BECOME MORE
TECHNICAL
20 Weeks of Focused Training for artists
Train directly with an Unreal Gold Authorized Instructor.
Designed for artists who want to understand the technology behind their craft and take it to the next level.
Learn Shaders, VFX and Procedural Tooling workflows that will make your environments and work stand out from the competition.
Stop copying shaders from Youtube.
Understand them.
Build your own.
Veteran of Film and Games
House of the Dragon • The Witcher • The Little Mermaid • 3 Body Problem - Fortnite - Horizon Forbiden West - Exoborne
Unreal Gold Authorized InstructorFilipe Strazzeri
Founder - Technical Art Director
15+ Years Building Games, Tools, and Real-Time Experiences
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I’ve worked with studios including Guerrilla, ZeniMax, Sony, Disney, Netflix, and Epic Games—building tools, developing pipelines, solving complex technical challenges, and shipping content at the highest level across games and film.
As an Unreal Gold Authorized Instructor, Unreal Engine isn’t something I teach from theory—it's something I use in production.
This bootcamp isn't about copying shader graphs from YouTube or blindly following disconnected tutorials.
It's about understanding Technical Art properly.
Shaders. Materials. VFX. Procedural workflows. Blueprints. Artist tools. Unreal Engine.
You'll learn the techniques professional Technical Artists use to build awesome shaders, solve production problems, and create workflows that make entire teams more efficient—not just prettier assets.
From your first material graph to building your own procedural tools and visual effects, every lesson has one goal in mind:
To help you understand the technology behind your art—not just recreate someone else's work.
If you're an artist looking to bridge the gap between art and programming, build production-ready Technical Art skills, and create a portfolio that studios genuinely value—
You're in the right place.
STRUCTURE
20 Weeks. Truly Understand Shaders & VFX. Build useful tools.
Become Technical..
The Hard Edge Technical Art Bootcamp is built around real production workflows, direct mentorship, and the practical skills used by Technical Artists across the games industry.
Working through focused production blocks, guided challenges and hands-on implementation, you'll move beyond creating assets and learn to build shaders, visual effects, procedural systems and artist tools—the same kinds of workflows Technical Artists use every day in professional Unreal Engine development.
Student Project: Kyle Landon
Shaders & VFX
Weeks 1–8
Shaders are the foundation of modern computer graphics, yet they're often taught as a collection of disconnected nodes and effects.
In this module, we start from first principles.
Before creating advanced materials, you'll learn how textures, colour, UVs and mathematical operations work together inside the shader graph.
Think of it as Photoshop inside Unreal Engine—except every operation happens in real time.
No assumptions. No tutorial hopping. Just intentional learning built from the ground up.
You'll Learn To:
Understand how mathematics drives every material and texture operation.
Build your own panning, tiling, distortion and water shaders from scratch.
Create scalable material systems using Custom Primitive Data instead of bloating your master materials with parameters.
Connect shaders directly to Niagara for more flexibility.
Develop the confidence to build and debug your own materials instead of copying existing graphs.
By the end of this phase, shaders won't feel like magic—they'll make sense.
Tooling & Procedural Art
Weeks 8-12
Now that you understand how shaders work, it's time to use those skills to build production tools that speed up your workflow and remove repetitive tasks.
Instead of placing hundreds of assets by hand, you'll learn how Technical Artists build systems that help entire teams create environments faster and more consistently.
You'll build:
Modular asset stacking tools
Decal placement and texture atlas tools
Asset cycling and procedural scattering systems
Vertex animation systems that bring environments to life
You'll also explore how Unreal Engine can be used to create artist-friendly workflows that improve productivity without requiring large amounts of code.
Student Projects: Kyle Landon & Aden Thompson
Student Project: Kyle Landon
Production PROJECT
Weeks 12–20
Great artists don't just create beautiful assets—they understand the technology that brings them to life.
In the final phase of the bootcamp, you'll combine everything you've learned to build a polished portfolio project that showcases both your artistic ability and your growing technical confidence.
With regular mentor feedback, you'll refine your work while integrating shaders, visual effects, artist tools and production workflows into a single cohesive piece.
Your project may include
Custom shaders and material systems
Niagara visual effects
Artist tools and workflow automation
Vertex animation
Performance optimisation
Optional Procedural Content Generation (PCG) workflows
Professional presentation and documentation
By the end of the course, you'll have more than a collection of individual exercises—you'll have a polished portfolio piece that demonstrates an understanding of the technical workflows increasingly expected from modern artists.
Built Around Real Life
Weeks 3, 6, 9 , 12 , 15, 18
Hard Edge includes dedicated Break Weeks between every production block.
Life happens. Projects evolve. Feedback needs time to sink in.
These weeks are designed to help you catch up, refine, ask better questions, and maintain momentum—without burnout.
look at what our awesome students can do WITH OUR training !
Student Artwork : Melvin Wee
Student Artwork: Tassja Falcatan
Student Artwork: Kyle Landon
Student Artwork: Aden Thompson
LIVE • GLOBAL • FLEXIBLE
Sessions run Weekdays, typically 18:00–20:00 (UK).
Works comfortably across Europe and most US time zones.
London — 18:00
New York — 13:00
Los Angeles — 10:00
Every session is recorded - if life happens, you never fall behind.
Want to become more technical?
Student Work: Aden Thompson
See how shaders finally start to make sense.
Get exclusive access to one of our real Technical Art Bootcamp lessons and discover how we teach the foundations of shader development through understanding—not memorisation.
Stop copying shader graphs. Start building your own.
Limited Availability
Hard Edge is built around small cohorts, direct mentorship and personalised feedback—not mass-market courses.
Seats are intentionally limited to ensure every student gets real support.