Meet Kevin Shimamoto | Visual Effects Compositor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kevin Shimamoto and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kevin, how has your work-life balance changed over time?

Over the years, my work life balance has taken a dramatic turn for the better. I graduated from The Art Institute of California Los Angeles in 2012. Right out the gates I was hired at Hydraulx. I had a great experience there and was only asked to work a little bit of overtime during a weekend one time in my 6 month stint there if I remember correctly. From there I went to work at a small animation studio called Cosmic Toast Studios. It was while I worked here that my work life balance would be way out of balance. At first, things were fine. I worked a regular 40 hour week, at 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday. But as the studio grew and we started to get work from bigger name clients, things began to take a turn for the worse.

It started out with maybe I’d have to pull an overnight once every other month or so. And when I say overnight, I mean we, the compositing team, which was me and Jorge Zavala along with a few animators, would stay at the studio working all night long and into the next day. In most cases we would go home half way through the next day because we were too exhausted. This means that I wouldn’t see my wife and kid for a day and a half, but the work was done and we would hit our deadline. Looking back, I was just young, inexperienced and thought that this was normal and was kind of a “right of passage” as an artist in the entertainment industry because you always heard stories about people doing it at bigger VFX studios, or animation studios. But the overnights started to become more frequent. I never really thought too much of it at the time. We were fed and given energy drinks or coffee to help get us through the night. The studio had a sister studio called Cinipix and my co worker Jorge and I were brought over here to work on their feature length indie film.

We were both ecstatic at first since it would be our first time working as compositors on a feature film. We were the only two VFX artists to work on the film with the exception of one more that came on late into post production. But at first things were fine, until they weren’t. The regular 8 hour days quickly went out the window and soon became 12 hour days and then eventually turned into multiple overnights in one week. This is where my work life balance truly hit rock bottom. What Jorge and I went through for this project was just absolutely absurd. Again, we were both very green and just inexperienced in the industry and our bosses took advantage of that. But I definitely learned my lesson after that. It wasn’t long after we finished working at Cinipix that I was talking to an editor on another project I was working on with connection to Cosmic Toast that he put things into perspective for me. He told me that yea it may seem cool to pull an all-nighter with your colleagues, but think about the time you’re missing out with your family or friends and think about your pay. He asked if I was hourly or salary. I told him salary and he said that’s even worse because when you work out the math I was getting paid pennies for the amount of hours I was putting in.

So after my time at Cosmic Toast Studios, I’ve made it a priority to make sure I keep a healthy work life balance. There haven’t been too many times where I’ve had to do much overtime at all. Occasionally I’ve had to work a few late nights close to deadlines and I’m ok with that. But it has been nothing like what I went through at Cosmic Toast Studios. And I’m also fortunate enough to be part of a team at Van Dyke VFX where a lot of the employees have families and understand that it’s important to be able to take time out of our days to be there for our kids’ events like school plays, award ceremonies and even vacations. They truly do their best to make it work if you need to step away for a few hours to be there for whatever life event comes your way outside of work. And I love that!

Your work life balance is so important! If you don’t make it a priority, you’ll end up missing out on so much in your personal life. Whether it’s with your family or your friends and it’ll also start to take a toll on your mental health as well. There have been plenty of VFX artists who have stepped away from the industry because of the unrealistic demands it can have on people.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

So I’ve been working as a VFX Compositor for most of my professional career. I did do matchmoving for a brief period of time, but mainly VFX Compositing. I would say that what sets me apart from others would be my determination. I say that for a few reasons.

