Is your mind a whirling dervish of creativity? Do your ideas formulate out of the blue, and evolve from non-existence to intrinsically detailed visions, in a matter of minutes? Channeling these skills can be an adventure, especially if you enter an industry where the boundaries are seemingly limitless…

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Escape students possess a unique ability to intake an insanely-high level of caffeine. Some claim it assists their CGI wizardry in the classroom, others argue it's due in part to our breakout space housing the largest cappucino machine ever created by mortal hands.

August’s free tutorial goes out to all the Compositors. Take this opportunity to breathe a little life into your projects, using some NUKE trickery. Based on a technique applied while working on Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Compositing tutor and Head of 2D at Escape, Davi Stein looks at how to enhance basic elements within your scene for a more filmic look.

These Autodesk eyeball sweets are causing quite a storm at Escape Studios—not least because a trail of Chinese whispers has led some students to believe we're giving away 'free Autodesk suites' ... awkward!

Also awkward: the look visitors give as you sit casually munching eyeballs, whilst taking a phone call.

To mark Escape's 10 year anniversary we decided to give the office a new look. Some of you who have been to our office may remember the funky brown and orange colour scheme gracing our office walls and the old layout of the desks next to our Reception area. Over the past few weeks the Escape office has dramatically changed and now we have a fresh, chic and very cool colour scheme of metallics and white. We've opened up a new area for our main office space and moved the Tech team into their very own area. There are more changes to come - we've got big ideas for the uninhabited space next to the Reception area plus some trendy furniture is arriving from our LA office.

There have been some exciting changes at Escape Studios recently, and with that we are very pleased to welcome our new Relationship Manager, Anita Gribble. In this role Anita will have two main responsibilities. One is to work closely with post houses up and down the country to continue building on the industry coaching scheme we currently have for our full-time students. As well as this she will be helping to maintain our relationship with recruiters at a variety of post houses to further benefit our students.

Or wanted to be able to say, ‘I did that’, when watching a film and seeing a huge, breath taking explosion? Then maybe you should start to think about pursuing a career in Visual Effects. At Escape Studios, we want to make those first steps into the industry as easy as possible whilst providing you with the tools to succeed. Our Visual Effects Production course will not only give you the skills to progress in the exciting world of Film Visual Effects, but will also show you how to make an impressive show reel (which results in many of our students securing jobs once they have finished.)

Last Wednesday we sauntered down to our friends at Saddington Baynes, devoured some gourmet Pizza, washed it down with some ice cold beer and cleansed our pallets with some invigorating VFX related conversation, all in the name of our second graduate reunion…who says you can’t mix business with pleasure? And with a high calibre of industry employed attendees from the likes of Double Negative, Framestore, The Mill and MPC London, conversation was rife.

For the past three years, we have held a ‘CG Whiz’ competition, and one of the winners from last year just recently claimed part of his award by beginning a 12 week VFX course here at Escape Studios. We wanted to offer a little insight into what this opportunity means for Daniel, but, before we jump in, here’s a low down on the competition itself.

At the beginning of the month we gave a little insight into the world of Escape and how our graduation ceremonies work. As mentioned, we assemble all the different graduating classes into our breakout space, where students and tutors watch what each student has worked on during the first, or last, six weeks of their course.