I am a huge fan of production design and this week, came across this awesome blog site complete with a nice video explaining set design and 3d printing!

Our friends over at View Conference Italy, last week unveiled that they will be providing cash prizes for winners of their different awards. The prizes vary from top of the range tablets to a lump sum of 2000 Euros. The categories for application are as follows (complete with direct links)

Fancy knowing more about compositing? Do you think you might just be a natural compositor? If you'd like to find out more then why not come along to one of our compositing taster days?

Compositing is a crucial part of the Visual Effects pipeline. It's the bit where everything comes together. pipeline, the bit where it all comes together. As a Compositor, you’re the person who has to make sure the shot meets the artistic brief from the
director. You’re the one who’s finessing that creative vision. That final, all important creative milestone – that’s you. The Compositor. The person who naturally looks for the finer detail, who enjoys checking that the colour is ‘just right’, the person who questions whether that ‘hair’ looks part of the scene or not and if not, why not? You’re the person who helps deceive the eye, so the viewer asks, where there any Visual Effects at all?

Combining lots of different elements to make us believe we’re looking at a single scene is no mean feat and it takes highly dedicated individuals to make it happen. Without Compositors we’d never be looking at those gorgeous finished shots we’re so used to seeing. Instead, we’d be looking at the gaudy wires that support actors during actions sequences and shots lacking in any kind of atmosphere or composition. This is the department where the real magic happens through a variety of processes.

So fancy a day trying this out? seeing if it's for you? Places are limited so make sure you register your details now.

The phrase ‘put your money where your mouth is’, is rarely put into practice. However, over the last few years, website kickstarter.com has bucked the trend by allowing generous and creative types to come together and put their money into projects that they genuinely believe in.

You may remember this fake UFO clip made famous last year - naturally everyone quickly branded it a fake which it clearly was/is.

Fans of 3D and users of Photoshop will be delighted this week, with the announcement that 'Photoshop CS6 Extended' is on the market, it allows you to create 3D shape text using extrusions as a 3D layer... "similar to CS4 Extended" I hear you say! But alas, according to this write up, we are told that this works far more 'natively', with 'the usability you’d expect from an integrated Adobe toolset'.

A big thank you to the ladies from WFTV (Women in Film and TV) for organising a networking event last night for women who work in technical roles across film and television. Three of us (Davi Stein, Anita Gribble and myself) from Escape went along to see what was going down! We had a great time meeting women from lots of different fields. Among them was a DOP, a few editors and to our delight two effects TD’s from MPC.

We’re fans of art all across the spectrum here at Escape, and these sculptures, created by Chinese artist Li Hongbo are rather mind boggling.

As many of you will know, JJ Abrams was last week confirmed as director of new Disney owned segment of the Star Wars saga. We’ll forgive your bare faced denial of the appointment only last month JJ, just make sure episode VII is a killer!

Those who watched Charlie Brooker’s ‘Black Mirror’, were no doubt transfixed by the futuristic realism of the plots, and the creation of worlds that are uncomfortably similar to our own. You will have no doubt been impressed by the VFX (well, those that you noticed) that created the settings on which the plots to unfolded, and of course a considerable amount of the action!