Another escapee from our Character Animation Course has just secured a position in the games industry. Congratulations to Pedro Cabeleira who began an internship this week at Ninja Theory in Cambridge, working on Cinematics for one of their new games.

We have got some good news to share today about one of our Games Course escapees. Holly Pickering - who finished our Games Art Course a little while back - will be joining Adam Esat (another escapee) at Travellers Tales working on AAA titles as a Character Modeller. 

Have you seen this article in gamesindustry.biz?

It's always great to hear when escapees land jobs - especially if it's one that they've always dreamt of getting. Tom Harle, who studied our Games Art Production course has just secured a job at top games studio Rebellion. He's worked really hard on his portfolio and it's clear that it's really paid off.

TIGA are celebrating their 10 year anniversary this year and are inviting all game artists and developers to their birthday bash, at Channel 4 Studios next Thursday night.

We are always looking for a glimmer of hope with any budget... These days it's hard to find any. And that's certainly the case for the UK Games industry. I appreciate we are a niche sector, but the fact that we are a long established (in CG terms) and vibrant industry that allows us to lead the way just goes seemingly forgotten. The petition paperwork will have been 'filed' and once again we find that there is no support.

Last week I mentioned the 'red carpet day' for Games companies at the BAFTA's. Well, The awards ceremony was last night and the results are in!

There has been a bit of an underground homebrew fanbase for Microsoft's new controller, Kinect.

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.

So when Activision, the distributor of Call of Duty Black Ops - a game that hit the $1 billion mark in sales in roughly the same amount of time as Avatar - mentions that it might take its development out of the UK you would hope that someone might sit up and take notice.