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We have been hard at work planning our next set of video tutorials for you all to enjoy but right now, we are very keen to hear directly from you what sort of tutorials would help you most. Since we understand that you are all busy, we have put together a super quick, super simple 5 question survey, and all those who fill it in will get a chance to win a free Maya Essentials online course or a ZBrush for 3D Artist online course.

It's the time of the week when I share with you the news that picked my interest over the last seven days. This time, there are the following goodies on offer: a cool making of from Framestore, some great new tutorials, a trailer of Pixar's "Brave", a new trailer for Spiderman and lots of education news related to Michael's latest announcements regarding education reforms.

This was hardly surprising news, but the positive spin put on this stat by Universities UK, was that the drop wasn’t as great as predicted. However, a decrease of 8.7% is significant, and demonstrates prospective students are unable or unwilling to pay the increase in fees imposed by the current government.

There were more women than men applying, but the biggest drop is not amongst school leavers, down only 3.6%, but from older students over 21 which were down significantly.

However, there was also a slight increase in overseas students applying here, and conversely more UK students are applying abroad, for example, Maastricht University forecasts 600 applications.

It’s not rocket science figuring out that fees of £9000 p/a over a three year degree, plus all living costs will be a considerable sum to repay, and for a non-vocational degree, it will require serious thought to justify. After all, if the degree studied will not guarantee a job at the end earning you X amount, then being saddled with that kind of debt is a hefty burden to bear.

Even the prospect of the student idyll and those first tastes of freedom living away from the parents, in the life of Riley, may now seem a little indulgent.

In our sector, Animation and Computer Graphic degrees are wide ranging and extensive, but this can be both their strength and their weakness. Yes, you may learn a wide range of skills, direct your own mini movie masterpiece, and if you’re exceptionally talented and hardworking, this film may lead to a job winning Showreel.

The reality is too often we see films that are either strong in one discipline but severely lacking in others, so making the overall effect disappointing. Or either, so many students have worked on one jaw dropping movie, that it’s hard to see exactly how much of a role any one individual played in the overall execution.

If getting a job is your top priority, fair to say it’s better to study an in-depth industry specific course, such as we offer here at Escape Studios, rather than something less focused.

Hype or Genius? That’s the question on many people’s lips – especially with so much speculation as to whether or not it will steal the show at the Oscars, and take the prize for best picture.

My, what a busy week! There are announcements from the likes of Pixar about their RenderMan software, interviews with London studios such as Pixomondo and the much more education controversy. Here's my pick of last week's more interesting stories.

A few weeks ago, we posted some details of changes and improvements we were making to our courses. We promised we would be giving details of these improvements soon, and today we are going to be talking to you about Houdini.

First week back at work and it's as if Xmas was months ago. The news certainly kept on coming this week, and here is a quick summary of what I picked up on this week.

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.

CG Whiz is over for another year, and it’s been a brilliant competition, with an incredible level of talent on show in both categories. It's now time for what you have all been waiting for, the announcement of the winners. But before I do so, I wanted to take time to give you some information on what our judges were looking for.

This is an incredibly depressing statistic, but one that I wish had been accompanied by more background information and context. I read it in a BBC article entitled “National Literacy Trust highlights book-free millions” published last week. According to the BBC, a new report by the National Literacy Trust indicates that the proportion of children without books is increasing, and now stands at one in three, compared to one in ten in 2005.

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.

There were a whole raft of announcements and news stories about university applications last week - sadly they didn't get much air time as TV and radio stations remained firmly focused on the state of the Euro. Still, the BBC did publish a few stories which are worthy of further discussion.

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.

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.

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.

The 10th Edition of the VES (Visual Effects Society) Awards is upon us, and whilst I know many of you will already be working on your entries for it, I thought I would take time to write about it in this blog to encourage those of you who haven't considered entering the competition.

Last week, disgruntled students took to the London streets to protest about tuition fees and the "privatisation" of universities. Frankly, I don't think it got the attention it deserved, but in an unstable world where the media is focused on the economic consequences of what Greece and Italy's political elite are up to, I can't say I am surprised. Shame though, because there is a lot that still needs to be said about this government's reform of the higher education system.

