We recently connected with Mahshid Sadoughi and have shared our conversation below.
Mahshid, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
Pretty much from when I was a teenager. I always loved watching animated movies and when I was in high school, I started learning about the process of filmmaking and visual effects from behind the scenes features and it just fascinated me. I was so inspired and interested to learn more about it. I became so in love with it that I would re-watch my favorite animated films over and over again.
Even though I didn’t go to art school back home, during my undergraduate studies in computer science, I attended many art and animation classes and I did a lot of self-education by reading and watching a lot of behind the scenes. I decided to pursue this more seriously and that’s when I moved to San Francisco and majored in Animation and Visual Effects at Academy of Art University in 2014. I was always very driven and passionate about animation and films, I used to stay until midnight in the school’s lab working on my projects until they would kick us out. That’s how I knew this was the path I want to pursue.
Mahshid, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am a Lead Visualization artist working in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. I have specialized in previs and postvis and have worked on multiple movies, tv shows and commercials. Some of the most known projects I have been a part of are Avengers: Endgame, The Flash, WandaVision and Rebel Moon to name a few. My job is to create cinematic and appealing shots with good composition and camera. And to make sure the characters are staged well and their performance is good. I have always been recognized as someone with a very good eye for detail and an excellent visual memory, which I am very proud of and grateful for because it has helped me succeed in many great projects.
As visualization artists, we have a very important role in the production. We are the first team of artists who bring the vision of the director to the screen. From the script and storyboards that are presented to us, we start creating the environments, the motion of the cameras and character animations in a 3D/virtual space. We give the director and their team the first draft or blueprint of the movie; making us involved in the process pretty much from the start to finish.
Our jobs is very creative and technical and requires a deep understanding of cinema and animation, and many softwares including Adobe, Autodesk and Game Engines.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
To me it’s the ability to be creative and tell stories that can impact the audience, and being able to see your name at the end of the movie credits. Everyone has a different vision and it’s beautiful that we can collectively gather around in a collaborative environment, brainstorm, try different ideas and build something new each time. Sometimes those ideas won’t make it in the end product, but when they do it’s a very rewarding feeling.
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I had known the struggles and challenges of our industry. I was fairly naive fresh out of college and did not expect it to be this hard to make it in the industry. It’s a very competitive field and a it’s constantly evolving so you have to always be prepared to learn and adapt. If you are not passionate and dedicated about it, you will not be able to survive it.
Contact Info:
- Website: imdb.me/mahshids
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/mahshid-sadoughi-y