Step into the mind-blowing world of VFX with The VFX Festival! Escape Studios has created the first ever four-day festival exploring the breathtaking world of visual effects, held in London on 10th-13th October.
Celebrating a decade of UK visual effects, the festival will be packed with the most respected VFX talent, visionaries and companies who have helped shape the industry. Offering inspirational insight behind the clever trickery in this booming VFX industry, with an exciting four-day programme packed with insider knowledge and information, showreel demos, hands-on workshops and exclusive premieres, it's perfect for those with a creative talent or thirst to develop their VFX Career.
The VFX Festival 2012 - Get your tickets now!
Union VFX's 'River Zoom'
In a bid to cure our post-Oylmpic blues, we've been re-watching Union VFX's fantastic opening sequence, comprising a mix of real photography, animation and CG elements, which helped to kick off the celebrations at the opening ceremony for the Games.
Escaping to IBC 2012
The 2012 IBC Conference & Exhibition is now in full swing in the buzzing city of Amsterdam. Let’s just say, you’re not going to find a hotel room very easily right now! Jason Jenner and I from the Escape Studios technology team are here to represent our partners in the world of tech. We’re here all week, so if you want to get in touch, please drop us a line.
HaZ Dulull - Plenty o'Success!
Hasraf Dullul is part of a generation of VFX artists first inspired by the film ‘Bladerunner’, since this early awakening, Hasraf, or Haz, as he is more fondly known by his contemporaries, has assembled a portfolio of some considerable weight; it includes a number of prestigious awards and world renowned projects. Batman: The Dark Knight, Planet Dinosaur and NOVA – Life beyond Earth, not to mention numerous VES (Visual Effects Society) awards nominations!
The most recent fruits of his labour have flourished in the form of his own VFX driven short film, ‘Fubar Redux’, which has been fondly described as ‘Animal Farm meets Platoon’ quite an intriguing round up right? Be sure to check it out here, we think it’s marvellous!
Fubar Redux - A must watch!
Escapee Hasraf Dulull's fifteen-minute film is a true work of art! Set in an alternate reality with cats and dogs, it mixes some intense action with some serious drama, all emphatically enhanced by a unique animation visual style.
SIGGRAPH Round Up...
Another year another SIGGRAPH and what a packed in week it was. This year, LA didn't just give us earthquakes, heat waves and the biggest burritos known to man but also a full week of presentations from some of the biggest and newest studios plus an exhibition hall packed with the latest technology from around the world.
Here is a quick summary and a few favourites from last week. These are just some of the things to check out:
The FREE tutorial for August!
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.
Maxon Cinema 4D
It has been announced this week that MAXON will be releasing CINEMA 4D R14 in September this year. MAXON have almost 20 years of programming innovation under their belts and CINEMA 4D is one of the best known and most successful 3D motion graphics, painting and rendering software applications around.
Last in the Current Series...
It is with great sadness that we post the last in the current series of mocha Pro V3 videos from our mocha Pro mini-series. But we had a good run...wouldn't you say?
The Foundry Summer Spectacular
Yesterday we announced the 1-day sale for The Foundry’s MARI but what we didn’t mention is that The Foundry and Escape Studios are treating everyone to a super summer sale. And there is no need to wait until August for these ones!
The summer promotions come in three pretty epic packages:
Scene Setters
If you haven’t seen clips of Prometheus yet, or even the film itself, then you are either living under a rock or from Germany (release date is August 8th apparently – unlucky).
Do you only have eyes for NUKE?
A few months ago our very own Simon Richardson, Escape’s in-house 2D genius, posted a series of blogs declaring his undying love for NUKE.
Now Announced... Speakers For HUG London!
Less than one week to go before the UK's first HIERO user group, HUG London and we have kept you waiting long enough as to who will be speaking.
NUKE & NUKEX 6.3v8 Now Available…
We are happy to announce that the latest version of The Foundry’s compositing package NUKE and NUKEX has now been released.
GTC 2012 NUKE spotlight
The GPU Technology Conference (GTC) took place in San Jose California from May 14th to May 17th. The conference is the brainchild of GPU giant NVidia and looks to celebrate global awareness of GPU computing and visualisation as well as the importance of the future of science and innovation.
Compositing: Creating the Illusion
Want to introduce yourself to some of the fundamental techniques of compositing? Well now you can. The lovely Simon Richardson, compositing escapee and one of our esteemed Studio Assistants here at Escape, has put together a free NUKE tutorial that will demonstrate exactly that. This short video will walk you through a basic CG rebuild inside NUKE, using Maya’s Mental Ray passes. For anyone starting out using this software, it’s a great insight into the processes behind building a shot ready for edit.
Get Involved With The Foundry
The Foundry are planning on launching a range of new online live product demos this summer, set to be a regular feature on The Foundry website. But before anything is set in stone they want to know what YOU want to hear about!
Studio Assistant Workshop - Final Gather Maps Part Two
Welcome back everyone!! I hope you all had a cracking weekend. Right now we are going to pick up where we left off on Friday with FG Maps.
Studio Workshop - Final Gather Maps
Ladies and gents, welcome to another Studios Assistant blog. Today's topic: Final Gather Maps.