Valve has released this video to show us how they create their mini-movies.
Pixar Films Rank #1?
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.
Creative Skillset Short Course Approval
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.
New Type Of Education
I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but, as I have said before my favourite developer is Valve. They consistently produce work which is innovative on so many levels and always has engaging narrative and characterisation.
Spider Senses Are Tingling
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.
B Movie Box Office
Last week was an interesting week for movie fans. Our prayers were answered when Michael Bay's production of Ninja Turtles was shut down (he decided that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles should be neither mutants nor teenagers, apparently, and the world decided to hate him). The Amazing Spiderman had it's London Premiere, another 45 minutes worth of TV spots for The Dark Knight Rises were released and the world was given Abraham Lincoln; Vampire Hunter.
Are You 'Dredd'ing It?
Usually, comic book adaptations tend to be successful at the box office; Spiderman, Batman, The Hulk, The Avengers to name a few. However, there are exceptions; Green Lantern, Elektra and of course, Judge Dredd. Judge Dredd looked promising, we all love a bit of Stallone but the actual outcome, to put it nicely, didn’t quite live up to expectations.
Time to HUG London
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.
E3, On The Flip Side
As shown in this real time tech demo by Epic Games Unreal Engine 4, there are a host of improvements coming to the next generation of console and PC games. These are notably, real time dynamic lighting and particle effects as well as massive improvements to the UDK itself, enabling developers to leverage all these improvements much easier and faster. Then, just to show off Square-Enix, creaters of the hugely popular Final Fanstasy series, go and show what their latest real time tech is made of, and that really is impressive.
Watch This Space
The Halla Stulecia in Wrocław, Poland is an almost 100 year old dome designed by legendary architect Max Berg and was built to commemorate the 1813 war of liberation against Napoleon. Almost a century on, members of the visual arts label AntiVJ have transformed the 65 foot concrete dome into what they call O (Omicron). O is a cinematic installation that paints the hall's intricate contours with the stark, pulsing lights of a futuristic starship.
HIERO 1.0V3
The Foundry has just released the latest update of their cross-platform timeline-based application, HIERO for Mac and Linux.
The Summer Must-See Movies Take 2
I have already aired my excitement over the new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises in yesterday's blog. However, after searching through more of the summer "must see" films on IGN I came across another film I am excited to see; Ted.
Gamers Paradise: What Should we be Getting Excited About?
Epic Games released this trailer of the Unreal Game Engine at the E3 Festival last a few weeks back and it got me thinking, what else can we look forward to seeing this year?
Create Your Own MOCAP Studio
Well, what a day Thursday was! As part of the Visual Effects Animation Professional TD course, we created our own motion capture studio here at Escape!
The Summer Must-See Movies
Whilst scrolling through the IGN website I stumbled across a page that I wanted to share with you all, even if it is just a check list! IGN has released their list of top summer movies for 2012 and, although many of them have been released (and you can cross them off on your check list), there are still plenty of brilliant CG films being released over the upcoming months.
A Pioneering Digital Artwork
NATIVITY is a pioneering digital art project by Martha Fiennes, a moving-image interpretation of the Christ Nativity inspired by a canon of Renaissance paintings on the story. Martha’s idea for this project was brought to life through the process of SLOimage, which is the process of random and perpetual image self-generation. It slowly transforms through a wide range of alternative pictorial content in a way that is unpredictable to both the artist and the viewer. In a way, it is as though this technique has its own level of consciousness, allowing the artwork to generate meaning in new and very unexpected ways.
Has E3 Spelt the End of VFX? Possibly Not!
I was on holiday last week, enjoying the almost total lack of sun, and having a week long geekasm at the E3 coverage. Imagine my surprise, then, to come back to work at Escape to discover hardly a mention of all that awesomeness on the blog. This is not, I thought to myself, acceptable. So have a peek at this!
Sneak Peek at Resident Evil 5
It’s always good to end a Friday with a little something to look forward to. Therefore, we would like to present to you the new trailer for Resident Evil: Retribution.
Disney Takes On Another Classic
Did any of you hear the breaking news this week that Disney have unveiled what will be their latest CG project? If not, then have no fear. I can now share with you that Frozen is set to be their next classic. Unfortunately there's very little information released on this, but as we receive more information we’ll pump it out to you.
Valve Show Us How It's Done, Again
Once again, I’m going to have to promote how great a developer Valve is by showing you another presentation that I found on their website. I know I have already showcased some of their expertise in a post a couple of days ago but I think this presentation is equally as impressive as the last one.