Saint John Walker

Saint John Walker is the Programme Leader for postgraduate media at the UK’s University of Hertfordshire and a leading VFX educationalist with over 25 years of experience of teaching and training in the games, animation and VFX industries. 

He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), a Senior Fellow (SFHEA) and a member of the honorary Visual Effects Society, and has chaired London events for them. He is also a member of Siggraph UK. 

Most recently Saint was Dean and Director of Industry Engagement at the UK’s Escape Studios and previous to that he designed, initiated and ran the VFX degree course at Norwich University of the Arts for four years. 

Saint is an active member of Access:VFX, and the convenor, designer and chair of the popular Industry panels at the London International Animation Festival each year (since 2017). Recent work with the Next Gen Skills Academy, FMX (Stuttgart) and the View festival (Torino) saw him chairing and taking part in industry panels as diverse as AI, Animated Documentaries, VFX Careers and Creature FX. He has run portfolio reviews at Turin's View Conference in 2024 and 2025.

Saint is the author of the well-respected Core Skills of VFX Handbook and Student Primer, which in 2025 was re-launched with the support of the UK Screen Alliance, and is now available at www.coreskillsofVFX.com, updated for a new generation of new entrant talent, with over 100 industry contributors.

Saint is now a board member of the Visual Effects Society, and was Panel Lead of the Awards Nominations judges at Industrial Light and Magic.

He was Creative Director for Epic Games’ Summer of Unreal 2021, a four week pan-European course that trained over 800 animation professionals in Unreal Engine. An emphasis on exploring and teaching now technologies saw him leading three training courses in virtual production in 2022 partnering with Mars and Garden Studios. 

Saint has designed and run courses for the National Film and Television School, University of the Arts, and is an external examiner for one of the best animation schools in the world, the Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark. 

In 2026 he was industry advisor for the re-validation of UWLs VFX degree course.

Visual Effects (VFX): In 2025 I updated the Core Skills of VFX and VFX Student Primer handbooks with support from the UK Screen Alliance. The previous edition that I authored in 2017 needed overhaul. A series of Industry Focus Groups were undertaken across the UK with virtual wikis to remotely share the emergent 'chapters'. Over 100 contributors from Industry. The Handbook is freely available here: www.coreskillsofVFX.com

New Animation Workflows: After chairing a series of industry panel sessions at the 2024 and 2025 London international Animation festival with leading global animation companies like Aardman, Nexus, BlinkInk. DNEG animation and Studio AKA, I am leading on the plan to create an illustrated book of the transcripts with the CEOs, Heads of Department, Creative directors and founders, complete with high quality imagery of their work.

The Victory-Foxtrot-Xray-Halo podcast: It’s an occasional series of conversations with people moving the tectonic plates of the VFX and Animation industries and expanding the VFX story. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/vfxhalo