In this Mentee Showcase Alex Cortes talks about his experience taking the Stylized VFX Mentorship, the projects he worked on with with Marcus Bruzzese and The Mentor Coalition, and his path to becoming a VFX artist at Blizzard working on Hearthstone.

Tell Us About Yourself How did you hear about The Mentor Coalition?

Hello! My name is Alex Cortes, I am a Real-Time Visual Effects Artist that specializes in creating stylized visual effects for games! I heard about the Mentor Coalition from Marcus who is the Mentor for the Stylized VFX Course. I messaged him on Twitter initially asking for advice on breaking into the games industry as a VFX Artist. During this time I was working in simulation as a Tech Artist, but really wanted to get into games specifically creating visual effects. After a bit of time discussing advice and feedback with Marcus he brought up that he does mentorships through Mentor Coalition. It came up at a great time because I felt that I was stagnating in my VFX skills and had no idea how and where to push my skills further, so later on I hit him up on the offer to get a 1:1 VFX mentorship from him and the rest is history from there.

How was the Mentorship experience for you?

It was exciting and nerve-wracking initially haha. It was exciting to work with someone who was very experienced in his craft and I learned a lot from Marcus during the mentorship. He was really nice and patient which helped a lot since I know I had a lot of questions to ask him throughout our time on the mentorship. He was also always open throughout the month to give me feedback on my work and would check in to see how things were going, often showing me new techniques to improve my workflow or hone my artistic eye as well.

Mentorship overview

So the overall goals I wanted to achieve during my mentorship was:

• Improve an old version of an effect I have made (Magic Missiles)

• Revamp an effect entirely from scratch (In this case a portal)

• Overall improve my understanding of colors, textures, and effects creation so I can take my effects and make them stand out.

So we started off learning techniques in photoshop to create varying texture shapes, specifically caustic looking patterns because before then I only knew how to play with some clouds and blur tools but had very limited knowledge beforehand. He would show me how to use all the other functions like minimum, maximum, median, different noise filters and such to create a wide variety of textures and would explain how these shapes can influence the texture and feel of an effect.

From there I really wanted to update my old magic missiles in Unreal as I felt what I had although not bad, could be a lot cooler for a magic infused projectile hurling at the enemy. So what we focused on for that was mostly applying color theory to make elements stand out more while also making they feel cohesive, before they were mostly just pink with some purple color shifts and we shifted that to include more blues and a bright yellow to act as a bright point to better indicate the head of the missile. Afterwards it was all about making the impact feel a lot more, well impactful haha. I added a lot of secondary elements such as sparks, streaks, and smoke to help carry the motion of the missile after it impacted to really sell when it hits the object.

Now for the portal I really wanted to build it from the ground up and give it a great feeling of depth and energy so we started off with a simple taurus-like mesh in Maya and played a ton with the textures and particles on it in Unreal. It went through several phases of just trying to figure out how to make the shapes feel good, and by that I mean making all the different parts of it feel like one cohesive effect.

Early on there were particles and shapes kind of placed whatever felt cool at the time, but then it slowly evolved into having the main center of the portal be the emitter of all this energy and that ended up being the foundation of where all the other elements of the effect would derive from.

From there we played a lot with panning the UVs and distorting them using some soft grayscale masks to give it more motion and energy and then with that it was all timing the formation of the portal and the secondary effects to create this epic moment of the portal forming

What impact did the Mentorships have on your Art Creation / Process / Workflow?

I learned a lot about timing, color theory, and motion and how much just focusing on those elements can really enhance an effect. There were times where I was focusing on just tweaking the colors for hours at a time just to get them to look right whereas before I often just put what I thought looked decent and would move on. Motion and timing ended up being a big factor as well since there used to be a lot of dead time in my effects where not much was happening, so I was really glad to also develop that skill more as well. On top of that being cognizant of how layering multiple particle emitters can help provide a sense of depth to an effect.

How does a Mentorship experience compare to a traditional course or classroom?

It was really cool because I got to focus on areas I know I wanted to improve on. In a class environment subjects are often generalized and most of them will end up reteaching basics you may already be aware of so being able to talk to a professional one and one and say “I want to improve on specifically this” and have them work with me on achieving those goals felt extremely refreshing and felt more like I was in control on what I wanted to learn.

What has your professional work experience been since taking the Mentorship?

I’m actually currently working at Blizzard as an Associate VFX Artist on Hearthstone! Marcus would reach out to me every now and then to check up on how things were going after the mentorship and one day he told me about how Blizzard opened some VFX positions and asked if I was interested in any. I said yes of course, and he ended up referring me to some of the positions, one of them being Hearthstone which I’ve been playing since open beta, so you can say I was a pretty excited to join the team working on a game I myself actually play.

Life Since The Mentorship? Future goals?

I’ve been continuing to hone my skills in other areas recently. VFX is an area I’ve been improving at work, so it’s opened up my free time to try things like concept art and sculpting. Other than that, I have been doing my best to connect with other devs and give advice to those looking to get into the industry, especially if it involves VFX. For the future I think I’m just going to keep focusing on improving myself and my abilities and try to help others grow in achieving their goals.

Would you recommend The Mentorship Coalition?

Oh for sure! I feel like the focused teaching has helped me grown immensely, I especially recommend it if you feel like you have been stagnating in your skillset and are looking for ways to push yourself further beyond your current level.

Mentorships Taken

Alex Cortes took the Stylized VFX Mentorship with Marcus Bruzzese.