We are really pleased to have been invited to partner with The Foundry at the VES Career Fair and Technology Expo this weekend.

Make sure you don’t miss out on our 10 DAY SPRING SALE to purchase any of our Self-Directed Online courses at half price! Whether you want an introduction to Maya, to learn how to animate a character or get to grips with visualiation for V-Ray, these in-depth short online courses are the most efficient way to pick up new skills and expand your CV.

After a busy year of new course launches, we now have Visual Effects and Compositing training to suit everyone, whether that’s Classroom Training or Online Mentored study. We know what you need to learn but also understand that everyday life can sometimes make this difficult. This is why we’ve tackled this head on and ensured that our training is flexible and works for you.

Due to the unprecedented demand for our 12 Week Visual Effects Production courses we have just opened up another VFX classroom for January! Having filled the two existing January dates so quickly, and while we are still receiving enquires for these courses, we wanted to give as many people as possible the opportunity to start with us in January.

We are delighted to welcome Simon Jones from SR Partners to Escape Studios this week to present a visual treat 'Reasonance' to our students.

Due to unprecedented demand for our 12-week Visual Effects Production and 18-week Visual Effects Professional courses, we've just announced a new course date for February 2012. Our two January courses our now full, so if you're interested in joining the February course please contact us as soon as possible as we expect it to fill quickly too.

I'm really pleased to bring you a first look at one of our student's work from our new Compositing Professional 18-week course. Carlos finished the course in August and after taking a well earned short break he has already secured an internship working as a Paint Artist on MARI at The Foundry.

We currently have one final seat available on our hugely popular compositing evening course which is starting this week!  This course has been booked up for some time but we have just had a late cancellation which has freed up a space. If you're interested, be sure to contact us straight away. But don't worry too much if you can't make this one, we do have a new round of evening courses starting October for compositing and Maya Core on October 10th.

Chris Mulcaster is a great example of someone who got to where he wanted to be through hard work and determination. Chris studied our VFX Production course and it gave him all of the skills he needed to secure a job in the VFX Industry. But he didn't just study the course, he poured his heart and soul into it. This is the sort of dedication which pushes you to achieve great things and which sets you apart in a very competitive industry. 

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.

We're very proud of the work we do here at Escape Studios but we probably don't show enough of our students' work. Over the coming months we're going to be featuring much more student work on our website but in the meantime I wanted to start showing some of the reels from our most recent graduates.

A while back we featured a blog post about our escapees working on a short film called God View for the East End Film Festival. We are delighted to say that the film picked up best short film in the UK and so massive congratulations to Billy Lumley and all of the escapees that worked on it.

Our Character Animation Tutor Alex Williams needs little introduction. if you follow the world of Animation, you will have heard of him and his work. He is one of the most talented animators of the decade and has not only written books such as QC Cartoon Series, but also worked on well known titles such as The Lion King, Pocohontas, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, and most notably Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He makes quite an impression on most of the people he meets, and especially the students in his class.

I'm really pleased to bring you some news of an update to our current Compositing classroom courses. As most of you will know, what sets us apart from other training institutions is the fact that our courses are entirely industry focused. To ensure we continue to deliver on our promise, our development team regularly meet with industry professionals to refine our courses and align them with the very latest industry requirements. The changes we are making to our Compositing curriculum today will be applied to our 12-week Compositing for Production course as well as our 18-week Compositing Professional course.

We're really pleased to show you the trailer of a new short film project by Billy Lumby titled 'God view'. Billy approached Escape Studios to help him out with some of the visual effects work on the project. I'm not going to give away any of secrets of the project but you'll see it's a great concept and some really interesting techniques were used to create the film's final look.

The tour continued with a whirlwind week of talks. Firstly I met with a small group of the Games Development students at the University of Westminster. They have a number of interesting courses there as well as some interesting research projects - I hope we can build on this initial meeting and I'll be able to tell you more about what they are up to in the future!

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…).

If you are a freelancer or a professional working in post-production, you can save on our courses with funding from Skillset. The level of funding you receive depends on whether you're employed or work as a freelancer, and could see you save as much as 80% on our online self-directed courses.

