How VFX artists can seize the opportunities of this changing landscape

His films certainly divide modern critics and audiences alike, which is perhaps no surprise. In a Hollywood saturated with formulaic product for multiplex audiences, his films are an anomaly, breaking from a conventional narrative and featuring extended, languid shots of the natural world that often serve to emphasise his character's - and therefore Man's - insignificance in the face of events.

For many years now Massive has owned the crowd sim market space, especially at the high end of VFX. Of course some of the larger post-houses have written their own tools, but the availability of any other commercially viable product has been limited.

We’re getting pretty excited here at Escape Studios and looking forward to July 12^th, when 3D Creative Director at The Mill, Jordi Bares, will be taking part in our special VFX Open Day.

When I see students go from first day newbies to fully-fledged VFX artists I can’t help but feel that they absolutely deserve it. After weeks of rigorous training learning how to create believable CG, the moment comes when they start looking for a job. And that’s exactly what happened to Pasquale Riefoli and Maria Busco who have both secured jobs at Double Negative!

As promised here's another escapee reel. This time from Ben Revens, one of our recent VFX graduates. This is a great reel with good examples of work from two of our most popular courses. The violin and tank shots were produced during our 12-week Visual Effects Production course. The more elaborate and advanced staircases shot was produced during our 6-weeks Visual Effects Professional extension which Ben took straight after his VFX Production course.

A few weeks back I took my class to the Natural History Museum so that we could generate some new footage which they could camera track with. It was lots of fun as they not only got to film live-action footage, they knew exactly what they would have to work with when getting back to the classroom. For me, keeping things fresh is important - and so filming new footage for the students to work with is a must. As you can see from the video, we're all pretty excited to be out of the classroom!

Here is an amazing use of Xbox Kinect or PlayStation EyeToy: desktop motion capture!

Here is a question for you: just because we can make somthing in 3D, is it always the best approach?

Skillset, the industry body which supports skills and training for people and businesses in the UK have put together a nice VFX Core Skills handbook that you may be interested in.