Escape this Spring!
Want to know what it’s like to work in a thriving, dynamic industry? Escape Studios is offering a taster into the world of computer graphics with its new three-day short courses that highlight the exciting career opportunities on offer to students and provide valuable insight into the industry.
Escape Studios is offering four new taster courses: Introduction to 3D using Maya (the leading 3D imaging software), Introduction to Computer Animation, Introduction to Visual Effects and Introduction to Games, which all contain abbreviated content from Escape Studio’s full-time courses. Over three days, students will learn the basics of 3D effects creation and gain a better understanding of what’s involved in visual effects, character animation and games art with guidance from world-class tutors. The courses are aimed at giving people a chance to get a feel for what a computer graphics job is like and understand what discipline they might want to pursue in the industry.
All four short courses cost £399, which is refunded should the student decide to sign up to an Escape Studio classroom course. Full courses are typically 12 weeks long and have been designed to cover all the basics and provide someone new to the industry with the required skills to begin their career. Escape Studios offer a range of courses including visual effects, animation, games and more. For more information please contact the training team.
Are you a woman trying to break into the film industry? If so, this training course could be just what you’re looking for.
Thanks to funding support from Skillset, Birds Eye View is offering a range of 3D and VFX training, including a 3D Graphics and VFX course specifically for women, which will be delivered by us here at Escape Studios. The training takes place on Sat 6th & Sun 7th March and is designed to give a practical, introduction from anyone wanting an insight into 3D for visual effects and post-production.
This hands-on session will take you through the basic creation of 3D models, the process of camera tracking these into live-action footage and the skills required in lighting and texturing, in order to achieve photo realistic results – it’s a great opportunity for any woman looking to boost their skills, confidence and experience in film.
If you’re interested, download an application column on the right hand column of this web page. All you have to do is submit your application and CV to the following address office@birds-eye-view.co.uk and Birds Eye View will let you know if you’ve been successful.
We look forward to seeing some of you there in a couple of weeks.
Birds Eye View Film Festival runs from 4-12 March at the ICA and the BFI. See at full 2010 programme at: www.birds-eye-view.co.uk/2010/festival
We’ve got some exciting news: we’ve hired games industry veteran Tim Flett. Tim will be our new Business Development Manager for Games and Interactive, in charge of growing our professional services, which include training, technical consulting as well as hardware and software solutions.
Tim has spent more than 15 years in games developer and publisher relations. Previously he worked for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, managing third party relations. He was in charge of the development tools and communication team, responsible for the ongoing guidance and support for major developers, publishers and licensees looking to use the PlayStation® platforms. He was also the mastermind behind the hugely successful DevStation™, the PlayStation development conferences.
Tim said “I’m thrilled to be part of such an exciting company. Escape Studios is doing some fantastic things across all parts of its business, and I’m hoping my expertise can help it grow even further.”
Mark Cass, Commercial Director of Escape Studios, said “Tim has a huge amount of knowledge and experience in the games industry, and is a strong addition to the Escape team. Just as we are growing our games courses, so we are looking to improve our reach into the games industry via our burgeoning software and hardware sales division.”
Prior to joining Escape Studios, Tim was Developer Relations Manager for Emergent Game Technologies, managing the EMEA territory sales. We’re really looking forward to seeing all the great work Tim will be doing for us, and hopefully he’ll be blogging about the games industry soon, so keep an eye out.
Our very own Escapee, Chris Bradwell, has won a BAFTA for his fantastic work on the game Flock! just five years after graduating.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, Flock! is an extremely creative puzzle game made entirely from soft, stuffed objects. It’s set on islands in the middle of the ocean and you have to use your UFO to herd sheep, pigs, cows and hens through physics puzzles into your mothership. It might sound a little bizarre, but its great fun and the graphics are awesome. It’s definitely worth checking it out.
We’ve heard that Chris is still busy in the studio finishing off a second game release ‘Final Fight: Double Impact’, and is planning to start work on another unique game: watch this space!
We caught up with Chris to hear what he had to say about his fantastic achievement:
“The BAFTA Scotland Best Game 2009 Award is a wonderful surprise – not only is this our first game, but it’s the first year they’ve had a gaming honour. I’m really proud of the work we did and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Proper Games team, my lovely wife and the guys at Escape for all their support. The games industry can be hard to break into these days, but Escape helped me onto the path of success!”
We love it when our students go on to achieve such a great success. Well done Chris – the game is great fun to play and I can’t wait to see what other creative ideas your team comes up with.
Regular readers of the blog will know that last week we had the awards ceremony of the CG Whiz competition. We managed to grab the three winners and some of the judges, including Steve Venning from The Mill, to film their views on the competition. We think everyone had a great time, and over the next few months we’re hoping to have blog posts from Adam Droy, the overall winner, and runners up Ronan McMeel and Marco Barrato, to see how the competition prizes have helped them break into the CG industry.
Well done to all who entered – we were astounded by the standard of the entries. For all those of you inspired by the entries keep an eye out for next year’s competition, and the chance to win another potentially career transforming prize.
Over the last few months we’ve spent a lot of time meeting various people from the CG world on Twitter, and have been discussing everything from the latest Autodesk upgrades or Softimage updates, to Nick’s doodles and even elephant clocks (this conversation really did happen). After all of this interaction, we thought it was about time that we got to meet some of you face to face, so on Friday we invited three of the more vocal Twitterers to a beer and CG evening at Escape Studios.
