I have been out on the road over the last month visiting universities across the UK, as part of our university tour, and wanted to give you an update on my progress so far. It's been a bit of a whirlwind, but meeting up with such enthusiastic and creative people is never a chore - you come back full of ideas an imbued with the same enthusiasm
The Foundry’s Storm: Free Trials Now Available
The Foundry’s new RED Digital Cinema product Storm has been released, and we now have free trial licences available for those of you keen to test it out.
Share 3D Designs in Interactive PDF Files
Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of new plug-ins and products starting to emerge. Some good, some not so good. But a few of them have really caught our eye, so we’ve decided to add them to our Techstore range. It means that there’ll be a lot of new additions for you to check out over the next few days.
Review Diary: Zbrush for 3D Artists Part 1
For those of you who are starting to learn ZBrush or want to improve their ZBrush skills, we have an exciting new review of our ZBrush for 3D Artist online course for you to read. CreativeBloke.com has been reviewing the courses and published the first part of his review diary on this course.
Kuro Dragon Produces Its First Kids TV Title Sequence
Last night I caught up with Stuart Howard, the Managing Director of a start-up VFX studio that’s doing some great work.
Escapee Ben Cantor Gets Dream Job at MPC
We’re always pleased when our students start work in the industry working for their dream company or in their dream job. That dream recently became reality for Ben Cantor.
Prepare for Your First Compositing Job With Our New Free Webinar
If you’re an aspiring compositor who would like to know more about what the industry is going to expect from you, then sign up for my new webinar, entitled:'Entry Level and Junior Roles for Compositors".
FxFactory Pro: 170 Plug-ins in One Box
FxFactory Pro's plug-ins are brand new to Escape Studios, and we are pretty excited about adding this clever package to our software range. FXFactory Pro is basically a bundle of 170 plug-ins which have been developed by Noise Industries specifically for CG artists who work with Final Cut Pro, Motion, Final Cut Express and Adobe After Effects.
Wimbledon in 3D... Really?!
I don't often get completed 'weirded out' by news announcements, but this one really made me stop for a second. Sports Business News published a story yesterday about this year's Wimbledon tennis tournament being shown in 3D. According to them, "The 3D coverage will be produced in partnership with the BBC, the host broadcaster of the tournament, and will also be offered to international broadcasters. Sony will also work with theatrical distribution partner SuperVision Media to take the action into cinemas".
Free Tutorial: Volume Caustics for the Maya Expert
This month’s free tutorial is aimed at the experienced Maya user. It has been designed by Mark Spevick, our VFX tutor, to help you master some of the advanced tools which can sometimes be complex and take a while to get to grips with.
3D Artist Reviews the BOXX8550
Did any of you see the review of the 3DBOXX 8550 Xtreme in the latest issue of 3D Artist magazine? I can't say that I was surprised when I read that it had taken the title of the fastest rendering machine ever seen. We have been running test on this machine in our labs ourselves and have seen it deliver some pretty outstanding results.
Escape Studios in a Live Q& A at the Guardian
The chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’ve got more than a passing interest in the film industry. Alright, specifically the VFX part, but still, you’re keen to know as much as you can about the industry, and possibly how you can break into it (hopefully with our help…).
Top Ten Uses of Special Effects for Great Storytelling
I came across an interesting little article yesterday on PodcastFilmReview.com about the top ten uses of special effects for story telling. It was refreshing to see someone looking at this from the angle of the story telling rather than just for the special effects themselves.
Double Negative, The Mill and Framestore Mentor Escape Studios Students
Just want to say a Big Thank You to Double Negative, Framestore and The Mill for the fantastic help you've given our students on the first stage of our industry mentored classroom courses here at Escape Studios.
Red Carpet Day for Games at the BAFTA Awards
Is it any wonder that the games companies in the UK have a hard time? So many companies going out of business already this year (and it's only March) and seemingly no government support or tax breaks. Whilst computer games feature as heavily in many people's lives as film, I suspect that few know about the games BAFTA awards.
Well, it is red carpet day for the games industry on Wednesday 16th March 2011 and you can view the awards online starting from 8:30 PM. Will the awards ever make it to live TV? OK maybe not, we don't generally know these faces as they are not on the big screen. But give a thought for the awards, the games and the technology these guys produce - they need everyone's support... It's not like we don't play games right?
Has your favourite game been nominated? Check out the nominees here. For me in the family section it has to be Kinect Sports but good luck to everyone who has been nominated!
Escape Studios Launches New Search Function in its eLearning Platform
Over the past couple of weeks we've been busy working on our online learning system. "Really? I haven't noticed any difference", I hear you say... Well, it is true that most of the work carried out has been "under the bonnet", so you might not have noticed anything. The reason for sharing this with you today though, is that this work is enabling us to bring to you a number of new features and enhancements.
UK Games Industry in Need of Help
We were all delighted for our friends at Double Negative on Sunday, as they scooped an Oscar for their VFX work on Inception, and the whole country was feeling a touch of national pride as Brits dominated the ‘big’ awards. No matter what your thoughts on the future of British film, it was certainly a good day to be a part of the UK film industry.
Autodesk Media 2012 Announcements!
So Autodesk are at it again with a complete update of all their product line for Media and Entertainment. The update for Maya looks very good, with multi-threading in nucleus - a big plus! Check out the video at the top of this page - it shows the work being done on liquids . The viewport technology begun with viewport 2.0 in 2011. Obviously it was not that great in 2011 but it's a different story with this new 2012 version. All the good stuff is now in there: screen based ambient occlusion, motion blur, depth of field, they are all in the viewport.
Nvidia Cleans up at the Oscars
There may have been only one winner for the Best Visual Effects award at the Oscars, but it was the top line-up of nominees that gave NVidia a real cause to celebrate.
BBC to Broadcast New Dinosaurs Documentaries
The BBC have announced that they are to broadcast a new series of famous dinosaurs documentaries. This will be a much shorter series than the original Walking with Dinasaurs - only 3 programs - but will feature all the 3D and visual effects wizardry you would expect from this program. According to Broadcasting News, it will feature photo-realistic fight scenes to give a "whole new perspective on dinosaurs".