It’s fair to say that the world of VFX is a bit like a tardis, a tardis that escapee Allyn Lawson knows all about.
Carmine Agnone: Success Story
Carmine Agnone, a lifelong Tim Burton fan and escapee, finished his course with us in April 2011 to work on shots for Burtons new film Dark Shadows only months later - a real dream come true! Since then, he’s worked on many projects and built extensively on his wealth of career knowledge.
Escape Studios Graduation Day
Today is a very exciting day for a lot of people here at Escape Studios. Yes, today marks the end of course for a few of our classes (Visual Effects Production and Visual Effects Animation Professional). And to celebrate this graduation day, we thought we’d give a little preview of what we do as a Bon Voyage for our escapees.
Escapee Showcase: Ben Revens
As promised here's another escapee reel. This time from Ben Revens, one of our recent VFX graduates. This is a great reel with good examples of work from two of our most popular courses. The violin and tank shots were produced during our 12-week Visual Effects Production course. The more elaborate and advanced staircases shot was produced during our 6-weeks Visual Effects Professional extension which Ben took straight after his VFX Production course.
Escapee Showcase: Roger Serrabassa Vilar
We're very proud of the work we do here at Escape Studios but we probably don't show enough of our students' work. Over the coming months we're going to be featuring much more student work on our website but in the meantime I wanted to start showing some of the reels from our most recent graduates.
Games Course Escapee Holly Pickering Gets Job At Travellers Tales
We have got some good news to share today about one of our Games Course escapees. Holly Pickering - who finished our Games Art Course a little while back - will be joining Adam Esat (another escapee) at Travellers Tales working on AAA titles as a Character Modeller.
Do Universities Need To Teach Basic Job Skills?
An announcement by Edge, the education charity, caught my eye this week. It said that universities should now be required to teach employment skills as part of degree courses. According to its latest study, employers now believe too many graduates are unfit for the workplace.
Rhythm & Hues: Effects Apprentice Program
Calling all escapee's and graduates... An opportunity to be part of this amazing apprentice program in California!
Record Number of Overseas Students
Did any of you read the recent article published on the BBC called "Record numbers of international students"? This is definitely worth a read.
Digital Compositor and Escapee Victor Perez Thanks Escape Studios
When Victor Perez finished our 12-week Compositing for Production course last year, we knew that he was destined for great things. Since completing the course he has worked for an impressive range of companies - most of the post houses in Soho in fact - and is absolutely loving it. Victor was born to be a compositor -it's just in his blood. He's been hooked since his early days watching Star Wars. For Victor being able to use his artistic and technical skills to tell a story is one of the most important aspect of what he does -he's definitely in the right job then!
A New VFX Outfit to Watch
Currently wowing audiences everywhere, and hot off the back of its Oscar nominations, Danny Boyle’s latest film 127 Hours is something we’ve been keeping a particular close eye on. Obviously we’re fans of Mr Boyle’s work (personally, I can’t wait to see the Olympic opening ceremony), but in this case we’re more interested in a small team of people working behind the scenes.
Escapees make it to Autodesk's Education Showreel
We're never prouder than when our escapees get the recognition they deserve. This usually comes in the form of a first job with a top post house or commendation from the professional community for a perfectly executed shot, so when we found out that some of our escapees made it to the Autodesk 2010 Education showreel, we were beaming.
Portrait of an escapee: How Nick Illingworth Became TD at MPC
When Nik Illingworth came to an Open Day last year, he was brimming with CG enthusiasm. He knew that he wanted a career in VFX but didn't really know how he was going to make it happen. After studying for 12 weeks with us, Nik was up and running. He finished his course, was offered his first job at Frametore and accepted it, then a short while later he decided to come back to us for 6 weeks of final professional training. He's now Effects Technical Director at MPC and still has the same love for the industry that he started off with. Nik's is one of many stories of CG enthusiasts who come to study with us and that's why we wanted to share his case study with you - getting a career in VFX off the ground really is easier than you think.
CG Graduate Design Awards competition entry date extended to 16th August
Firstly, a big thanks to everyone who has entered our CG Graduate Design Competition Award so far. Entries have been coming thick and fast and as always the standard has been exceptional.
Thanks also for keeping in touch via all our social networks - it really is great to hear from you all and it just reaffirms our belief that the UK and the US have a wealth of talent and will undoubtedly produce many future stars in the CG world.
Meet Nik Illingworth – Escape Graduate and now VFX TD at MPC
It’s been pretty busy for Nik since completing his VFX course a few weeks back. After a stint at Atticus Finch and then Framestore he’s now working at legendary post house MPC. We caught up with Nik, sat him down, and asked him what it’s like being the new FX TD on the block.
New mentored courses for long distance learners
Today we’ve launched a brand new set of online mentored learning courses to offer a helping hand to international grads and drive the next wave of computer graphics talent. The twelve-month course offers the same high quality, interactive training experience as our flagship Visual Effects classroom course.
Competition reminder
It's great to see entries coming through for our Graduate Design Awards. Just a quick reminder you need to upload your show reel to our YouTube channel and then complete your entry by sending your contact details to escapestudios@brands2life.com. We need your name, showreel title, email address, telephone number, year of graduation, university and course attended.
Graduated but still looking for a job?
The BBC recently reported on the struggle faced by graduates to find a job after leaving university. Unemployment amongst grads aged below 24, rose by 25% last year.
A Traveller's Tale: One Games Graduate Journey
Recent Games Course Graduate Adam Esat has just landed a job at prolific Games company Travellers Tales - and we are super pleased for him.