1- After assessing, mentoring, and supervising over 70 MA Visual Effects students in the past 2.5 years, I have observed that their submissions focus mainly on producing final videos showcasing technical abilities (hard skills), while overlooking VFX-related soft skills. This gap is evident in shallow reflective blogs, imbalanced participation in collaborative groups, vague and impersonal critical appraisals, and sometimes inferior quality of final videos.
2- I believe that training particularly female students to adopt STEM-oriented mindsets will equip them with lifelong tools to compete in a predominantly white, male-dominated industry. Developing STEM-related soft skills will ultimately promote inclusivity and create equal opportunities, especially for women who remain underrepresented in the VFX sector. These skills are essential for survival in a highly competitive and unstable industry.
3- There is a common misconception that technical skills alone secure employment in animation and VFX. When students prepare their CVs in the final term, they often struggle to identify and articulate their soft skills because they were never trained to recognize or develop them. By fostering metacognitive awareness of soft skills early on, students will gain confidence and improve their employability.
4- Students generally have limited understanding of what soft skills are. When asked what they need to improve, they often cite the same examples—communication and time management—without deeper reflection.
They lack metacognitive ability to identify other soft skills and rarely take active steps to improve them. Instead, these skills are treated as vague explanations for failure rather than as areas for intentional development.
Students fail to see soft and hard skills as complementary tools for becoming successful VFX artists. In their critical self-appraisals, it is clear that they struggle to articulate which skills contributed to their successes or failures. They typically attribute issues to lack of time, disorganization, technical problems, or insufficient software knowledge, while overlooking STEM-related soft skills that are vital in the VFX industry.