As some of you may know, we recently launched a new course called "Visual Effects Animation Professional". Well, our first group of students from the courses have been handing their projects in and I wanted to take the opportunity to showcase a fantastic piece of work by Hyeon Joon Kang. His work clearly shows how the VFX pipeline works and if we retrace his steps, we can take a closer look at each part of the process. Joon's project is a great illustration of what we teach in this new course and what you can achieve in just 18 weeks with us.

We came across this video and just had to share it with you all. Check it out!

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, here is a great video that shows life behind the scenes at Dneg. It is a really good way to get an idea of what it would be like to work for a world class Visual Effects house like Double Negative. They are one of the fastest growing Visual Effects houses in the UK and one of the top Visual Effects houses in the world.

Chaos Group recently released Phoenix FD 2.0, the latest version for their grid based simulator. This latest version now comes with liquids, foam & splashes simulation capabilities, a particle shader and GPU preview improvements.

Last Thursday, the winners of CG Whiz 2011 were announced at the much anticipated Reveal Event held at our Escape Studios headquarters in London. The room was busy with noise and champagne as Daniel Danielsson waited patiently to find out whether he had scooped first place. He needn’t have worried though as Mark Cass our General Manager and head judge Lee Danskin soon explained why Daniel deserved first place. With no professional training at all, he took it upon himself to learn all of the software that enabled him to create such a professional looking showreel.  Check out the Reveal Event video, created by The Mill, to find out why Daniel was pretty much speechless when he found out.

This will be my last Weekly Round-Up of News for this year..., hope you enjoy it. If you have suggestions for stories I missed, just drop me a line or post a comment. I'll be sure to look at your suggestion during the Xmas break.

I thought I would let you guys into something special... A look at the truly fantastic Christmas video from The Mill's 2D department. In between working on some of the world's best VFX for commercial spots, The Mill still finds time to make a departmental Christmas video to compete at their Christmas party.

The judging is done, and the votes are in – the winners for CG Whiz 2011 have been decided upon, but you’ll have to wait until the 14th December to find out who the winner are. I know, it's a bit cruel, but we like to make a big deal of our Reveal Event. It's only fair considering how much work all our entrants have put in to their reels.

Here is my usual Weekly Round-Up of News, with stories that I have picked up over the past week. If you have suggestions for stories I missed, just drop me a line or post a comment.

MARI has already gained a reputation for being a powerful compositing tool, but the team at The Foundry continue developing this software to make MARI an even faster, more flexible tool.