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...
New Term Dates & Brand New Maya Core & Compositing Evening Classes
We're over half way through with our first set of course offerings in VFX and Compositing and it has been an exciting ride. We'll be offering both of our 12 week daily courses again in 2012. We've set up our spring, summer and fall start dates for our Visual Effects Production and Compositing for Production courses so you can start your planning right away.
Escape Students Visit New Deal Studios
As part of their classroom course with us, our students (who we affectionately refer to as escapees), get a chance to visit working studios to get a taste of what they will be faced with when they start working in the VFX industry. We took our first bunch of escapees to New Deal studios last week, and rather than giving you my thoughts on how the visit went, I asked Greg Pilon - who is taking our Compositing for Production course - to give us a quick summary of his visit.
News Round-Up: Monday 23 Jan, 2012
Last week was rich of stories about The Artist and speculation about how it will do at the Oscars, but there were also lots of other interesting stories including news about new 32Ten Studios, interviews with the likes of artists at ILM, and the first of many stories about the Super Bowl. Here's my pick of the most interesting pieces published...
Our First US Escapee Mug Shots
Our first set of students just hit the mid-way mark of their courses so we decided it was high time we subjected them to a long-standing Escape Studios tradition, that consists of capturing their photos before they start pulling their hair out coming to grips with the more complicated side of the VFX pipeline.
News Round-Up: Monday 16 Jan, 2012
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.
News Round-Up: Monday 9 Jan, 2012
Here's my take on last week's news and announcements. Among the items I picked up, there's the call for submissions for SIGGRAPH. if you are planning to submit your work, you'd better hurry, as the deadline is tomorrow.
News Round-Up: Tuesday 3 Jan, 2012
It's been two weeks since my last News Round Up. The holidays have gone so quickly and we are now in 2012, rested and ready to go. To get you in the mood and get you started in 2012, I have put together a summary of news published over the past couple ofweeks.
Looking Forward to Working with The Foundry in LA
Today our friends from The Foundry came by to discuss some great stuff that we'll be doing together here in LA in the new year. It was great to see Claudia and Tom and enjoy some great Thai food from our fantastic local restaurant Pot and Pan. Tom will be moving to LA in the new year and we're really looking forward to working closely with them. Look out for some really great collaborations in 2012!
News Round-Up: Monday 19 Dec, 2011
This will be my last Weekly Round-Up of News for this year..., hope you enjoy it. If you have suggestions for stories I missed, just drop me a line or post a comment. I'll be sure to look at your suggestion during the holidays.
Classes Off to a Booming Start in LA
In Rick’s compositing course, our students have already made great strides. They are currently working on Keying and Rotoscoping - finishing up the section of the course which deals with the core skills for a junior. Next, the students will start to work in ‘real world’ scenarios, which will help them to become problem solvers. They’ve completed work on the NUKE interface and are now focusing on the art of compositing, and the techniques to approaching problems. After the break they will be working on color correction, 3D in NUKE and CG compositing. They're all very excited to start shooting their own footage and putting together multi-pass composites.
VES Education Committee to Host Free Event at Escape Studios
Are you interested in learning more about compositing? The VES Education Committee is hosting a presentation on Basic CG for Compositors at Escape Studios on December 17, 2011 at 10:00 am. Guest speaker Martin Hall will present some basic techniques that he used on recent projects including passes engineered in Vray and Mental Ray to complete his composites.
News Round-Up: Monday 12 Dec, 2011
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.
Rodeo FX Video Clips from the Making of the Three Musketeers Worth a Watch
Rodeo FX is a company in Montreal that specializes in Matte Paintings, Set Extensions and Compositing. When one usually thinks of matte paintings, one brings to mind the 'way ' background images with no parallax shift - banks of clouds, buildings and other set dressings to make an otherwise anachronistic foreground comply with the period in question. But these matte paintings are extraordinary in that they are 3D in lots of ways - not only were they created in stereo, but they are also fully CG with proper perspective shifts, nice integrative lighting and historically correct.
News Round-Up: Monday 5 Dec, 2011
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.
News Round-Up: Monday 28 Nov, 2011
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.
News Round-Up: Monday 21 Nov, 2011
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.
News Round-Up: Monday 14 Nov, 2011
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.
Enlightening Evening With Digital Domain & the "Real Steel" Team
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.
News Round-Up: Monday 7 Nov, 2011
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.
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