VFX Pros at Home: Matt Leonard2020-06-25T13:06:52-07:00

Matt Leonard works for Industrial Light and Magic as a VFX Trainer focusing on the Generalist, Environments and Creature Dev teams, along-with the wider needs of the studio.

He has been in the VFX industry for the 27 years having started out using 3D Studio (DOS) back in 1993. For the first 13 years of his career Matt worked initially as an Animator using 3D Studio, Softimage | 3D and Maya, before moving into a more Generalist role.

From 2006 – 2015 he ran a small company offering bespoke VFX training to artists and companies such as Framestore, Dreamworks, Ghost VFX, and many others. During this time he closely with the Foundry and FXPHD producing and running their Nuke Accreditation program, he was also the first trainer to train both Katana and Arnold internationally, he co-wrote a Masters Degree in VFX for the University of South Wales, and recorded over 290 training videos for fxphd.com.

In 2015 Matt moved with his wife and three kids to Vancouver where he initially worked for MPC as their lighting and rendering trainer before taking the role of VFX Trainer at ILM.