I like to end a Friday with a chirpy, feel good post. So, following on from my blog yesterday of Pixar’s top 13 movies; I had to post about this second Pixar ranking order. IGN has released their thoughts on who the top 10 Pixar characters are, and I have to say that I am genuinely shocked at who, and where, they have placed certain individuals.

We feel there’s just not enough webinars on compositing at the moment, so we’ve arranged for one of our compositing escapees to resolve this. Alexander Swann, currently Paint and Roto Artist at Framestore, is joining us for a webinar exclusive on August 29^th for all the comp fans among you.

Last night we fought off the threat of rain, heated up the barbies and started cooking for our Assimilate, HP and Escape Studios BBQ in the Shepherd’s Bar and we are so proud that it was a huge success! A big thank you to everyone who made the journey down to Shepherd’s Bush for this very special event.

For those of us who like to indulge in a little bit of Pixar, whether it’s to appreciate the animation or just because you love a 'feel good' film, we all tend to have our favourites. My top 5 Pixar films (in no particular order) consist of Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 (Ken is just hilarious the entire way through), Up and Wall-E.

We’ve just had some exciting news from the lovely people at Creative Skillset. The creative industries’ sector skills council are currently running a pilot scheme for short courses that provide training in areas such as TV, film, radio, interactive media, animation, computer graphics, facilities, photo imaging, publishing, advertising and fashion & textiles. By making training in these areas more readily available, they hope to open up these industries and create a more diverse pool of talent right here in the UK. And we’re delighted to play a part in that ambition.

Last Monday night saw the premiere of the The Amazing Spiderman in Leicester square. Whilst the premieres are continuing elsewhere around the globe I thought I’d bring you a bit of information as to why we at Escape are excited for the latest installment from the Spiderman franchise.

This is your last chance to get your name down for the Assimilate, Escape Studios and HP BBQ tomorrow!! It looks like the weather is going to hold out so expect steak, sunshine and cervezas.

We are pretty excited to have HP as the event’s sponsor as we now have the HP Z Family available on the Escape Studios Tech Store. The Z1 is a pretty spectacular all-in-one model with all the HP technology built into a 27 inch, LED monitor, all of the power minus the tower.

We are really pleased to announce HUG London, the first ever HIERO User Group in London to celebrate The Foundry’s shot management, conform and review tool.

Some of you may have read the Frankenweenie blog from last week, well, after doing a little research on the film myself I came across this video that I think anyone who is interested in the film, the director, or stop motion should watch.

Last night my partner in crime (Fellow marketeer Ellen Payne) and I were fortunate enough to attend an exclusive premiere at Framestore’s in-house cinema to see Snow White and The Huntsman and wow – it was good. After a long busy day in work, I didn’t really have any expectations of how good the film might be (in fact, I was more excited about the possibility of an end-of-day cinema snooze). But no such luck, the film was awesome! And I sat wide eyed for the whole 127 minutes. As well as the dashing huntsman (Chris Hemsworth, Thor), the Visual Effects was nothing short of incredible. From the dark army made of a thousand shards of glass to the oil-dripping evil queen Ravenna and sparkling gold animated mirror, it really is a feast for the eyes.