I would say that what sets me apart from others would be my determination. I say that for a few reasons. I had to pretty much teach myself how to use the industry standard software Nuke. I went to school for Visual Effects, but the school that I went to hadn’t transitioned from using the old industry standard software Shake when I was taking regular classes. It wasn’t until my last couple of quarters there did they decide to switch to Nuke. So I graduated not really knowing how to composite in Nuke. Thankfully I was able to skate by for the first four years of my career with just knowing how to use Adobe After Effects. And yes, After Effects is still used today in VFX, but not as regularly as Nuke is. So after Cosmic Toast Studios closed back in 2016, I was left knowing how to use a rarely used program in VFX making it very hard to get myself into more T.V and feature film work. I spent about a year teaching myself how to use Nuke. I had to do that while raising two boys, finding time with my wife and working a full time job working the graveyard shift to help keep us afloat. But my hard work and dedication paid off when I was hired to work on my first feature film “A Wrinkle In Time”. I was so ecstatic when I got the job, and since then, I’ve been able to find work pretty consistently with the exception of covid. I’ve worked on commercials, music videos, t.v shows, and feature films.

I would have to say that what I’m most proud of recently is having the title of “Lead Compositor” on a project I worked on a couple of years ago. That was a great feeling to have reached that level in my career. Before that I had always just been listed as a compositor in the credits. So that would be the highlight of my career at this point. Throughout my career I have learned so many things. Obviously you need to put forth all of your effort into whatever it is that you want to do with your life. Always keep pushing yourself to do better, or to take on tasks that you’ve never had to tackle before. That’s where you really learn what you’re truly capable of. I’ve also realized that in my profession, I’m almost always networking and making sure that my name and my work gets out there in front of recruiters’ eyes because you never know when you’ll be looking for a new job. Most of the jobs in VFX are project based. But at the end of the day, I’m glad to say that I have a career and not a job.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
There are so many great places to visit in SoCal. Obviously there’s your amusement parks. So I would definitely try to make it out to Disneyland, Knotts, Universal Studios and Magic Mountain. I would also take them down to San Diego and enjoy some great beach weather. A visit to Ventura Harbor for some amazing clam chowder from Andreas would be on the calendar. You also can’t leave out a trip down to Little Tokyo for a delicious bowl of ramen from Daikokuya! That would definitely be a must as well. I would also have to plan a trip to explore the outdoors. I recommend Yosemite, Mammoth and Big Bear just to name a few amazing locations to appreciate nature. That’s about all that comes to mind at the moment. I know it’s a little hectic, but there’s just so much to do when visiting SoCal.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

I would like to give recognition to a few people actually. First would be to two of my instructors at The Art Institute, Rosa Farre and Beau Jansen. I’d like to thank them for not just giving me a passing grade just to get me out the door. I say this because I know that there have been so many people who have gone through The Art Institute and are just thrown out into whatever field they chose when they aren’t quite ready and they don’t end up making it. So thank you to them for taking the time to make sure that my skill level was where it needed to be for me to get my foot in the door right from the get go.

I also want to give a huge shout out to a recruiter who goes by the name of Susan Thurmond O’Neal. After Cosmic Toast Studios shut down, I had a hard time finding work. I was not experienced with the software Nuke, which is the industry standard for compositing. So I had spent almost a year teaching myself how to use Nuke with the limited resources I had available. During this time of self teaching, I had to get a job at an Amazon warehouse working the graveyard shift when my unemployment ran out. But I remember in early 2017, Susan reached out to me after finding me on LinkedIn with a job opportunity which turned out to be working on the Tech Vis and Pre Vis for “A Wrinkle In Time”. So I responded and landed the job. And since then I’ve had consistent work in the industry. But I do believe that if it hadn’t been for her, I would have had a much harder time getting back in the industry if at all. So thank you Susan!

And I would also like to give a shoutout to my boss Dave Van Dyke and my supervisor Matt Wilson. They have both given me the opportunity to work with them for many years now and have continued to bring me back on project after project. Dave has created a great working environment where he treats the artists fairly and with respect. And Matt is a great supervisor who is always willing to help and teach his team new tricks and techniques when he can. I also appreciate their understanding of maintaining a healthy work life balance.

Website: kevinshimamoto.weebly.com

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-shimamoto-6a43bb22/