On Tuesday I attended the launch of the Livingtone-Hope report which was undertaken to address the skills issues facing the UK's games and visual effects. Escape Studios staff have taken part in a number of the surveys which went into building the data for this report as well as speaking directly to Hasan Bakhshi and Juan Mateos-Garcia from NESTA, who did a large amount of the work of pulling the data for the draft report together. In essence the report lays out 20 recommendations across the talent pipeline from schools through FE and HE to the industry. All these parties as well as the government and other skills and training bodies such as Skillset are called on to do their bit. All of this whilst being realistic about the funding and resources available, the recommendations had to be about the focus of existing funds not calls for large sums of new money.

We've had lots of questions about how our Mentored Training works and we thought it would be great to give people a guided online tour. We'll take you through what you'll learn on the course but more importantly, how you'll learn on this course - demonstrating our unique e-Learning platform.

Escape Studios has been approached to help with some of the CG and VFX work on an exciting new, non-profit project called Operation Chastity.

Having started at the beginning of October, the first batch of students from our Online Mentored Visual Effects Course are well under way and the initial results of their work has been great.

We have just updated three of our graduate showreels here.

Skillset have recently announced a new funding scheme which will allow individuals working in the UK film industry to apply for a bursary towards various types of training.  The scheme is aimed at increasing the high-end visual effects skills within the film industry so individuals who want to get additional training under this new funding can identify a course or a training provider that meets his or her needs and apply for bursary from Skillset.

Last week, I promised to share with you some more of the work that our students have presented to us at the end of their courses. This time, I have decided to show you the work of Tracey Chung, who recently completed our Character Animation course taught by Alex Williams.

If you work in TV or produce work for TV as a freelancer, you could receive between 50% (employees) to 80% (freelancers) off the price of four of our visual effects courses. These are online courses, so can be done in your own time. They are: Maya Core; Nuke for 3d Artists; Zbrush Foundation; and Advanced Lighting and Shading.

I wrote about the work that 4DMax have been involved with in helping create a new brand identity for Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory. They have just sent us the result of their work and I thought you'd be interested in taking a look.

We recently had a chance to catch up with Ognyan Zahariev an aspiring games artist and Escape Studios graduate. Ognyan is heading to Codemasters to start his career next month and has taken some time to share his thoughts on life after Escape Studios and joining the workforce in the games industry.

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.

Following the Pixar masterclass, we asked Pixar’s Andrew Gordon to share his tips on creating a fantastic animated sequence and tell us how he came to work in the industry and at Pixar.

If you're a TV professional who has always wanted to study Visual Effects, you can now apply for a Skillset Bursary to fund your online training at Escape Studios.  Bursaries are available to both employees and freelancers working in the UK TV Industry.

Just to let you budding games artists know, we've a few seats remaining on our 12 week Games course starting  April 6th, so if you are interested in attending you should book your place as soon as possible. We're also offering a one-off chance to attend the first six weeks of the course which is completely Maya focused.  It's perfect for anyone wanting to grasp the foundation skills required to become a 3D artist.

We're pleased to announce that we’re running a ‘3D for Visual Effects’ classroom course, which runs for 12 weeks and includes hands-on practical training using the latest industry standard software and techniques.

Escape this Spring!

As some of you may have seen, we've got a fantastic event coming up in March - a two day masterclass with the doyens of CG animation, Pixar.

For those of you considering working in this thriving, dynamic industry, we’re offering a taster into the world of computer graphics with a range of three-day short courses. They’re a great opportunity to get a better understanding of the career opportunities out there while gaining valuable insight into the industry.

Nick Savy, our character tutor, has done us another fantastic sketch.

Many of our candidates present their CG work on a website or Blog. In most circumstances this method is totally acceptable – when we need to send a candidates details over to client at short notice this is the perfect method.

Top college places students on the path to employment with Escape Studios

When Edge magazine came along to talk to founder of Escape Studios, Dominic Davenport, Recruitment Director Paul Wilkes and Games tutor Simon Fenton, what one thing did they all agree on? That, becoming a games artist has never been trickier without the right training. You can read the full article in the June issue of Edge magazine...