If we are watching a live action film with actors, it’s very rare that one of the main character features we concentrate on is the hair. Occasionally a judgemental comment of whether it looks good or not is thrown out there but that’s the extent of it. The average viewer will fail to notice if the colour looks wrong in one of the scenes or that it doesn’t look realistic enough.

Yes, I really went there. A new trailer has been released for the updated version of Total Recall, and gone are the days of Arnie showing his rippling torso and basking in the limelight. This adaptation follows Doug Quaid (Colin Farrell) on his quest to find something better than his current life. After discovering ‘Rekall’, and being warned against it, he decides to rebel (against the norm, funnily enough) and visit the place regardless. This results in Doug Quaid having to question everything to try discover what is, and isn’t, real. The film boasts robots, a futuristic (yet dark) London and a whole lot of CG from MPC, Double Negative and Prime Focus. So from an industry point of view, it's definitely going to be worth a watch.

I like to end a Friday with a chirpy, feel good post. So, following on from my blog yesterday of Pixar’s top 13 movies; I had to post about this second Pixar ranking order. IGN has released their thoughts on who the top 10 Pixar characters are, and I have to say that I am genuinely shocked at who, and where, they have placed certain individuals.

We feel there’s just not enough webinars on compositing at the moment, so we’ve arranged for one of our compositing escapees to resolve this. Alexander Swann, currently Paint and Roto Artist at Framestore, is joining us for a webinar exclusive on August 29^th for all the comp fans among you.

Last night we fought off the threat of rain, heated up the barbies and started cooking for our Assimilate, HP and Escape Studios BBQ in the Shepherd’s Bar and we are so proud that it was a huge success! A big thank you to everyone who made the journey down to Shepherd’s Bush for this very special event.

For those of us who like to indulge in a little bit of Pixar, whether it’s to appreciate the animation or just because you love a 'feel good' film, we all tend to have our favourites. My top 5 Pixar films (in no particular order) consist of Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 (Ken is just hilarious the entire way through), Up and Wall-E.

We’ve just had some exciting news from the lovely people at Creative Skillset. The creative industries’ sector skills council are currently running a pilot scheme for short courses that provide training in areas such as TV, film, radio, interactive media, animation, computer graphics, facilities, photo imaging, publishing, advertising and fashion & textiles. By making training in these areas more readily available, they hope to open up these industries and create a more diverse pool of talent right here in the UK. And we’re delighted to play a part in that ambition.

Last Monday night saw the premiere of the The Amazing Spiderman in Leicester square. Whilst the premieres are continuing elsewhere around the globe I thought I’d bring you a bit of information as to why we at Escape are excited for the latest installment from the Spiderman franchise.

This is your last chance to get your name down for the Assimilate, Escape Studios and HP BBQ tomorrow!! It looks like the weather is going to hold out so expect steak, sunshine and cervezas.

We are pretty excited to have HP as the event’s sponsor as we now have the HP Z Family available on the Escape Studios Tech Store. The Z1 is a pretty spectacular all-in-one model with all the HP technology built into a 27 inch, LED monitor, all of the power minus the tower.

We are really pleased to announce HUG London, the first ever HIERO User Group in London to celebrate The Foundry’s shot management, conform and review tool.