The chances are, if you’re reading this blog, you’ve got more than a passing interest in the film industry. Alright, specifically the VFX part, but still, you’re keen to know as much as you can about the industry, and possibly how you can break into it (hopefully with our help…).

So when an academy awarded influential film editor like Walter Murch makes very detrimental comments about 3D stereo some people should take a long hard look at it. What does 3D really add to the whole film experience except expense and a headache? You can find his comments here - all of which are very observant and true.

You can really impress future employers by taking advantage of our two expert tutorials this month. Taken from our Character Animation Foundation and ZBrush for 3D Artist courses, they are designed to give you pro-skills in very specialised areas.

The cloud is only just beginning to really show its power and what it can do. This OnLive demo of their new video compression technology is astounding. It will open a whole new era of computing and inter-op that we can only dream of. Imagine running maya on an Ipad? Well, it's not that far fetched an idea, and I reckon rental of maya is a definate possibilty in the future. But what about having the ability to run any app on any hardware? This truely is a game changer and from their humble beginnings in just the games' world I think OnLive just showed that the future will be a very different place and that they may be a major force.

We said it was going to be tough to judge and we were right. The entries for this year’s CG Whiz competition blew us away (quite literally!) and the quality of the reels overall impressed each and every judge.

The actors unions and writers strikes are having a major negative impact on the film making capabilities all over the world. First, there was LA some years ago with their writters' strike. Now they threaten the film production in NZ according to the recent news. 

According to Variety we have been saved from yet more badly converted stereo films - check out the story here. Warner Brothers have canned the release of Harry Potter Deathly Hallows part 1 in 3D. This is due to quality issues, that were mainly due to time constraints, and Warner have come to the conclusion that the converted film was not high enough quality. I can only applaud them for not releasing yet another stereo nasty.

Absolute genius on the part of the creatives at Leo Burnetts for Norton.

Firstly a big thank you to all of you who entered our CG Graduate Design Awards. We were really impressed with the standard of entries and it made last week’s judging day with our friends at The Mill pretty tough.

Those of you who follow us on Twitter will know that we had our first ever realtime Twitter feedback session on Monday. I am told I should refer to them as Tweetups or Twitter parties, but if truth be told, it was a simple, honest, online showreel clinic!  We asked our followers to send us links to their reels, and Lee Danskin, our Training Development Director, provided his usual professional feedback.