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.

Reading the article about what the Budget has done for graduate recruitment made me think about how this might affect the Gaming Industry.  Gaming truly is part of our culture. It's everywhere, we have never had so many platforms and opportunities on which to play games and I think it's fair to say gamers have never had it so good. So, why is it such a bad time for the UK games industry?

I have been out on the road over the last month visiting universities across the UK, as part of our university tour, and wanted to give you an update on my progress so far. It's been a bit of a whirlwind, but meeting up with such enthusiastic and creative people is never a chore - you come back full of ideas an imbued with the same enthusiasm

Just want to say a Big Thank You to Double Negative, Framestore and The Mill for the fantastic help you've given our students on the first stage of our industry mentored classroom courses here at Escape Studios.

Want to know what it’s like to do one of our Mentored courses? Well we caught up with Escapee Ricardo Viana to find out how he got on – all the way from sunny Portugal.

I'm really pleased to announce a new addition to our full-time classroom courses - Compositing Professional.  This course builds on the amazing success of our 12 week compositing for production course and adds an additional 6 weeks of advanced training.  This extra time will give students the opportunity to develop skills to really set them apart from other juniors looking to enter the industry - covering subjects such as compositing for stereoscopic and the advanced techniques needed to work with high end 3D visual effects.  Part of the course includes a dedicated project week where you'll be able to work on your showreel and make sure that it really stands out from the crowd.

Please getting in touch with training team or come along to one of our open days to find out more.

We know just how popular our webinars are on all things CG, well the next in line is all about our Mentored Training and includes a preview of our exciting e-Learning platform.

For those who can’t give up work for 12 weeks or come to our offices in London or Los Angeles, Mentored Training is just the ticket. You can study our VFX or Compositing online and still get expert mentoring and feedback from our tutors and share your creations with classmates on Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo (that’s thanks to our clever e-learning technology!).

A couple of weeks ago we asked our friends on Twitter and Facebook where they stood on online learning versus classroom courses. The range of opinions put forward was fantastic, with arguments from both sides no doubt strong enough to sway those who like their perch on the fence.

As the end of 2010 approaches we're filling up fast for our next round of courses in January 2011. The last spot on our Compositing course has just gone, so the next seats available for that are now in April. We have also just filled our Character Animation course with Alex Williams so we now only have a few seats left on the two Visual Effects Production courses, taught by Mark Spevick and Dan Shutt.

At the end of every one of our intensive classroom courses, we get our students to present their finished work to their classmates and to our Training Development Director Lee Danskin. Last Friday, it was the turn of the escapees from our latest Visual Effects Production Course.