which is what I mentioned before so again this is not about you know you know graduating students or you know students that are sort of finishing up and winning the prizes this is about people that are you know could be first year second year it could be people that are actually teaching themselves you don't actually have to be going through a you know sort of formal training process and this is where you enter into The Rookie awards and you're competing to be you know The Rookie of the year for visual effects or 3d animation or any one of our I think it's 13 categories so we have you know individuals or group or team based projects that people can essentially enter their portfolios into these different categories we're really trying to get students to think about their you know where they want to end up so if you want to be in visual effects then tailoring your demo real specific to that category knowing that you're going to be applying for jobs in you know in visual effects so that's kind of what it looks like on the surface you know and then below that we're currently working on a couple of different initiatives so one is CDA which is certified digital artist so essentially what happens now somebody will go through training they'll you know get their qualification they you know have their portfolio which is really their passport into the industry but there is nothing that's kind of defining the benchmark of what they need to have to be able to kind of confidently start applying for jobs you know so students come out and they're all at various levels around the world depending on where you've trained so CDA is if you think of somebody that studies law they study for four to five years they come out and they still have to pass the bar to say that they're qualified to actually practice law so this is the certified digital artist initiative so essentially we're working with all the top studios around the world to collect data about what they see as being the core competencies for people getting into visual effects if you want to be a modeling artist or a texturing artist and so forth so collecting all that data then cross you know checking it to come out with the core competencies so that people that have trained can then self-certify themselves to know that they've you know got the information and the the tools to be able to confidently apply for jobs and positions so that's yeah something that we're currently working on at the moment and for both visual effects and animation and games that's you know coming working from a studio and knowing how difficult it is actually I mean we were just having a conversation today about hiring younger talent and wanting to bring them on slightly earlier in the project so we can train them up and get them on like a decent project but finding those people and fighting you know who are ready for the workforce you know that's really difficult as well coming you know just being ready to work you might be amazing artists but you know working with people so that's that's I mean that's an amazing initiative that you're working on I mean how is it how do you engage how do you get studios on board like I would imagine you know with getting the students and getting people engaged with The Rookies is easy but it's not easy but you know that's people are eager and hungry to do that but it's I guess yeah the studio is slightly different yeah it's a good question and I think you know and it's to your point Charlie is that industry recognizes that we need this you know we need some sort of benchmark to be able to you know not only help students but had to help schools so they have a blueprint of like what they need to be teaching and also for you know for studios to know that they when they see that certification badge that they can go okay cool I know they're at this level automatically so you're not wasting you know your time sort of filtering through you know thousands of demo reels you know which are not hitting the mark whatsoever right so there's a few but you know there's quite a few benefits with that so when you talk to studios about that and knowing that you know it's not being run by a studio which you know studios have tried to do this before but there's always been you know not on purpose but there's been biased shifts towards whether it's proprietary software or their way of training or for whatever reason so the fact that you know The Rookies is doing it kind of a standalone organization that's just really you know the gatekeeper of this information and we can you know work with all our studio partners so just take a step back through The Rookie awards we also create opportunities with studio partners right so they come on board they say hey you know what we've got an internship program or a entry level positions that we're looking for so as part of the prizes students can actually win these you know career opportunities we call them and they can be you know like I said internships placements mentorships workshop whatever it is so we already have a fantastic I guess network you know network of studio sponsors that we have on board so you know we've built 10 years of trust with all these studios they know that The Rookie awards is the central place for finding young talent like we had you know over 4 000 students that entered this year into The Rookie awards and we get we attract the best students in the world like with you know that's just with without a question you know we each year it's the most amazing talent you've ever seen so you know to have that talent pool that we're then able to give back to studios you know we've garnered that trust so you know for us it's been really easy to get studios on board to contribute to CDA that sounds brilliant I mean we've spoken or you've spoken very highly of your students so I think it's about time we have a look at some of their work if you