Are you looking for a job in the CG Industry? Here at Escape Studios Recruitment, we’ve never been busier. It’s a great time for the UK Post-Production industry and we have been inundated with requests for professional artists.

We blogged on the 3rd of March that Autodesk had announced their new 2012 product line-up. Well, today you can get your hands on all the new toys! If you have a current support contract simply access your subscription portal to download your 2012 version.

Silent Studios are by no means a big company. As a team of four, they are a tight knit unit comprising a Creative Director, a Music Director, an Art Director/Designer and a Composer. However, they have certainly made some noise (quite literally) in the world of digital media. The Creative Director, Nathan Prince, came to Escape Studios to talk to our classroom students about digital media and how CG is playing a massive role in what they do every day. Liam described Silent Studios as a design and music partnership that blends moving image, creative direction, graphic design, installation and musical composition. A little bit of everything then.

This week Escape is very pleased to welcome Mark Pascoe from Rushes to speak to our current classroom students. Mark joined Rushes 5 years ago off the back of the Visual Effects Production Grade course at Escape, doing the Maya comprehensive course before that. He is currently in the Film and TV department at Rushes, taking up a technical role on projects. He has also been nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Series.

As most of you know, the UK Visual Effects' industry appears to be in a very healthy position at the moment.  Many of the large post houses in Soho are in the middle of long term projects and most studios are commenting on the lack of available freelancers. As a result, the Recruitment team here at Escape has never been busier!

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.

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".

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.

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.

First of all, I want to take the time to thank you all for taking part in our recent satisfaction survey. More than 2,400 of you took part, and over the course of the following weeks, I will be sharing the results of our findings with you.