Epic Games launches Unreal Fellowship for cinema, VFX and animation professionals

Epic Games now accepts applications to curate a new educational initiative: Unreal Fellowship. This four-week intensive blended learning experience is designed to help film, animation and VFX professionals learn Unreal Engine, understand the state of the art in virtual production, and be able to create new opportunities with technologies and techniques at the forefront of emerging real-time manufacturing sectors.

Applications are open until Monday 27 July on unrealengine.com/fellowship.

Conducted entirely remotely, the Unreal Fellowship will accept 50 Fellows and begin with an orientation day on Friday August 21st, with lessons ranging from Monday August 24th to Monday September 21st. All learning tools are completely free and Epic will provide each participant with a stipend of $ 10.000 to ensure they can spend a lot of time successfully completing the rigorous curriculum.

The Unreal Fellowship builds on existing Unreal Online Learning courses for core skills and also offers 22 hours of dedicated live training, weekly guest lectures from industry leaders, weekly mentoring meetings, open "office hours" with a live trainer and a dedicated Slack channel for communication and questions and answers. With an estimated 94 hours of content along with project-based work over the course of the four-week program, Fellows will focus on learning Unreal Engine fundamentals, model ingestion, animation, mocap integration, on lookdev, lighting systems and cinematic storytelling. The curriculum was developed earlier this year through a 15-member pilot program.

“Technology can only be a great democrat if it is available for free and authorizes the people who use it. Epic not only has the first, but with its Fellowship program, it has taken an active path to bring professionals and luminaries into their ecosystem. This is proof of something more than a passive interest in the Hollywood community, but an active positive force towards important narratives and changes, "said Daniel Gregoire, owner and president of Halon Entertainment.

“At Epic, we have always believed in the transformative power of real-time computer graphics for film and television production,” said Kim Libreri, CTO of Epic Games. "With the Unreal Fellowship we are actively investing in visionaries who will be responsible for making the stories of tomorrow to ensure they are armed with a deep understanding of the many ways real-time technology can benefit their projects."

The Los Angeles-based Epic team is driving the live training and real-time collaborative components of the Fellowship. At least five years of experience in commercial film and television production, immersive entertainment or game development are required, as well as the ability to engage full-time in the Fellowship for four weeks.

For more information, visit unrealengine.com/fellowship.