After the shocking events that hit Japan there is of course a severe knock on effect to our industry in terms of technology.

OK, so Sapphire is not a new product. It has been used by a lot of the top studios like Framestore, MPC and The Mill for some time now. But is it new to our Techstore range, so we thought we’d make a bit of noise about it.

I have been out on the road over the last month visiting universities across the UK, as part of our university tour, and wanted to give you an update on my progress so far. It's been a bit of a whirlwind, but meeting up with such enthusiastic and creative people is never a chore - you come back full of ideas an imbued with the same enthusiasm

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of new plug-ins and products starting to emerge. Some good, some not so good. But a few of them have really caught our eye, so we’ve decided to add them to our Techstore range. It means that there’ll be a lot of new additions for you to check out over the next few days.

Last night I caught up with Stuart Howard, the Managing Director of a start-up VFX studio that’s doing some great work.

If you’re an aspiring compositor who would like to know more about what the industry is going to expect from you, then sign up for my new webinar, entitled:'Entry Level and Junior Roles for Compositors".

I don't often get completed 'weirded out' by news announcements, but this one really made me stop for a second. Sports Business News published a story yesterday about this year's Wimbledon tennis tournament being shown in 3D. According to them, "The 3D coverage will be produced in partnership with the BBC, the host broadcaster of the tournament, and will also be offered to international broadcasters. Sony will also work with theatrical distribution partner SuperVision Media to take the action into cinemas".

Did any of you see the review of the 3DBOXX 8550 Xtreme in the latest issue of 3D Artist magazine? I can't say that I was surprised when I read that it had taken the title of the fastest rendering machine ever seen. We have been running test on this machine in our labs ourselves and have seen it deliver some pretty outstanding results.

I came across an interesting little article yesterday on PodcastFilmReview.com about the top ten uses of special effects for story telling. It was refreshing to see someone looking at this from the angle of the story telling rather than just for the special effects themselves.

Is it any wonder that the games companies in the UK have a hard time? So many companies going out of business already this year (and it's only March) and seemingly no government support or tax breaks. Whilst computer games feature as heavily in many people's lives as film, I suspect that few know about the games BAFTA awards.

Well, it is red carpet day for the games industry on Wednesday 16th March 2011 and you can view the awards online starting from 8:30 PM. Will the awards ever make it to live TV? OK maybe not, we don't generally know these faces as they are not on the big screen. But give a thought for the awards, the games and the technology these guys produce - they need everyone's support... It's not like we don't play games right?

Has your favourite game been nominated? Check out the nominees here. For me in the family section it has to be Kinect Sports but good luck to everyone who has been nominated!