Chaos will be in London this July, and we have decided to team up with them to deliver a one-day V-Ray for 3ds Max Advanced Training Course.
Autodesk Finance Deal: 0% Interest Finance or Pay Nothing for 5 months
Did you know that Autodesk are offering some pretty interesting finance deal at the minute?
Realflow 5 Out Now!
RealFlow’s Version 5 has just been released, and we are quite excited about some of the new features and improvements our friends at NextLimit have made.
Next Gen Intel CPUs: More power in a smaller box
If you’re like us and have been struggling with the limits of 4-core machines for your CG applications, then you’d be just as excited about Intel's Next Generation CPU 6-core 32nm processors. They are probably the biggest advancement in CPU cores for over two years.
Come along to our Open Evening
Lots of people can't make it to our day time courses or open days, so, we've decided to run an Open Evening for those people interested in attending our VFX, Maya and Compositing Evening Courses. The courses are perfect for those with busy working lives because they don't interfere with day to day work and you can also pay for them a module at a time, which makes finding the funds a lot easier.
Latest VFX Graduate Showreels
Check out some of the latest work from the VFX Course that's just finished. The work is really imaginative and demonstrates real technical ability - all pretty cool considereing they were here for just 12 weeks. If you're interested in VFX now is the time to get in touch so you can take advantage of our early bird discount.
Pixar RenderMan User Group Meeting tonight!
We are all looking forward to the UGM tonight with our very technical friends at Pixar! Over 200 people in attendance... should be a great night and plenty of Escape $ behind the bar!
Feedback competition winners
We’re pleased to announce the winners of our latest Facebook competition. Having submitted their showreels to the Escape Studios Facebook fan page, five people were selected at random.
Head of 3D at The Mill shares his showreel must-do's
Our friends over at The Mill, namely Head of 3D Jordi Bares, has compiled a list of crucial do's and don'ts to help you create a sought-after showreel. So, if you're aiming to catch the attention of a potential employee, you best read on...
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Our New Animation Tutor
Meet our new animation tutor, Alex Williams who comes from a rich tradition of 2D animation. With over 20 years of industry experience that includes work as a storyboard artist, character designer and animator on more than 20 feature films for Disney, Universal, Warner Bros, Fox, DreamWorks and Sony, his film credits include animated masterpieces such as 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?', 'The Lion King' and 'The Iron Giant'. His most recent work includes animation for the Oscar-winning 'Monster House', as well as 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'.
Calling all Animation Fanatics
In conjunction with their fantastic upcoming Ray Harryhausen – Myths and Legends Exhibition, the London Film Museum are offering the chance to meet the great man himself.
Frank Frazetta
Frank Frazetta, one of the first and most influential fantasy artists in the industry, died last week aged 82.
V-Ray for 3ds Max SP5 Released
Our friends at Chaos Group have just announced the release of the new Service Pack 5 for V-Ray for 3ds Max.
Friday Fun - Illusion Contest
Really looking forward to next week because it's the start of the games course here at Escape Studios. So, before the hard work begins for my students, here is a bit of Friday fun! Check out the impossible motion video.
FREE Tutorial: Professional Lighting for VFX
This month's free tutorial is part of a series that discusses alternative methods of recreating naturalistic lighting in an exterior environment. Taken from our Advanced Lighting with Maya and Mental Ray course, this tutorial concentrates on optimising raytrace shadows within a manually lit scene, and will teach you how to add ambient shadows via a custom occlusion shader. This tutorial will give you the production level skills expected of a junior lighting artist.
Satisfaction Survey: what it's really like working in the CG industry?
A couple of month's back we conducted a Satisfaction Survey which asked people what it's really like working in the CG industry. The top prize for three lucky people was having a CG Master Class with Maya master Lee Danskin. The guy's found it hugely helpful as Lee shared lots of top tips on how to make the most of Maya, dipelling some myths along the way!
Fancy winning an iPod or an online 3D course?
Then take a look at Escape Studios’ Graduate Survey. If you’re a student or have graduated from a UK university we’re keen to hear how you got on finding a job, and how well you think your university prepared you for the world of work.
Autodesk Subscription Payment Plans
If you’re like most of us, and love to get your hands on the latest Autodesk 2011 products but cringe at the thought of paying the total sum up front, then you may want to check this out. We’re now offering prospective Autodesk 2011 users the option of funding their set-up with subscription payment plans from Autodesk Finance.
Pixels – a must see piece of work
If you haven’t seen this already from our tweet a while back, you must check out this awesome piece of work from Patrick Jean.
Storage Explored Part 1: Bandwidth Efficiency
Hello world!
We nerds are back to get deeper into storage and the various options and solutions out there. We're starting a multi-part blog series to try and help people get a better technical grasp over storage for media and entertainment. There's a vast majority out there that see storage as a mystic and cryptic situation; and we aim to help change that and aid normal people in their battles on the subject. We get a large number of enquiries about this at Escape Studios - and for too long, too many people have been purchasing the wrong hardware and software for the right purpose.