It's been a while since we featured any escapee work on our blog so I wanted to show you a recent reel which has really impressed us.
CG Whiz 2011 Shortlist is Announced!
The entries for CG Whiz 2011 are in and the judges are now hard at work reviewing this year’s crop of talent. We’ve had over 200 showreels entries, making 2011 the biggest CG Whiz yet!
Check Out the Work of Our Character Animation Students
Character Animation can be a tricky business. The industry is full of talented, creative people who are passionate and dedicated about what they do and this means they often have lengthy careers at the same company they first started out at. So, getting your first break can be tough because when those job opportunities arise, standards are high and so are expectations. Your work really does have to stand out.
Evening Courses have Never Been so Popular
Creative Futures is a study we recently commissioned to uncover what people in the creative industries really think about training. One of the key factors emerging from the report was that many professionals currently in full time employment, were actively seeking new skills to further their career. In these cases online or evening study are the only option.
Motionographer: Inspiration for Your VFX Work
Some of you may already know this, but here is an incredibly useful website called Motionographer which I actually check daily.
It's All About The Showreel
Starting out in VFX can be difficult for junior artists, but the best place to start is your showreel. It needs to be compelling and to demonstrate all the technical skills that you possess.
Escapee Showcase: Roger Serrabassa Vilar
We're very proud of the work we do here at Escape Studios but we probably don't show enough of our students' work. Over the coming months we're going to be featuring much more student work on our website but in the meantime I wanted to start showing some of the reels from our most recent graduates.
Breaking into the VFX industry – Escape Studios Featured on The Guardian’s Latest Careers Q&A
You may remember last month that Lee Danskin and Paul Wilkes were featured on The Guardian’s careers blog about the film industry. This month, the topic was ‘Breaking into the Visual Effects’, and as it’s our specialist subject we had no less than three spokespeople on the panel this time.
Amazing Showreel from Displace Studios
Here's a link to a fantastic reel from our friends at Displace Studios, they worked with us earlier this year to create some eye popping 3D brand furniture for our new website and other collateral. They did an amazing job for us and I wish them every luck with this new venture.
CG Whiz update
We’re eight days into this year’s CG Whiz competition, and we’ve been amazed by the quality and number of entries through the door so far. It’s going to be a tough one to judge and to think we’ve still got three weeks to go to see what talent’s out there.
Balloons & Zeppelins: Fresh VFX escapee work
Here's my final post showing some work from the courses which have just finished. These clips are from escapees who were on the Visual Effects Production course taught by Dan Shutt. Again these are 'work in progress' and need a little more polishing but you can see they are both great ideas that have been really well executed.
Tracey Chung: a budding character animation artist
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.
VFX Professional - New work!
We've just had another round of courses finish and again we've seen some really great work!
Junior Artists - Keep that VFX Shot Simple
A common misconception amongst Junior Artists when preparing their first reel is that they have to come up with some overly elaborate and complex VFX shot to wow future employees. These usually feature exotic spaceships, massive explosions and weapons of mass destruction. It doesn't have to be like that. So, what makes a good CG shot? I had a chat with our Training Development Director and Maya Guru Lee Danskin to find out.
Two showreel tips
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.
Robert Holmes takes time out to talk about his career to date
It’s always great to find out how escapees get on after their training and enter the world of work. Last week, we met up with ex-student Robert Holmes out at SIGGRAPH. Since his time at Escape, Rob’s gone on to work on some amazing projects at The Mill. He took time to tell us how he got his break and what’s needed to be successful in this industry.
CG Graduate Design Awards competition entry date extended to 16th August
Firstly, a big thanks to everyone who has entered our CG Graduate Design Competition Award so far. Entries have been coming thick and fast and as always the standard has been exceptional.
Thanks also for keeping in touch via all our social networks - it really is great to hear from you all and it just reaffirms our belief that the UK and the US have a wealth of talent and will undoubtedly produce many future stars in the CG world.
Competition reminder
It's great to see entries coming through for our Graduate Design Awards. Just a quick reminder you need to upload your show reel to our YouTube channel and then complete your entry by sending your contact details to escapestudios@brands2life.com. We need your name, showreel title, email address, telephone number, year of graduation, university and course attended.
Graduated but still looking for a job?
The BBC recently reported on the struggle faced by graduates to find a job after leaving university. Unemployment amongst grads aged below 24, rose by 25% last year.