Image Engine, a partner in Vancouver’s RenderCloud remote server farm, is launching a new facility to carry out rotoscope and camera track work.

The goal is giving local graduates entry-level jobs that would otherwise go overseas to India or China to build up a skilled workforce for Vancouver.

And that in turn should enable Vancouver to better challenge the UK, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand to snag visual effects work on Hollywood movies.

Image Engine CEO Greg Holmes said the digital studio is acting proactively to train and sustain Vancouver’s next generation of artists.

“There is a very real pressure for all of the studios in Vancouver to expand significantly in order to meet increasing demand for work in the region,” he added.

Graduating students from Vancouver media schools  account for around 70% of job hire’s at Image Engine’s new studio, which is at work on Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium feature and Universal’s sci-fi action movie R.I.P.D.

At the same time, Vancouver faces the challenge of retaining young graduates that often head to Los Angeles and London for better-paying jobs on the next Tron or Avatar blockbuster.

So the new facility at the Centre for Digital Media, to open on April 5, will hand work on labour-intensive rotoscoping, where artists manually prepare film plates for compositing, and camera-tracking for Image Engine’s movie slate, to local graduates.

Head of Studio Jason Dowdeswell argued the new facility will build up the city’s senior artist pool and enable foreign producers to more fully exploit digital production incentives available for work completed by local labour.

Photo: vancouverfilmschool / Flickr Creative Commons