want to share your screen again with audio with audio yeah that's it let's go so this is just this is a bit of a a promo video that we created at the end of The Rookie awards this year so this will just take you through some of the entry so one thing to to note remember that this is all student work so let's just play this so yeah that's just that guitar riff was doing my head and it's yeah that's quite long that I haven't I forgot how long it was but it really gives a good idea of all the different categories and just the talent behind each of those categories and it really means a lot to these kids to actually you know get these badges and win these prior you know not so much the prizes but it's more the accolade you know like studios you know when they recognize the fact that these kids have either got into the finals or placed in The Rookie awards it actually holds a lot of a lot of weight for them and it's we've had some incredible stories over the years of you know a young you know young kids that were kind of just you know hidden away in various countries that you know we exposed and showed and now have gone on and are absolute rock stars in the industry you know one story comes to mind of this the South Korean kid that was pretty much giving up on the industry and ended up going across to la he'd spent all his money for this one course I think was at no men in la and he entered in and it was kind of his last big shot at trying to break into the industry it changed from visual effects to games and he ended up winning an internship to epic games and you know he's been there I think for like seven years or something like that now and he's like an absolute rock star there but you know it completely changed his his journey from entering and he was he was actually he wasn't even the winner because the winner had actually got a job up you know after we had already you know announced or before we had announced it so he was kind of about third on the list and you know the opportunity came about and it changed his life you know and that's just one of you know thousands of stories that we've had you know I’ve got I mean that's amazing I mean are there who you know you speak about yourself from the founder but who are who else is behind The Rookies who is it who judges the awards you know what does your team look like yeah I mean we're pretty nimble like me and Maka who Andrew who's the other co-founder you know we've been two for a long time and you know in the last and to be honest Charlie you know the rook The Rookies was really a bit of a side hustle you know while I was working in visual effects it was always just one of those sort of pet projects that happened on the side and it really sort of gained momentum and then about five years ago when we rebranded to become known as The Rookies you know we went full time on it and Andrew's you know Andrew's been full time on its you know since then so and since then we've you know employed we've got a social media person we've got a full-time you know web developer we've got we've just recently employed somebody from for education so there's another initiative that we're working on which I’ll talk about in a minute but yeah we're sort of expanding out the team now and you know really for us you know the business model you know was always about advertising you know obviously we get lots of sponsors that come on board and you know they want to have influence to this young demographic to be able to you know either use their software or hardware for whatever reasons so they come on and they pay for a sponsorship package to be part of The Rookie awards so it's really it's you know it's not a model that I love because it changes you know every year and you know for us we've been lucky because obviously there haven't been a lot of events or live conferences so companies are looking for more you know online events which is what The Rookie awards is right so we've been we've been lucky through this covert time but I forgot what your question was then when I was answering it but yeah I think you know yeah I forgot what your question was Charlie the question was about people but you went in it was a good segue it was about people into the business model and hiring and growing which is really good to hear that you've been you've been able to do that and like say you know not benefited from Covid but it's worked you know it didn't affect it negatively which is so important especially because you know our young artists now are when they're joining the industry is completely different you know they're working from home most of the time they're not getting that one-on-one mentorship with VFX supervisors I mean have you is that something you offer is that you do the students that you work with do they come to you for advice as part of The Rookies when about that sort of thing yeah actually I’ll just go back to your last question because you asked about the judges so we have you know as the we have this year we had I think over 150 industry professionals that were part of the judging panel so part of the platform so when we invested in The Rookies platform we built a whole judging system that sits behind that so judges get on board and they can you know they've got a whole judging system so and it's you know obviously we've got that 10 years of history so it's a really slick well-oiled machine and it needs to be when you've got over 4 000 entries right so yeah so it's the you know like the industry supports The Rookies you know they like I said 150 and it's the who's who of the visual effects games architectural visualization concept art world you know all these people are at the top of their game and they're part of the judging panel so we have a whole two-tier judging system set up for that so that's answering a question about the judges which you know we can't thank enough and then the next