Inside Industrial Light & Magic: Career Paths in VFX & Realtime

James Miller is a visual effects artist and independent film Director and Producer, based in Los Angeles, California. Growing up in Hong Kong, gaining his MA at the NFTS in the UK, and having had the opportunity to work and study across the globe, led to him penning the pseudonym VFX Nomad.

During his career he has worked for state-of-the-art companies including Industrial Light & Magic, Dreamworks and Double Negative. This has in turn has led to him working on a plethora of blockbuster-titles including Star Wars, Avengers, How to Train Your Dragon and Black Panther to name a few. 

Currently he can be found supervising the Environment and Generalist departments for Industrial Light and Magic based out of Los Angeles. Outside of his 9 to 5 he is actively involved in the VFX community, creating tutorials, as well being a member of VES and BAFTA. 

His passion is ultimately to create compelling stories using the skills he has honed during his career, and this is channeled into the short films as is now Directing and Producing.

Before working as a senior production engineer at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) on films and TV shows such as the second season of Andor and Tron:Ares, Ihimu was a pipeline developer for ScanlineVFX, where he did pre-visualization and production work on films and television shows such as The Gray Man, Aquaman 2, and Slumberland, The Three Body Problem, and Yu Yu Hakusho. He first got his professional start in visual effects working as a senior software engineer for NextVR, where he helped build the rendering pipeline and graphics engine of the Sony Playstation version of their VR television application.

He has also worked in the avionics field, with over a decade of experience working on in-flight entertainment systems and real-time drone simulation software. Long before all this though, he learned the rudiments programming, animation, and computer graphics as a five year old armed with only a Commodore 64. Outside of work, he paints leather, collects custom movie poster artwork, designs his own costumes and clothing, plays the synth, and enjoys travel to obscure destinations. He is also a voice actor, Unreal Engine fellow, and FAA licensed Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) pilot.

Born in Los Angeles, CA a couple months after the 1992 LA riots, the government calls him Brian, and the more respectful friends call him Panda. Somewhere in between Starfox64 and StarCraft Brood War, he knew he didn't just want to play games, but make them. He went to the University of Southern California for his B.A. in Interactive Media, and has been making video games since 2010. Since then he's done an internship at Blizzard, made games with InXile Entertainment, and even worked on Bitmojis at Snap. Having joined ILM since 2022, he has now found himself doing both modeling and texturing for interactive storytelling experiences and movies/film VFX. In his free time, he plays Scottish Highland Bagpipes, dances afrobeat and house, and watches clown shows.

Kate Gotfredson is a Lead Realtime Technical Artist at ILM. She has worked in virtual production, previs, games, and final vfx since graduating from Loyola Marymount University in 2017. Kate entered the film industry right as virtual production was taking off, and most of her experience was gained on the job. As a technical artist, a big part of her job description is continuing to learn! She is passionate about gender equity and education in the workplace, and advises her team on the best practices for realtime work at ILM. Some of her past credits include The Mandalorian, Ford v Ferrari, and Skeleton Crew.