Since winning our 2010 CG Whiz competition last year Stu Schwartz, Natalie Rocks and Justyna Galka have been on a world wind of activities.  Stu wrote a blog recently about how excited he is to start studying with us in our brand new LA campus .  He's also going to continue to blog about his experience on the course throughout his study so make sure you keep and eye out on our blog for that.

First of all, I want to take the time to thank you all for taking part in our recent satisfaction survey. More than 2,400 of you took part, and over the course of the following weeks, I will be sharing the results of our findings with you.

BOXX’s flagship machine has again wooed the reviewers, this time picking up the Editor’s Choice award from 3D Professor.

I don’t think anyone was too surprised by last night’s BAFTAs. Personally, I was really pleased to see Inception win the Special Visual Effects award. With the hardware becoming more powerful, the software more sophisticated and the work ever more creative, as an industry the bar is set incredibly high, and it’s always great to see how people are constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. It’s even more impressive when you consider who else was nominated.

According to Nintendo’s president, low priced mobile phone games are one of the biggest risks for the games industry as they are giving the impression that all games should be cheap. Last night I had a fantastic gaming session with my son, not on a Wii, PS3 or xbox but on my iPhone and it cost me 59 pence. The success of the Wii is something that Sony also encouraged with eye toy, casual gaming that is fun and accessible for all kinds of people not just hardcore gamers. It strikes me as a little naive to think that the app generation is the biggest threat to the games industry. Though, the cost of a ds game is huge and takes a child ages to save up their pocket money

The iPhone has opened the Market to small developers, provided a fantastic opportunity for people to break into games and because it is so easy to use, has opened up the world of videogames to a whole cross section of society. My children and I get just as much fun from an iPhone game as well as a ds for a fraction of the price. Epic has produced an amazing looking game for only a few pounds and created a version of their awesome engine specifically to embrace this exciting platform. The biggest threat to the games industry is the CEOs not listening to gamers - they should be encouraging development every where creating internships and fostering talent.

The makers of angry birds have opened an academy, not bad for a little throw away game.  Come on Nintendo Sony and Microsoft, get your act together! Speaking of internships one of our games students Chris Chorley is doing a six month internship at veemee. You also only have to look at the success of Portal to see that Valves approach to internships pays huge rewards.

Since I’ve been back at school I’ve been constantly asked about the CG Whiz competition. Are you excited about going to LA and studying with Escape Studios? When will your placement start at The Mill? Are you nervous? Apprehensive? And truth is: I'm totally overwhelmed, but so excited!  The more I look at what the course entails, the more eager I get.  I’m looking forward to learning new 3D programs that I haven’t used before.  And not only that, but delving deep into them.  I’m hoping that this will give me a much broader knowledge of VisFx.  I’m also really thrilled about the Instructors who I will be learning from directly - they are all incredibly qualified and will be invaluable as mentors to me!

So it may not be an Oscar but we’re still pretty damn pleased that we’ve won SilverStripe’s website of the month! Without getting too techy, the reason that we took first place is because our website is a complex SilverStripe implementation that has lots of integrated services such as Single Sign-On, Sales Force, Magento e-commerce and YouTube feeds. The graphic design for the site was created by Distinguished & Co – who did a great job, making navigation a doddle. Big thanks to all of the guys who voted, what a great way to end the week.

I just wanted to point you towards this article which discusses the amazing title sequence for Scott Pilgram. When I was a student wanting to get into the industry I found out about Shynola (a collective group of visual artists who have collaborated on a variety of projects) when a brilliant but very strange music video was produced by Unkle called "eye for an eye".  When I came across this article of how Shynola worked with the Edgar Wright the director of Scott Pilgram,  I decided to have a look.

Roy Trosh (Head of Technology at The Mill) must be feeling pretty proud of his son James, Television Production student at Bournemouth University. He's the first person in the UK to attach a Go camera to a helium weather balloon and...a toy Robot! The project was initiated as part of a music video but produced some amazing footage of the earth’s curvature, the best bit is that it's being screened on tube station platforms as part of ‘Smile for London’; a campaign to brighten up the commuter's journey to work. James explains: “We attached the rocket and robot to a helium filled weather balloon with a GPS unit and mini HD camera to track and film the flight. The balloon then popped and fell down to earth with a parachute, where we found the robot and camera 11 miles away in a farmer's field.”

I came across this blog on the 5 miserable VFX Jobs that make movies possible and found it quite amusing... ;-)