Escape Studios had a special treat today as animator Paul Chung kindly agreed to come along and give a talk to our Academy Tour attendees, oh and half the current student population too…

So, the time is nearly upon us to open our doors to all you budding VFX artist wannabes to show you what we’re made of!

What sets 2D and 3D visual effect artists apart? Most would say, not a lot. Both teams of artists are necessary in the creation of stunning CG visuals. But have you ever wondered why someone would choose one path over another? What makes the ultimate Compositor or 3D VFX artist?

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…

We had an enquiry from one of our online students asking if she could view our online courseware on an iPad via the Skyfire app to view flash content... As we have not yet worked on mobile releases of our learning system (busy building fab courses), I thought I would take a look at it as I was kind of intrigued.

So I invest my £2.99 and loaded her up! I was amazed I could get in to our system and play the video content! Sadly my joy soon tempered when I could not make out the text in the 3DS Max interface. #disappointed!

The loading was also a little clunky to be honest, you would select a video to view and it would load a little window in the bottom left hand of the screen and find the video. Not elegant.

Not to be beaten I decided to look at some additional apps. Whilst I am sure there are others I came across iSwifter. It was also cheaper at £1.79 ;-)

So I was again a little disappointed, this time with the speed of scrolling in our system... However - once I played a video it was seamless, no drop outs excellent quality and I was really very happy with the results.

Whilst we do not 'officially support' the iPad or mobile devices, I now know at least I can grab iSwifter and load up a video with my iPad. If you do have an iPad and want to try this out iSwifter do allow you to take a peak so why not grab one of our free tutorials and give it a go?

Have a great weekend everyone.

I have been out on the road over the last month visiting universities across the UK, as part of our university tour, and wanted to give you an update on my progress so far. It's been a bit of a whirlwind, but meeting up with such enthusiastic and creative people is never a chore - you come back full of ideas an imbued with the same enthusiasm

Over the past couple of weeks we've been busy working on our online learning system. "Really? I haven't noticed any difference", I hear you say... Well, it is true that most of the work carried out has been "under the bonnet", so you might not have noticed anything. The reason for sharing this with you today though, is that this work is enabling us to bring to you a number of new features and enhancements.

Having started at the beginning of October, the first batch of students from our Online Mentored Visual Effects Course are well under way and the initial results of their work has been great.

If you work in TV or produce work for TV as a freelancer, you could receive between 50% (employees) to 80% (freelancers) off the price of four of our visual effects courses. These are online courses, so can be done in your own time. They are: Maya Core; Nuke for 3d Artists; Zbrush Foundation; and Advanced Lighting and Shading.

So, to celebrate the launch of our Online Mentored VFX course, we have decided to go mad and give away for free the first week of the course to fifteen lucky people.