Comp Lair – The Next Level Leadership Programme for Compositing Leaders

The National Talent Academy for VFX is delighted to offer 6 places on the highly regarded Comp Lair programme starting late April 2026.

The programme takes place online over 14 weeks and is a blend of technical, management, soft skills and strategy approach.

Course Dates & times:

Week starting the 27th April to the end of July 2026

Live sessions once a week - 1.5 hours

On average, participants will spend an additional 5-7 hours a week on study.

Phase 1: Technical Mastery

This first phase is all about refining and sharpening your technique where it matters for career stabilisation, growth, and to get you noticed - fast.

Within just a few weeks, you will gain the level of confidence you’ve been craving and transform the way you approach creative and technical challenges - without losing your focus to “shiny new objects”.

You will start operating from a calm and insightful place, supported by this new level of confidence, naturally inspiring trust from your peers, supervisors, and the teams around you.

As part of this process, you will also explore scripting with TCL and Python, enabling you to create tools, automate tasks, optimise workflows, and build scalable solutions that support both your work and the teams around you.

Phase 2: Management Leadership

Now that you gained a whole new level of technical confidence, it’s time to focus on the area where most projects tend to fail, which leads to repeated frustration: management and leadership.

This is where many experienced artists feel the most frustration. Projects become chaotic, deadlines tighten, and stress builds.

In this phase, you develop from reacting to problems to operating strategically. You will be creating one of the biggest leverage points in your career as we explore both the technical and (more emphatically) the strategic sides of management through Color Management and Project Management, respectively.

You’ll design your own project management system, something you can take with you across studios and projects as your responsibilities grow. 

Phase 3: Mindset, Soft-Skills & Strategy

This is the phase that brings everything together.

Technical mastery and management skills are powerful, but real career progress happens when they are applied with clear strategy and the right mindset.

In this phase we focus on developing the thinking and communication skills that allow you to turn your capabilities into real opportunities.

You’ll reflect on your past experience, identify the key lessons within it, and use that clarity to design a deliberate roadmap for the next stage of your career.

Instead of waiting for opportunities, you begin operating with clear direction and intention. 

Weekly Schedule:

Week 1: Mindset & 2D Space

Week 2: 2D Space

Week 3: ST Maps, Smart Vectors, UV Painting

Week 4: Keying & CG Compositing

Week 5: Linear Algebra for Compositors

Week 6: Normal Pass & Position Pass

Week 7: Particles & Deep Compositing

Week 8: Colour Science

Week 9: TCL

Week 10: Python

Week 11: Python

Week 12: Colour Management

Week 13: Project Management

Week 14: Soft Skills & Strategy

Participant Profile:

The Next Level program is for experienced Compositors and existing Leaders coming from a Compositing background, such as Lead Compositors, Compositing Supervisors, VFX Supervisors, and Compositing HODs.

Open to Irish residents only!

Fee: £400

This initiative is highly subsidised. Places are limited, and while multiple applications from a single company are welcome, offers will depend on the overall volume of applications.

Applications are now closed.

For technical difficulties with the online system, please email Barbara.henkes@nationaltalentacademies.ie

National Talent Academies courses are open to all regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.

Reasonable accommodations: We aim to accommodate all attendees to help ensure they can successfully participate in our programmes.