Jie credits his time at BU with helping to focus his career aspirations on becoming a character artist. Having impressed the team at Motion Picture Company (MPC) with his graduate showreel, he secured a role as a technical animator with the company – specialising in fur and cloth - and went on to contribute to films including The Jungle Book and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Since then, Jie has relocated back to China and transferred his skills to become a 3D artist in the games industry.

He said: “When I was about to finish my undergraduate course in digital media technology, I found my special interest and strength in 3D animation. I made up my mind to take my study in 3D animation further and eventually prepare myself for getting into the VFX industry. Since Bournemouth University is the home of the NCCA, which offers top-rated courses in 3D animation and VFX, I felt it could give me strong connections within the industry and would be a good place to learn practical skills that could be applied to a future career. The best thing from the course was the experience of completing the group and master projects. Through these my professional skills and collaborative abilities significantly improved, which helped me a lot in my career.”

At the end of 2016, Jie made the tough decision to give up the job at MPC to move back to China to be closer to family. A change of focus to the games industry led to a role with Tencent as a 3D artist, responsible for creating character animation and visual effects for video games.

Jie reflects: "I am grateful to BU in helping me to achieve my academic and career goals. Looking back, many things I learned from my degree helped me along the way. These include professional 3D software skills, but also the aesthetic sense I built up during the course. Apart from that, BU offered me an environment to adapt to the workplace, the capability to co-operate with team members and the methodology of problem-solving.

“My advice to other students or graduates is to learn more about the industry before you get into it. Find out what roles match with your skill set and what the requirements are for your ideal job. Then, purposefully build up your skills to match the job and set your area of focus.”