question which I just forgot because I keep which is it was it was about what the industry is like oh yeah yeah so in terms of like helping young people you know obviously the platform which we do we're able to do that you know because we have to you know it needs to be scalable right so we can't be giving demo real reviews at an individual level you know so we you know you having a discord server and being able to help people through there and really when you look at the sort of the ecosystem of The Rookies they come on early you know they go through the sort of you know the diff because when you come onto the platform there's various levels that you are a user type so you could be an absolute novice which is what we call our debuts right through to a The Rookie which is somebody that's graduated they're a year outside of their graduation studies maybe they're still working on their demo reel but they still don't really have a full-time position so in between that and we have two other levels that they that you can be so so we support them on that and then you know they go through The Rookie awards we create career opportunities they come back you know they do they succeed they come back as a judge they give feedback to you know the next generation so there's this sort of beautiful cycle that happens and you know they're doing it for you know they when industry professionals get to a level and it's like me you know I get to a point where I want to give back and I know the struggles we've been through it before you know and at the moment you know even though that it's a golden period for people students to be getting into the industry there is that flip side which is the covert right so you know when you look at the industry we've got streaming happening we've got you know I just work for adobe as well and I see all these new industries and verticals that are now developing 3d pipelines and there's a real shortage of talent right you mentioned it before everyone's screaming out for talent all these projects are being green lit at the moment there's so much work on around the world studios just can't find the talent so you've got this golden period and then you've got all these students that's stuck at home that are not forming relationships in an industry and you know in a studio environment or sorry even in a classroom environment right and these people you know that you're forming these relationships when you get into the industry and you move through the ranks you know these are your friends that are you know that now you know either heads of department or you're here to running studios for me so you're missing out on some of these really crucial networking connections and they're struggling you know they're not able to ask their classmates how do you do this it's the same as people working you know at home instead of in studios that sort of one-on-one is being broken down and not happening and you know I think we all thought it was fun at the start and some people can do it and some people just you know struggle really with working you know in silo so that's it's a really it's a really interesting time right now for students and for industries I’m just going to mention to our lovely attendees that we're 15 minutes out before closing so if you do have any questions please send them through and we'll get them asked and answered for you I do already have one or when what do students who have gone on to be successful in the industry have in common yeah it's a great question I think you know when we look at a top tier and those students that have gone on to succeed and I think you know when I look back on my journey and it's about it's about resilience and it's about it's about knowing that you know you can be the best artist in the world but if it's not the right time then you know a studio is not going to pick you up although they probably would now because of so much work but you know there's a lot of things that are in play and I think you know when you look at the most successful students not only they might be technically good and they're not even they might not even be the best technical artist but it's you know there's a lot of soft skills and a lot of other things that make up a fabric of somebody that is successful right so you know being able to communicate being able to work in a team all this stuff that we've heard about before is is paramount and I think you know when you look at that stuff it's more important that almost the technical and you know the I guess you know your demo reel in some ways your demo reel is really just to get your foot in the door it's really just to you know ask for that interview and then you know you've got all these other things that come into play but it's it's somebody that's really well-rounded so somebody that can do all these you know things that we've talked about like we're being able to work together in a team being able to communicate being able to I guess you know troubleshoot problem solve there's all these little things that really go up go into somebody that's a really well rounded and grounded artist and somebody that's willing to listen take on feedback not take it personally you know a lot of a lot of students just get offended when they're told you know their work it probably isn't at the level that it needs to be there's a lot of a lot of little small nuances that you know go on to being a good I guess you know entry level junior artist good answer no I think and that I guess goes back to what we were saying before those social skills and learning to work and be resilient and not just be in your own silo in the head and think I’m the best in the world and you know I think that all affects and contributes to just being able to work as part of a team and just actually have a bit of thick skin and being able to take on that criticism and just push yourself be better