It has been brought to our attention that Visual Effects facility Union VFX have recently collaborated with award winning director Danny Boyle on a couple of projects.

There were a whole raft of announcements and news stories about university applications last week - sadly they didn't get much air time as TV and radio stations remained firmly focused on the state of the Euro. Still, the BBC did publish a few stories which are worthy of further discussion.

For those of you who have always dreamt of using MARI, now is your chance. The Foundry and Escape Studios are running two training programs, each broken down over two evenings for MARI and the NUKE <> MARI bridge, both held at Escape Studios.

Some of our escapees are appearing in Arch 21 - an exhibition which is showcasing great student projects in architecture and VFX. Carlos Lora is one of the team responsible for organising Arch 21 (Pictured in the very centre) and was a student on our VFX for Production course which finished in April this year. Congratulations to you Carlos, it's quite an acheivement already!

If you're interested in Architecture and VFX, you should definitely go and have a look at the work being exhibited. With over 50 architecture students, graduates and VFX artists presenting their most recent work, it promises to showcase some amazing talent. The exhibition is at Blackhall Studios in Shoreditch from the 3rd to the 14th of August 2011 and is open from 10am to 8pm daily with the closing night being held on Saturday 13th of August.

Louisa Peacock, the Jobs Editor at The Telegraph, recently interviewed one of our escapees who is working as a compositor at Framestore. Alex Swann loves his job and explained what a day in the life of a compositor entails – everything from roto all the way through to rig removal.

Escape Studios is hitting the road this year undertaking a program of talks, presentations and master classes throughout the UK universities and colleges.

Few of you will have missed this morning’s headlines about yesterday’s violent student protests in London. Taking to the streets is not something that comes naturally to British people – unlike the French, who view student protests almost as a right of passage. So, having 50,000 of them marching in London shows the level of discontent over the government’s recent decision to increase tuition fees.

The coalition government released last week a whole host of new measures aimed at universities in a bid to make these institutions more transparent. You can read the full story published in the Telegraph here. I for one fully applaud the sentiment behind these measures, but if you'll allow me a cliché, "the devil is in the detail".

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.

Last week, I promised to share with you some more of the work that our students have presented to us at the end of their courses. This time, I have decided to show you the work of Tracey Chung, who recently completed our Character Animation course taught by Alex Williams.