Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, an advanced real-time 3D tool, today announced the second edition of The Women Creators Programme. The initiative, in partnership with
Open Air Films, ASIFA India and Perforce Software, will provide women producers and VFX
professionals across India and Southeast Asia with a paid six-week virtual training and mentoring programme. It is aimed at equipping the next generation of real-time animators with in-depth training, with a particular focus on inspiring and empowering women creators in India and Southeast Asia, both one of the fastest-growing artist hubs in the world.
The program, which started on 16 May 2022, saw 21 women from over 178 applications across the Southeast Asia and Indian subcontinent selected to be mentored by former Unreal fellowship graduates, along with Unreal Engine evangelists. Finalists include Singaporean Digital Creative Director Jessica Tan, Malaysian Visual Effects Artist Zubaida Nila, as well as Indonesian Producer Ellen Xie.
Phase 1 of the programme will end with a pre-visualization demo and evaluation, which will see the top 10 creators moving into phase 2 of the program, where they will proceed with final training and assessment on 7 July.
The Women Creators Programme 2022 builds on the success of the 2021 edition, which saw 20 budding women artists from India undergoing one-on-one mentoring and virtual workshops. Over four weeks, they learned the latest techniques in real-time world building, lighting, sequencing, and virtual production using cloud-driven virtual machines—which resulted in amazing short films.
“After the success of the Women Creators Programme 2021 edition, we are all set to scale up the programme,”
“It is our pleasure to interact and onboard some of the finest upcoming talents in the VFX community today. We are hopeful that the creators will be inspired by the programme, and we are looking forward to seeing some promising plans over the next few weeks.”
Shruti Verma, Business Lead – India and Southeast Asia, Epic Games
The workshop training will cover relevant themes such as Animation and DCC workflows, World Building and Terrain Tools, Lighting and Post Processing, Material Editor, Sequence, Livelink and Blueprints.
“We are thrilled to be back with the second edition of Women Creators Programme for the immensely talented women creators’ community in India,”
“This immersive programme for women creators does not only restrict to VFX supervisors but extends support to creative storytellers, producers, and animators to learn and adopt virtual production. We welcome all the wonder women with exceptional creative talents on this journey of professionally upskilling themselves with Unreal Engine.”
Arvind Neelakantan, Tech Evangelist – India and Southeast Asia, Epic Games
“Virtual Production is the future of storytelling. We are excited to partner with Epic to help these amazing women learn the tools needed to stay on the leading edge.”
Katie Cole – Virtual Production Evangelist, Perforce
Unreal Engine has been adopted by over 11 million users globally, across both game design and enterprise sectors. Epic’s vision puts creators first and pledges to enable all creators and developers to deliver stunning real-time content and experiences through the industry-proven Unreal Engine, which has been used in production sets such as Marvel Heroes, WestWorld, Gilgamesh.