Armed with their latest pieces of work, Kevin Richter (@KevinRichter), Alex Amelines (@onehugeeye) and Charlotte Wills (@TimelordTotty) arrived at the studios for a quick tour followed by some one on one time with our tutors. A bit of face time with a Pixar veteran is always a bonus, so we sat the guys down to show their work off to Jeff Pratt, followed by some quality advice from Nick Savy (Batman Begins), and finished with advice from Maya Master Lee Danskin.
We’ll feature some of the work shown later on this week, but it was great to see the level of quality being produced. Once we’d finished with the question time section, we all headed off to the bar for some food, beer and CG banter. A great way to finish the evening.
A big thanks to Alex, Kevin and Charlotte for coming to see us, and we hope they had as much fun as we did. Take a look at their sites:
www.onehugeeye.com Alex’s superb character animation news and review site. Drop over and see what you think
www.kevinrichter.com Kevin’s personal portfolio. Kevin’s new book looks impressive
www.charlottes-animated-web.co.uk Charlottes personal portfolio. Some good work here, so take your time and browse around
We’d love to run another event like this sometime soon, so let us know if you’d be interested in coming along.
Congratulations to all the finalists of our CG Whiz competition. We had a great time at the Reveal Event last night, meeting the future stars of the CG industry. As we’ve said before, we were overwhelmed by the sheer number and quality of the entries we’ve received.
It’s clear that there’s a lot of talent out there, but there could only be one winner – Adam Droy (spikeycactus)!
Adam excelled across the board. His showreel highlighted his creative flair whilst demonstrating a sound understanding of the techniques involved. We’re very much looking forward to Adam studying with us at Escape next year, and wish him the best of luck during his work placement at The Mill.
The two runners up should also be commended, having fought off stiff competition from over 130 entrants.
Ronan McMeel’s (MrMeel) showreel earned him the runners up position, impressing the judges with his creativity and incorporating a storyline throughout his work.
Marco Baratto (smileandwave1987) also wowed the judges with a technically sound showreel – inspired by the “HP Hand” commercial.
Ronan and Marco – we hope you enjoy Escape Studios’ online courses and exclusive tour of The Mill.
For those of you that missed out this year, or didn’t get around to entering, don’t forget to keep your eyes peeled for information on next year’s competition. You’ll hear about it here first.
You might have read a couple of weeks ago about the winners of a prize draw we held for those who completed our survey. We wanted to see what people in and around the CG industry thought about their jobs and the world in which they work. We had a fantastic response, with over 2,800 professionals, hobbyists and students answering questions for us, and the results make for interesting reading.
One of the great things we found was that, if you’re a professional working in the CG industry in some form, you love your job. 80 per cent of you are happy working in the industry, and 59 per cent would recommend the career to others. How many other careers have that sort of approval rating?
However, despite the obvious enthusiasm people have for their work, there are some anxieties out there. 42 per cent of respondents said they are worried about job security, while a massive 62 per cent agreed they have had to do more training to refine their skills. Just a quarter of professionals agreed with the statement ‘I get enough training in my job’, with over half disagreeing with it.
For those of you that didn’t get a chance to answer the survey, what are your thoughts on the industry? Do you love it, but don’t get enough training? Or do you dislike the work, but could render a 3D feature with your eyes closed?
Here at Escape Studios, we pride ourselves on our close links with the industry. One of the ways we maintain these links is by having tutors who have done the jobs they teach. This means that our tutors are some of the best CGers in the business, and they’re an incredibly creative bunch.
One of these creative geniuses is Nick Savy, our Characters Course and Creatures Course tutor. Nick’s turned his hand to almost every part of the industry, from video games (working for the likes of Sega) to tv and film, where his work includes time spent on Batman Begins, Doom and the first Harry Potter. With this repertoire it’s no surprise that Nick is always creating, whether it’s in the classrooms with students or doodling in meetings. We think his sketches are pretty impressive, so we thought we’d share them with you (when he lets us). Who knows, maybe they’ll inspire some of you to share with us some of your sketches?
Let us know what you think, and if you’re inspired, show us what you’ve done.
It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for…
Escape Studios and The Mill are delighted to announce the shortlist of our CG Whiz competition. We’re astounded by both the level of interest and the standard of entries: we’ve had 136 entries, whilst the videos have received over 8,300 views!
The shortlist (in no particular order) is:
The shortlisted entries beat stiff competition and will now go forward for a chance to win the top prize of a course at Escape Studios followed by work placement with The Mill. Two runners-up will win online courses, and ten other runners-up will receive subscriptions to leading industry magazines Shots and 3D Artist.
The winners and runners-up will be announced on the 8th December at a prize giving event at Escape Studios.
Stephen Venning, 3D Executive Producer at The Mill, said: “We were very impressed by the sheer creativity and diversity of the entries we received from applicants around the world. It’s been extremely hard to pick the top entries so those we’ve shortlisted should be very proud of what they’ve achieved.”
The following have been specially commended by the judges:
All those listed in the ” Specially Commended” list are invited to contact Escape Studios in the coming days. Your entries have attracted our attention and we would like to hear more about you.
