It's that time of the year again, and everyone is getting ready, carving up their spooky pumpkins for visiting trick-or-treaters...

Japanese art student Choo San, blew quite a few minds this week when she uploaded her latest side project to internet forums.

For Years I've been fascinated by space, as a VFX artist it's the closest thing we have to observing epic film effects in real life. Every star, nebula or galaxy represents incredible pyrotechnics happening right in front of our eyes… albeit a few million years late some of the time. As an example, this is a picture I took a few years ago of M27, also known as the ‘dumbbell nebula’. This is the result of a supernova, a gigantic explosion in space - throwing off matter, the red stuff is mostly hydrogen gas, the greenish stuff is oxygen.

In this day and age of huge Sci-fi VFX productions that really don't go anywhere (cough!.. Prometheus...cough! cough!) emotionally we find ourselves longing for some real substance with our entertainment.  Enter Grounded , a film short by Kevin Margo, a VFX vet from Blur Studio, about an Astronauts journey through space and life.  The short was a top award winner at multiple festivals around the planet and in true VFX fashion Kevin and his team created a process short along with the film to show all of those VFX hopefuls out there just how it was done.  Top notch work from a top notch creative, I do hope we see some more from Mr. Margo's mind!

We are less than a month away from New York Comic Con, “the East Coast's biggest and most exciting popular culture convention”, an event that attracts fans of film/TV/graphic novel (and the rest!) in their hoards, last year’s convention drawing 105,000 punters! 

Following a lot of doom and gloom surrounding the UK economy, it’s always nice to read something positive about an industry contributing towards economic growth. The BBC posted an article this week discussing an independent report examining the impact of the film industry on the UK economy. And we feel this report is just the thing we need to restore faith in the creative talent that exists this side of the pond, so it can be nurtured allowing the industry to flourish even further.

Step into the mind-blowing world of VFX with The VFX Festival! Escape Studios has created the first ever four-day festival exploring the breathtaking world of visual effects, held in London on 10th-13th October.

Celebrating a decade of UK visual effects, the festival will be packed with the most respected VFX talent, visionaries and companies who have helped shape the industry. Offering inspirational insight behind the clever trickery in this booming VFX industry, with an exciting four-day programme packed with insider knowledge and information, showreel demos, hands-on workshops and exclusive premieres, it's perfect for those with a creative talent or thirst to develop their VFX Career.

Continuing on from Part I of this blog... then, at the start of season 8, and totally out of the blue, RvB started using action sequences, made with fully scripted fight scenes that involve stunts not possible with the previous game engine. CG had crept its way into the show, and in a big way; multiple people beating the incredible hell out of each other, huge explosions, space fights, giant weapons, and jaw dropping set pieces littered season 8, including a hilarious 8-minute sequence of Tex destroying the Reds and Blues, and flashbacks to Project Freelancer.

Sometimes a new piece of equipment struts onto the gadgetry scene, reminding us all, just how hard it is to keep up with the rapidly evolving trends in the technological world we live in.

Here at Escape Studios, we’re all about the visuals. Cut us and we bleed visuals... I’m sure you’re well aware!