Hi there! My name is Emilie Picard and I was born and raised in Paris, France. I followed an economics & science-centered curriculum in high school but quickly shifted towards digital arts. While I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do with my life at the time, I was absolutely certain I wanted to work in the animation & VFX industry. I first got interested in 3D animation but soon discovered the wonders of rigging and grew... addicted? I often found myself examining every detail of muscle contracting, objects articulating and figures deforming and tried to replicate said movements with setups. That's also about when I started finding ways to automate functions & tasks using python (which I had already studied during high school) and MEL. I also tried exploring different ways of doing by experimenting in 3ds Max or Houdini, searching new and better ways to improve my work. Or just to play around, really. As of right now, I'm finishing my 5th year of studies as a rigging specialist at ARTFX Montpellier. I'm working for three different groups, all presenting different short movies for the end of the year, and I had the opportunity to face new challenges and learn even more as each project is very different from the other. I also got to participate in various projects during my three months long internship last summer, from June to August. I was working in Paris for Mikros Advertising and got to work on different advertising movies, including vehicle-rigging, animals (like a rhino, a horse, but also a cat for which I had to work on muscle transfer from an existing lion setup to the cat setup), human-like characters (in Maya and Unreal) but also various animation tasks. I would say that I'm constantly looking forward to learning new skills, whenever it comes to 3D rigging or scripting, maths or more hobby-like activities like... cooking. Crochet, even! To me, there is always value in getting to know more, no matter the subject. And that is partially why I chose to pursue my studies after I had graduated from my licence at LISAA (1st to 3rd year).