Today is a very exciting day for a lot of people here at Escape Studios. Yes, today marks the end of course for a few of our classes (Visual Effects Production and Visual Effects Animation Professional). And to celebrate this graduation day, we thought we’d give a little preview of what we do as a Bon Voyage for our escapees.

If you, like my good self, are a film junkie then you will be incredibly excited to hear about the upcoming all-day film festival CINE-EAST.

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.

Over the weekend we attended the London VES Career Fair & Tech Expo, and let’s just say it put Love Box to shame with the numbers who turned out for the event itself! Queues of aspiring VFX artists patiently lining up to speak to representatives from some of the world’s greatest post houses, including ILM, Framestore, Pixomondo, Method Studios, Cinesite, Prime Focus and Disney, really highlighted just how much competition there is to get your foot on the first rung of the ladder in the world of Visual Effects.

When you consider the people who work in animation and VFX, many are guilty of picturing the stereotype in their minds; a bunch of geeky men working in a cramped computer room to produce the stunning images we see on screen. And I write to you now, with a sigh of relief, knowing that this is actually not the case. The Visual Effects Society (VES) has uploaded a video to their website which shows the NAB 2012 panel, consisting of five women, sharing their views, opinions and experiences working in the industry. The panel includes: questions from Randi Altman with answers from Jenny Fulle, Gabby Gourrier, Joni Jacobson, Jody Madden and Sarah McGrail.

Some of you may already know, but once a month we like to post a free tutorial on our website. We started creating these so that you could pick up new tips & tricks, tighten up the skills you already have or add a new technique to your toolkit.

The Softimage Creatives launch event went ahead on May 29th as planned, and it was nothing short of amazing. There was an incredible turn out of XSI enthusiasts, which confirms to us all that the community of users is still very much alive. Over 150 people squeezed into Jerusalem Bar on Rathbone Place to celebrate the launch of the London Softimage user group, and among those were visitors who travelled from Ireland and the continent. It’s this dedication to the cause that will undoubtedly help make the independent Softimage user group a real success, and I’m sure it has proved to the SiC founders that their efforts have not been in vain.

The mocha Pro V3 event took place last night at Framestore screening room in London. The event was a great success so a big thank you to everyone who came down.

Want to know more about getting into the games industry while also getting some inside info from the biggest independent games developers? Then make sure you head to GameCityNights.org.

Last June Imagineer Systems and Escape Studios hosted a mocha Pro demonstration event in London to celebrate the success of this tracking software. Due to the success of that event we are pleased to announce that we will be hosting another one this year on May 30^th 2012.