Eunice Chen (Ch, 2012)

Next time you watch anything with visual effects, spare a thought for me working behind the scenes programming the software tools for digital artists to make their work more efficient.

As a Lead Pipeline Technical Director for Industrial Light & Magic in my now home city of Sydney, Australia, work is always changing. There is no such thing as a boring day. I work with very talented people who come up with very good ideas and part of my role is to listen, take it in, assess the
feasibility and make it happen. People come to me with their technical problems and I find solutions for them.

There is so much to learn and the technology in this industry is ever changing. Even now I’m learning something new every day and there will always be new software or new technologies that I’ll need to keep up with so that I don’t fall behind. Within this industry, whether you’re on the technical or the creative side, you really have to be open minded, be adaptable and the biggest thing of all, be curious.

One of many highlights is being able to attend premieres of projects we have been involved in. The most recent one I attended was the Sydney Premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023).

Eunice (centre) with colleagues attending the Premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny at the Sydney Film Festival 2023.

When I was at College for A Levels, I would never have dreamt this is what I would do. I left to do an MSci in Physics at Imperial College London and I didn’t know about this industry at all until I was in my second year. At the Physics careers fair, a visual effects studio in London set up a booth to hire software engineers. I was curious.

I put it to the back of my mind but in the same year the film Interstellar was released. Being a Physics student the film was a massive deal. The created visuals were stunning, and I was really impressed by the amount of collaboration between artists and the physicist Kip Thorne. I think that was the turning point for me and I knew, somehow, I wanted to go in a direction where I could merge science and arts.

After I graduated, I decided that I would take a mini gap year (which lasted six months or so) to focus on creating my portfolio to get a job in this industry back home in Malaysia. From there, I got a local job as a technical artist. I learned everything else on the job, moved to Australia, and the rest, as they say, is history.

www.linkedin.com/in/eunicechen1

Eunice (second from right) with colleagues and Star Wars characters at one of Industrial Light & Magic’s annual parties.