"Like software engineers, VFX artists aren't professionals or artists" Overgeneral statement. You can perhaps make that claim of some VFX jobs, but I'd defy yo

"Like software engineers, VFX artists aren't professionals or artists" Overgeneral statement. You can perhaps make that claim of some VFX jobs, but I'd defy you to say that Bay Raitt, say (one of the main guys who created Gollum) isn't doing artistic work. 3D character modeling, to take just one VFX job, is sculpture. That's been fairly conclusively defined as an artform for a while now.