which is really hard right because you know when you're at school you know that's when you're actually learning a lot of these skills and that's not happening at the moment so yeah it makes it difficult for students trying to get in I think you know if there's advice that I would give to students that are at home now you know get involved in you know there's so much so many webinars and live event you know you know not live but you know events that are happening you know be part of it don't be scared to you know talk during these and ask questions and get involved because really you know again you're just trying to practice your communication skills and you know being prepared when you're going into these webinars having questions you know these little things can help you know when you do get to you know a physical you know a live you know where you can actually go to a live event well I mean that was always the advice wasn't it to students or people trying to get into the industry would just go towards me there's always networking events on there's always you know see graph the local chapters or access the effects whoever it is they're holding events so go to them and meet people and you will you know that way you also practical networking skills but networking's different now whether we like it or not it's probably going to be like this and which is which is more difficult you know often you just kind of sit around and everyone's silent but it's just going about putting yourself out there and going to those events and learning how to communicate this way now because that is so I’ll put a question back to you Charlie in terms of you know jellyfish and that with the recruits here like how are students you know best able to connect with recruiters now if they're not able to do it at you know events like Siggraph or FMX or these you know sort of more physical events like what's is there any you know sort of I guess tricks to for students being able to contact you know like is it through LinkedIn is it just nice messaging through you know that way like what's how do they approach recruiters now I mean so we still do a lot of I mean and those events still are doing virtual you know it's just which we will take a virtual recruitment stand and talk to people I mean I don't work directly in hr so they'll be able to answer that question better but definitely and because of what we were talking about with that just the need the honey we need talent everyone needs talent so being proactive is the way forward you know if you're looking at mid to senior artists they're already going to be out there you might have heard their names people will be talking about them if you're a student we're not going to know to look for you so you've got to be proactive LinkedIn you know our recruiters live on LinkedIn they're constantly they're looking like looking for a mind of talent so I’d say LinkedIn is really important go on to the careers pages and often or not I mean jellyfish certainly there is a speculative application which seems like I’m just going to send it off and no one will look at it but they really do we know and they'll you know our talent managers and recruiters will go to that pool when we're looking for a a candidate they will go to those people that have already entered yeah it's just it's like I said as difficult as it is it's attending those online events I mean we'll be at Manchester animation festival this year we'll probably be at view although that's a hybrid event it's going to be and so we're still going and studios are still going to those events so it's just putting yourself out there but in a virtual way I suppose if that helps we've got another question when you first started looking at the standards of education were there any schools or programs that stood out to you good or bad yeah I mean each year because of the data that we collect from The Rookie awards we're able to then release our global school rankings and you know like I said everybody that enters into The Rookie awards I didn't actually say this but I’m going to say now but everyone that enters into The Rookie awards actually gets a ranking so it doesn't matter if you're a first year student or a great recent graduate every single person gets a ranking which essentially puts a score against their name so all that data is then collected and then we're able to go okay cool this school here on average scored da da da da whatever it is so our global school rankings you know we've been told probably the truest form of global rankings around the world there's a lot of other different ones but we don't take any money for our school rankings it's completely you know independent of myself and Andrew our you know our industry professionals are the ones that are judging these people so a good place to look is you know our global school rankings which is on our on our website at the top if you go up the top there's a discover button and then inside there there's schools and it has school rankings and we're in the middle of actually about where you're about to release this year's school rankings on the on the 29th of this month so yeah I’ve actually seen the results for this year which is you know which is always interesting to see which schools come out on top and it changes you know based on lecturers moving around and the quality of courses and so forth so it's a really it's a really good indicator of where a school's at any given year so if you're looking at a looking for a training facility then I recommend looking at our global school rankings yeah I was going to ask about do you see much of a change in in the rankings does it ever change drastically was it more or less the same yeah I mean again it's it's it's it's independent of the school and how much they get on board with it sometimes you know we have schools that include The Rookie awards into their syllabus