Oh, how I love looking at this site!
Hot Smokin' Deal on VFX Bootcamps
Summer is almost here, so what will YOU be doing during summer vacation? Watching TV? Surfing the internet? Hanging out all day at Starbuck's?
Prometheus, and progress!
It's been an exciting and challenging term for my new students.
JAWS to be Released on Blu-Ray August 14, 2012
"Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again."
Rear Window Timelapse
How do you take an old chestnet and make it new again? You put together a timelapse based on actual footage and stitch it together in After Effects to tell the story of "Rear Window" in a single pane. Welcome to Jeff Desom's world - this appears to be the only thing like this he's done. Part Editorial, part Compositing, part Projection, this 2 minute piece tells the story from the window's POV very nicely.
Check out this NUKE and NUKEX 6.3v7 New Features Video!
It's great to see all the 6.3v7 release features. Nuke artists will especially appreciate the restructured pipeline for handling Photoshop files.
A Fabulous Evening with John Leonti
On Thursday, March 15 Escape Studios in Santa Monica welcomed about 40 visitors for an evening with The Mill's John Leonti. John brought along the spots and making-ofs for Chevy "Busted/Aliens", Mattel Hot Wheels "Immersion" and the iconic Sony PlayStation "Michael".
To Flame or to Nuke, That is the Question
Another beautiful "winter" day here at Escape in Santa Monica. The other day I was walking down the hallway here in the studio. As I passed by, I spotted a word on the "Cloud Wall"; the wall is filled with inspirational ideas and technical terms from the VFX industry. It's great, you could spot something new every day.
Clever Photoshopped Ads
As I was surfing the 'net the other day, looking for sites that would help me brush up on the latest and greatest tips and tricks for Photoshop, I came across this site featuring some really nice work by very creative artists on behalf of companies like Old Spice, the World Wildlife Fund, Guiness, Listerine and others.
News Round-Up: Monday 5 Mar, 2012
Good Monday to you all! This week's round up of news has lots of stories about "John Carter", some interesting announcements from Adobe, some new software releases and much more. Hope you enjoy the read and don't forget to let me know if I have missed anything important.
News Round-Up: Monday 27 Feb, 2012
Setting aside all the Oscar related stories that dominated last week's papers, there were lots and lots of news gems. Among my picks was a cool set of video breakdowns from Transformers, Pixomdo's making of Hugo, and the making of Rango. To get the full list, just read on...
The End is Just the Beginning
The inaugural VFX and Compositing courses at Escape Studios ended on Friday, February 17. On the last day of the courses, the students presented their work to the group in our screening room. Each went through their projects and explained the process they went through to get to that point.
News Round-Up: Monday 20 Feb, 2012
After a week's absence, there was a great deal of news to sort through. Here's what grabbed my attention during the last seven days. There's news of new VFX for The Muppets, talks of DreamWorks investing in China, various interviews with VFX pros and much more.
News Round-Up: Monday 6 Feb, 2012
I guess you will not be surprised if I say that this week's round up is dominated by news of the Super Bowl. I have gathered for you some of the best, but that's not all we have in this week's news. The award season is still with us, so we have had lots of Oscar related stories too. Please feel free to comment: I always enjoy reading your views.
News Round-Up: Monday 30 Jan, 2012
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.
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