Our visual effects and compositing students have gone on to work on some pretty awesome projects over the years. These include the many studio blockbusters that light up cinema screens around the world. Seeing escapee names in the rolling credits at the end of such films never fails to give us that warm fuzzy feeling of pride – proud to see they have achieved the goal they had when we first met them on our courses. And this was very much the case when some of the Escape team went to an exclusive screening of Snow White and The Huntsman at Framestore a few months ago.

Thinkbox Software will be in London on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of September and will be working alongside Escape Studios to organise meetings and demos of their product line up.

Just over six weeks ago, we blogged about a competition run by Film 4, called ‘Scene Stealers’.

“Big things have small beginnings”, was an idea acknowledged in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, released earlier this year. And for us, this statement couldn’t be more true. Taking the art of visual effects as a prime example, the spectacular CG you see on screens today was born from the most basic of concepts, and the people who created those effects invested significant time and energy to become the talented artists they are today. Every creative talent has to start out somewhere, and with the right levels of care and determination, it can evolve into something magnificent.

Since starting an internship with Escape Studios, I’ve had to rapidly acclimatise to the nature of ‘the desk job’, and I must say, like a nine to five Robinson Crusoe, I’ve made myself a home from home in front of my computer screen. 

I've been watching and loving Game of Thrones since the moment it was introduced to me. Completely absorbed in the HBO action, it almost got to the point where if I needed to blaspheme, I would most likely yell out "JON SNOW" instead of the more traditional term.*

Mortal Kombat is a franchise everyone's familiar with. Along with Street Fighter and Tekken, it's one of the classic beat 'em ups of early arcades and game consoles, pitching several outrageous competitors against each other in an excessively violent fight to the death for...well who cares what the reason was, it was awesome! Spawning a huge list of games from 1992 all the way to the present day, MK has helped taint innocent childhoods for 20 years. It had two major films, one acceptable, one classically woeful, and last year, around the release of Mortal Kombat 9, came a pleasant surprise; Mortal Kombat: Rebirth.

Want to know more about NUKE, NUKEX, MARI, KATANA and HIERO? Well look no further.

I don’t think there’s much to be said about this clip from Pixar’s Technical Director, Nick Pitera, apart from the fact that it just grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me down to the euphoric depths of my childhood. I do have a couple of questions though…

It's a well known fact that the iPhone camera is pretty cool but there's always been a certain je ne sais quoi missing from its camera interface. Granted it does make taking a quick pic a breeze but there isn't much on offer in terms of customisation or creativity. That's where Microsoft's Photosynth app comes in. This versatile panorama app automatically stitches vistas out of your iOS device camera's images.