so that means that you know they have to create a portfolio they have to enter into The Rookies so there's really good support behind it and you'll get some really good schools that you know students are either off when they've got jobs so it depends on depends on how much students actually participate in it but again like I said you know we know we've seen schools drop right off and that's been based off you know really good lecturers that have left and the quality of the courses have dropped so yeah we do see big shifts but there are there are a few schools that are consistently good every year you know and you can look at the archives and go back and see past rankings to see which schools they are but yeah we do we do get certain schools that just do amazing jobs and I think when we look at those ones they have really good ties to the industry so there's really good industry mentors that come in they're always up to date with techniques and software and hardware and making sure that they you know and obviously getting advice from industry about what they should be teaching so yeah there's usually a common thread with those schools that do really well okay I’ve got one final question and then we're going to have to wrap it up but how far off is a certified digital artist concept away from becoming a reality so I think honestly I think that's going to be so useful and a game changer for industry yeah I like I said we're deep in it right now so we're hoping to have that sort of by the end of this year so yeah so we're like we're going through all that right now that's a lot of my time right now and I’ll just quit yeah quickly mention one other initiative that we're working on is actually because we do focus you know when you look at The Rookie awards it's really the shining light at the top of it right so that's you go through and you know you're winning The Rookie of the year and all the accolades at that talking but we feel that we you know we need to go earlier to help you know younger people make good decisions before they even start getting into you know choosing schools so we're first focusing on another initiative which is about around high school students and creating sort of course content down that end to really help them you know start understanding you know the some of these creative industries that are going to be the jobs of the future right so there's a bit of a disconnect happening down that end as well so we really want to be able to work with schools and to find some pro key programs to be able to set them up so that when they do start thinking about games and visual effects they're not stumbling into our industry which is kind of what happens now somebody you know just stumbles into it so and you know I’ve got kids and I really you know do worry about the institute not training them to and you know not giving them the right sort of tools to be able to start critically thinking about you know some of these future jobs yeah that's super important I think you know as a whole industry studios games architecture whatever you know it's so important to go and go into schools and also into you know into neighborhoods which may be traditionally you know wouldn't you know underprivileged families or however I mean we work in Brixton in London which you know a lot of the families here wouldn't ever think that this was an option for their children and that's something we're trying to change a lot yeah that's awesome so I mean I could just carry on talking to you forever I’m sure I will do after this webinar but thank you so much forum for joining us it's been absolutely fantastic and insightful when you are doing such a great thing for for the industry for students and for everyone brilliant thank you so much Alwyn thank you for inviting us on and I’ll just I’ll just give a plug to mark and GridMarkets thank you so much for inviting us on for this webinar I was yeah we've got this actually I’ll share my screen just quickly because we're doing this this contest and I was going to show you what we're doing can everyone see that screen so we do it we're actually doing this little cool we've created this little cool character that we're going to do for an animation challenge forum for The Rookies and yes I was I was rendering this out and I was like oh this is going to kill me with the groom and all the rest of it and I gave you know gave a shout out to mark and I was like mate I want to I want to test out GridMarkets and I’ve got to say that the actual process of setting it up was pretty straightforward and once you gave me that little tip about going through envoy and stuff GridMarkets works like a treat so I’ve got this on your render farm now smashing it smashing it hard but yeah definitely worth you know and I think you know this this is the future as well even from a student's perspective it's like you know trying to render this stuff on your at home and not having options it's really frustrating so technology like this is the future and yeah I look forward to watching the progress of GridMarkets oh great thanks Alwyn I bet that's a brilliant plug mark you can slip me that 50 lighter mark so well thank you at six o'clock although we were three minutes late starting but thank you everyone for joining I’m sure you found it as fascinating as I have and please check out the reviews our next webinar as being on your screen right now is with Deborah Isaac from the Houdini School (houdini.school) it's the 21st of October please do come join and find out what that's all about we if you want to be watch this recording because why wouldn't you it will be on GridMarkets website www.gridmarkets.com forward slash webinars and if you want your free trial with You've got the promo code there 14 webinar so it's six o'clock we haven't overrun thank you everyone for joining and I look forward to seeing you at the next one bye.