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As Oscar fever is mounting up, there were lots of stories related to awards last week - no surprise there. But there were also lots of goodies such as a very cool video from TedTalk, an interview with the VFX Supervisor on Hugo and much more. Here's my take on last week...

Here's my usual round up of news. In today's edition there are news about Oscar nominations, a retrospective of 2011 by CGSociety, a review of the Wacom Inkling tablet, some news about SIGGRAPH 2013, details of the VES Awards nominations, and some interesting reports on the state of the US education.

Here is my usual Weekly Round-Up of News, with stories that I have picked up over the past week. If you have suggestions for stories I missed, just drop me a line or post a comment.

Another week has gone by – I sat out last week due to the holiday, but here, for your reading pleasure is a mashup of the good, the bad and the absurd. I hope you find some interesting reading within!

I love reading about good news! Especially at time when there is such "doom & gloom" dominating our newspaper headlines. So, it was with great pleasure that I stumbled upon a very interesting article entitled "Report: The State of the Graphics World" in Computer Graphics World (CGW) last week. I am not going to repeat it all verbatim - you can read it for yourself - but the saliant point to take away is that the CG market is doing rather well in what are pretty difficult economic times. 

On Thursday last week, our friends from Digital Domain came by to breakdown their work on "Real Steel". The house was packed to capacity, and the Q&A sessions were lively as Erik Gamache, Geoffrey Baumann, Justin van der Lek and Blake Sweeney explained the process behind animation, environments, crowd duplication and lighting.

The Foundry's new application "MARI" is on everyone's lips these days. Would you like to learn how it works? Join us for a FREE workshop at our Santa Monica office on October 24 or 25.

Our UK team recently released a story about one of our compositing escapees - Carlos Conceicao - landing an internship at The Foundry. This got me thinking about the actual spectrum of jobs that are available to people who study with us. There is an expectation that the majority will go on to work for companies in the VFX, Animation or TV industry. And yet Carlos has just demonstrated that you can actually go on to work in the software industry, for companies who develop the tools that are used in the media and entertainment sector. They are many such companies. Most of you will have heard of the largest ones like Autodesk, but there is a plethora of other companies and a constant flow of new comers too. This 

Hosted at the Escape Studios’ facilities in Santa Monica, The Foundry is offering free training in NUKE, MARI and OCULA. Sign up today to train for free, connect with other Foundry software users and experience Escape Studios’ great new facilities.

Here's an interesting take on using 3D software to develop something revolutionary. The ongoing question of using sustainable and eco friendly materials in the construction of surfboards has led Mike Sheldrake to innovate on the process of board building. Surfboards that look half way between an aeroplane wing and wireframe computer model certainly are very cool looking, I'd be interested to see how they ride.