The Power of Studio-to-Studio Mentorship: How Alchemy VFX and NoHero Bridge the Skills Gap

A core part of our upcoming Animation Magic education project is what we are terming the “Companion App”. Created in Unity, this Android application makes the design process of a short 3D movie very accessible to youth. We have our experienced VFX director Jeff Kuipers heading artistic design for the project, and developing the visual effects animation. And in 2025 we decided to put together our own indie dev team using local BC co-op students, plus a local computer science graduate.

It’s been an incredibly satisfying experience harnessing the energy and enthusiasm of our team, and mentoring them in some core game dev principles. From a business standpoint, the ICTC Work Placement subsidised co-op positions make it economical to do our R&D work, and the Companion App project is small enough in scope to be feasible to develop.

Beyond YouTube Tutorials: Why Junior Coders Need Senior Mentorship

What we have been missing, is a Senior Unity Developer—someone who can help mentor the junior coders as well as ensure our final product ends up robust and professional. We found ourselves in a similar position to many startup indie teams—wanting to access more senior-level skills, without the budget to hire a senior developer full or even part-time. I watched how when our students got stuck, their first recourse was to go to YouTube and try and find tutorials – a sometimes fruitful but very slow and often inefficient way to progress.

I’ve been impressed by our young team’s willingness to jump in the deep end with us and get to work, but also don’t want to risk them floundering in the water (or even sinking under the inevitable deadline pressure)—so I really wanted to secure some help for our project.

Finding the Right Connection: Success at DigiBC’s Signals Event

In October 2025, attending the ‘beta lounge’ of the Signals event, I sent out invitations and connection requests, following a hunch that I’d find someone there to offer support. After a few sobering conversations with external developers on the cost of hiring Unity engineers, it wasn’t looking hopeful. When your project funding is in CAD$ (or as I like to call it, ‘Maple Money’), it’s especially eye-watering to get day rates in USD.

This is when one of my last ‘speed date’ style meetings of the day turned up trumps—the smiling and patient face of Diana from NoHero studios listened with genuine interest to me share our story (including our limited initial budget). At the end of our time, she said something along the lines of ‘Actually, I do think there is something we can do to help, let me talk with my team.’

NoHero Studios: AAA Expertise for Small-to-Mid Sized Teams

NoHero has an impressive portfolio of AAA client work, and so to have their input on Animation Magic in some way would be a real boon. I will let them introduce themselves:

No Hero is a creative UX/UI co-dev and tools studio enabling small-mid sized teams to produce beautifully crafted UX/UI, drive monetization, and build brand focused outcomes. They partner with the full range of AAA to Indie studios to collaboratively solve modern challenges for tomorrow’s players. Their boutique sized team has a diverse background from games, marketing, and film with award-winning talent such as Top 15 Designers in Canada, and designers with over 25 years of UX/UI experience in games. They’ve contributed to titles like Call of Duty, Marvel Contest of Champions, and Gears Of War.

When NoHero say ‘collaboratively solve modern challenges’ they really mean it—within a few days of a follow-up meeting I had a set of carefully scoped out options on how they could assist us. We decided to go for an 8-session mentorship program with their Senior Unity and UI developer William. This gave our fledgling coders live, hands-on, 2-hour tutorials a couple of times a week with him to get specific support on their dev work, along with extremely valuable perspectives on UI/UX design and how to help them adapt to production mindsets.

I saw a difference almost immediately in our team, in their understanding, efficiency, and quality of the work they were delivering us. From a project management perspective, I also felt a weight lifted from me as I experienced the relief of another senior become available to monitor, unblock, and provide direction to our coders. Animation Magic’s Companion App was shifting from a slightly ‘game-jam’ prototype to a solid product before my eyes.

Experiential Wisdom: The Impact of Human-to-Human Mentorship

It felt great to offer such a quality hands-on experience for our interns. They really appreciated the value of dedicated support from an industry expert—probably the closest thing to a post-grad apprenticeship we could give them. One of my favourite comments from our graduate coder, Thomas, when asked about what he was getting from the program was the ‘revolutionary’ experience of being shown a keyboard shortcut (alt+ up or down) that lets you move blocks of code around without using cut and paste.

“Aside from the obviously highly valuable experience in terms of design, good practices, and problem solving we’ve been getting from the mentorship with Will, I’ve also really enjoyed learning some simple tips and tricks such as new keyboard shortcuts, as they can be very useful in speeding up and streamlining some of the development process.” – Thomas Gartisde, Unity Developer at Alchemy VFX

It is exactly the kind of experiential wisdom from a senior to a junior—”Hey, I noticed you don’t seem to be employing this handy shortcut”—that make human-to-human mentorship so valuable.

A New Path for Indie Studios: Symbiotic Support and Shared Wisdom

I very much have appreciated the professionalism and friendliness of Will and the NoHero team. Their willingness to step outside the small (and expensive) box of ‘full co-development’ services, and find a way to spend a few hours a week helping us out has been both nourishing and also inspiring. As the games industry rebalances and more Indie dev teams emerge, finding novel ways to address skill gaps and transfer wisdom from more experienced veterans to junior team members keeps us healthy and thriving.

As Diana from NoHero said, they “were able to support the project in a flexible way, adapting to Alchemy VFX’s needs and helping maximize the impact of a very limited prototype budget. We see this collaboration less as co-development and more as studios supporting one another to bring a promising idea to life.” This type of symbiotic, mutual support is a strong core value for our company too, and I suspect is part of the coming renaissance for quality game development in the future.

The Unity UI / UX mentorship with William Clark from NoHero was a highlight of my co-op work term at Alchemy VFX. I really appreciated the constructive feedback and online resources he shared, as well as his patience in teaching us new concepts. During this mentorship, I learned strategies to improve system performance, enhance project modularity, and optimize the UI layout for mobile apps. As a mentee, I felt supported and encouraged throughout. We were able to tackle design and code blocks together that previously seemed impossible to solve on my own. Thank you to Alchemy VFX and NoHero for making this mentorship possible! – Sophie Sianen, Unity Developer at Alchemy VFX

At Alchemy VFX, our experiences with mentorship of junior artists has mostly been for AAA companies or external developers. The cost-efficient model demonstrated by NoHero has encouraged me to consider similar offerings to smaller Indie teams—a way to help them access top-tier VFX understanding and support without needing to hire us full-time. I invite you to get in touch if you are curious about this, or have ideas to share.