Firstly, a big thanks to everyone who has entered our CG Graduate Design Competition Award so far. Entries have been coming thick and fast and as always the standard has been exceptional.
Thanks also for keeping in touch via all our social networks - it really is great to hear from you all and it just reaffirms our belief that the UK and the US have a wealth of talent and will undoubtedly produce many future stars in the CG world.
CG Graduate Design Awards competition entry date extended to 16th August
Christian Roberton joins our Advisory Board
Everyone who studies with us knows how much emphasis we place on our close ties with the industry. The members of our advisory board include some of the biggest names in CG, and they advise on everything from course content to placing escapees in work after they graduate. We are therefore very pleased to announce that Christian Roberton, MD of Film at MPC, has joined the team.
Escapees work on Rooney
Now almost as hyped an event as the World Cup itself, the Nike ad this year starred a host of big names, from our own Wayne Rooney through to Franck Ribiery of France, Italy’s Fabio Cannavaro and even shiny Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal. Most people will have seen at least one of the shorter clips, if not the full thing, and the eagle eyed among you will know that the guys at the Mill were on hand to provide the VFX wizardry.
Escape Studios at Siggraph 2010
Escape Studios is going to SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles next week. We’ll have a booth at the SIGGRAPH 2010 Job Fair (booth #26) and we’d love to see you there. Drop by and pick up some of the Escape Studios goodies!
Fusion 6.1 Out Now
For those of you that have been eagerly waiting for the next release of Fusion, you’ll be pleased to know that Version 6.1 is out now and available for shipping.
Meet Nik Illingworth – Escape Graduate and now VFX TD at MPC
It’s been pretty busy for Nik since completing his VFX course a few weeks back. After a stint at Atticus Finch and then Framestore he’s now working at legendary post house MPC. We caught up with Nik, sat him down, and asked him what it’s like being the new FX TD on the block.
New mentored courses for long distance learners
Today we’ve launched a brand new set of online mentored learning courses to offer a helping hand to international grads and drive the next wave of computer graphics talent. The twelve-month course offers the same high quality, interactive training experience as our flagship Visual Effects classroom course.
ZBrush - major announcements!
Our friends at Pixologic have done it again... There seems to be no stopping the development team and now Windows and Mac users will unite!
On Monday August 9 ,2010 existing users will be able to upgrade FREE OF CHARGE! Updated versions of all major plugins, and GoZBrush support for Modo, Cinema 4D, 3DSMax and Maya for Windows and Mac systems.
More information about ZBrush 4.0 and its features will be presented closer to launch date.
Competition reminder
It's great to see entries coming through for our Graduate Design Awards. Just a quick reminder you need to upload your show reel to our YouTube channel and then complete your entry by sending your contact details to escapestudios@brands2life.com. We need your name, showreel title, email address, telephone number, year of graduation, university and course attended.
Graduated but still looking for a job?
The BBC recently reported on the struggle faced by graduates to find a job after leaving university. Unemployment amongst grads aged below 24, rose by 25% last year.
Chaos UK Tour
The Chaos team held their very first UK event in London last week demonstrating V-Ray pipelines and some cool new technologies that are yet to be released. It was a fun afternoon with plenty of tips and demos from both Peter Mitev and Vlado Koylazov showing us just how the experts do it in V-Ray.
July’s Free Tutorial – Object Tracking in PFTrack
We have a real treat in store for you with July’s free tutorial; it’s a pretty technical and hands-on, and takes an in-depth look at geometry tracking within PFTrack.
It’s one of the final tutorials taken from our Camera Tracking for VFX Course and explains how the use of geometry can ‘Solve’ the motion of an object, enabling CG elements to interact with live action objects.
More Autodesk Hotfixes
Autodesk have just released a new set of hotfixes for their 3ds Max series of products for you to get stuck into.
CG Graduate Design Awards go live
We’ve launched the CG Graduate Design Awards aimed at uncovering talented uni grads in the UK and US. This is the first international competition of its kind, where we’ll be giving fresh talent, a helping hand into the competitive computer graphics world with our partners The Mill. So, if you’re a student or recent graduate dreaming of breaking into the industry, this is the opportunity for you.