How the right school helped this FX artist land a credit on ‘Sinners’.
Name: Martin Brattensborg, FX TD
Education: Campus VFX graduate July 2020 (12 Month FX Technical Director Program)
Location: Oslo, Norway
Credits: Sinners, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Last of Us, Season 1 (Emmy Winning team).
Reel: https://www.mbreel.com
Work: Currently working at Storm Studios in Oslo, Norway
Unlike a lot of other people who were inspired to enter the VFX world after seeing an inspirational film on the big screen, Martin’s interest in VFX began at the age of 12. Martin came across a compilation video on YouTube in which someone was creating effects using Adobe After Effects. After seeing the video, Martin was hooked. He consumed every tutorial ferociously and by the time he was 15, Martin was a home-grown 3D artist.
Martin graduated from Kristiania University College with a bachelor’s degree in 3D Graphics in June 2018 and spent almost a year as a 3D modeler and programmer for a small Norwegian company that utilized 3D as a medium to communicate Norwegian history. Although pretty cool, Martin had dreams of creating explosions and cosmic particles for a living.
Before pursuing a degree in 3D, Martin knew he wanted to specialize in FX because he wanted full control, creating his own elements instead of relying on limited online assets. That clarity and passion guided him even before starting university.
Discovery of Campus VFX
During the final year of his bachelor’s degree, Martin knew he wanted a more focused and precise skill. His degree gave him well-rounded skills; from graphics, animation, archviz to programming for games, but nothing like what sparked his love for VFX when he was 12 and watching the YouTube tutorials all those years ago.
He began researching schools with speciality programs. When he found Campus VFX, he knew immediately, watching the demo reels of Campus VFX students on their website and reading about the program, Martin’s search ended. He enrolled in the Effects Technical Director program, and 12 months later, in July of 2020, completed a Diploma in FX TD.
Martin chose to learn on campus which meant living in Vancouver, Canada during his studies.
“I have the fondest memories from my first ever assignment, a procedural geometry project,” he says. “I thrive on learning new skills, and since this was the first project/module of the 12-month program these first few weeks and months is probably where the growth of my skills and understanding of Houdini and FX in general grew the most.”
“Being able to dive in and learn how Houdini and its attribute system work at a fundamental level right from the start was a perfect fit for my learning style. That foundational knowledge, along with the troubleshooting skills I gained from my instructor Patrick, are abilities I’ve relied on every single hour I’ve worked in the industry since graduating.”
Transition to Industry
Immediately after graduation, Martin worked freelance on commercials as a VFX artist while he applied at larger studios across North America and eventually got multiple offers. However, the aftermath of a global pandemic changed the landscape of working visas, circumstances took him back to Oslo and opportunity (together with a solid demo reel and diploma) landed him a job at Storm Studios as a junior FX artist, where he’s been ever since.
Even before graduation, Martin reached out to studios and applied for open positions. He had questions about industry standards, terminology in the job postings and certain questions about work visas. The instructors and administration at Campus VFX were able to answer his questions and helped Martin improve his application submissions.
Contribution to Sinners
Martin was part of the team at Storm Studios that worked on the movie Sinners.
He contributed to multiple shots that required fire or cigarette smoke, but the bulk of his contribution was for the Juke Joint shot, taking the audience from the interior barn to an exterior, night location (watch that shot, above).
The shot, mimicking one seamless camera move, begins and ends with the live-action plate with the actors but the middle, including the travel to rooftop fire, embers, and 3D camera move was all created in CG.
It begins on Sammie playing his guitar and singing. The camera closes in on him and then tilts up and follows his arm to the roof of the barn revealing a hole in the roof, burnt by fire embers floating in space, mimicking stars before the camera comes back down to reveal a different scene, with the same dancers and singers under the stars.
For the burning roof, there were multiple technical and creative challenges that he and the team solved; one was needing to match a practical element of the roof burning.
To do this, Martin started by creating a VDB-based growth solver that married procedural advection with hand animated source geometry, allowing Storm Studios to almost perfectly match the spread of the fire in the plate and easily iterate on and react to notes about timing and layout in real-time.
This growth pattern was used as the base for all other effects, like controlling the fuel for the pyro-sim or the temperature of the corrugated metal roof, which in turn controlled the amount of crumpling the metal would undergo and the strength of the constraints holding the pieces of the roof together. Depending on the intensity of the temperature, the roof would also emit small pieces of embers and sparks that were then advected through the velocity fields of the fire-sim before falling gently down past the camera with another force to keep the embers from going directly into the camera and to keep the view of the burning roof unobstructed.
Another major challenge was the fire itself. The reference plate showed unusual behavior compared to typical gasoline fires. Martin spent considerable time matching it as closely as possible, but this introduced a new issue: the fire appeared hot and pale, yet small. When the camera was near the ground and the fire hadn’t spread much, it looked intimidating. However, from the roof, once it spread wider, it seemed small and non-threatening.
He experimented with timing adjustments, shading tweaks, and expansion changes, but none solved the problem. Ultimately, he reverted to a setup that matched the reference and created several versions by increasing the fuel input. When feedback came from the client-side VFX supervisor and director, they chose the largest version and that’s what ended up in the film.
When working on this shot, and any other, the foundational skills and knowledge Martin learned and developed while studying at Campus VFX has underpinned his ability to troubleshoot issues during production. They have helped daily to solve problems by breaking them down into their most basic components and applying what he learned to move forward.
Advice for New Artists
Campus VFX not only gave Martin a focused discipline with studio-level skills to work, but also confidence in understanding FX and the tools and also knowing that he is part of a team, not a silo, much like any great collaboration. While still a junior, Martin asked lots of questions of his senior counterparts as he was encouraged to do so at school. Shot production is both exhilarating and nerve-racking as a new junior artist. Now, Martin is the mentor and fields questions from juniors who are new to Storm Studios and is just completing his latest project as an FX Lead! He is helping the next generation of passionate VFX artists and holds the lessons that Campus VFX taught him with honour and gratitude for how far his VFX career has come thus far. We can’t wait to see what else this bright talent creates next.
Campus VFX is not just a school with a 20-year award-winning reputation, it’s also known for its trailblazing studio setting-style learning environment; one of the first schools in Vancouver, Canada to specialize exclusively in visual effects training and mimicking a professional studio setting and pipeline for focused instruction.
Campus VFX (formerly Lost Boys Studios) started as an award-winning VFX studio in the 1990s and transitioned into a boutique VFX school in 2006. It became known for its highly focused, hands-on programs in compositing, FX, and lighting, long before these specializations were common in VFX education.
Aligning careers with precision and purpose, Campus VFX knows every student by name and has built a reputation on jump-starting careers for VFX artists.
The next intake is January 2026 for lighting and March 2026 for FX and Compositing. Enrolment is now open. Find out more at campusvfx.com.
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