Time’s up! Escape Studios’ CG Whiz competition 2011 is now closed. Our judges are starting work behind the scenes and boy, do they have some work to do! What a breath of fresh air this year’s entries have been! The standard has been exceptionally high and unbelievably inspiring. Not only are they technically accomplished, but they are also proof of the raw talent that continues to emerge. All, I'll say is that I’m glad I'm not judging the countless number of entries; they’d all get my vote!

Every so often, I come across something that makes me pause for a second. I did just that yesterday in one of my usual web trawls. 

There’s less than two weeks to go before CG Whiz 2011 closes to new entries, so we thought we’d take a look at the entries we’ve so far received for this year’s contest. We’ve had nearly 80 entries already and we’ve been blown away by the level of talent out there.

CG Whiz 2011 has been open for entries for over a week now, and we’re already seeing lots of great work coming in. We know a lot of you will be hard at work on your showreels, so to give you some insight into what the judges will be looking for in the amateur category, we caught up with Lee Danskin, our Training Director and a CG Whiz judge since the competition started two years ago.

We’re delighted to announce that CG Whiz 2011 is now open! We’re accepting entries from today for the competition, with the winner receiving a 12 week classroom course at Escape Studios and a 12 week placement with The Mill in either its London or LA offices. This is a once in a life time opportunity that could kick start the career of one talented young artist. If you don’t believe us, see what past winners Stu Schwartz and Adam Droy say about what winning has meant for them.

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.

Following on from last week's announcement about our Weekly Round-Up of news, here are the 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.

We just caught up with Stu Schwartz—last year’s CG Whiz winner.  Here’s what he had to say about the experience and knowledge he’s gained and, of course, a few tips for this year’s submissions:

I learned a lot this last summer at Escape Studios as a student and intern but one of the most important things I want to make sure students and aspiring artists know is that I found out how important networking can be.  The more you get out there and meet people, the more opportunities will present themselves.  Escape is located right near the heart of countless studios and is always putting on events and connecting with other studios and industry professionals.  It's been a great environment for meeting other artists and potential employers.  So keep that in mind as you move forward in your careers.

For some time now, I have been doing a weekly round up of news for our own internal use at Escape Studios. I never actually thought of sharing it more widely until someone pointed out to me last week, that actually, maybe it would be useful to the people who read this blog. 

I know it sounds nuts, but I promise this is not a joke. My colleague Susan wrote a post about this yesterday in our US Blog and pointed to an article in the Washington Post entitled "To inspire, schools take a page from Disney".

With the launch of our Creative Futures report, we have been giving the topic of 'Jobs in the Creative Industries' a lot of thought lately. We have been talking to many professionals in sectors as diverse as Graphic Design, Architectural Design, Web Design or VFX. Ultimately, the majority of men and women we have been talking to are interested in getting tips and advice on how to get better jobs and further their careers. Seems it's quite a hot topic. So much so that Dom - our CEO - was asked to write a piece for The Guardian about what young professionals needs to do to improve their changes of getting a job in the creative industries.

Here is something cool to brighten your Friday afternoon and to prepare you for the weekend. It has been doing the rounds this week, and was even featured in the Metro earlier in the week.

Dom, Mark and I were delighted to play hosts to Ed Vaizey – the UK Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries – yesterday.

A great artist died yesterday and whilst his death has nothing whatsoever to do with the world of CG and VFX, I thought many of you would be mourning the death of this great artist.

Those of you starting out in the CG industry may be interested to know that the Sydney Opera House is currently running an animation competition.

After years of waiting, Harry Potter finally nears the end with the last instalment which premiered in London last week. Warner Brothers' decision to convert the final Harry Potter film into a 3D format left many of us concerned the magic would be lost.

Those of you who, like me, enjoy beautiful photography are in for a real treat with this one. Louie Schwartzberg has spent a life time filming flower pollination in its most minute details and his work is of breathtaking beauty.

Finland native, Miska Janhunen had been working for his family’s visual design firm as a Webmaster for some time, but he harboured a dream of working in VFX. For years he has been trying to find time and flexibility to study CG. “Because of my location and current situation in life, it felt more or less ‘mission impossible’. Then, in the autumn of 2010, I found Escape Studios’ Online Mentored VFX course and all the pieces fell into place.”

An announcement by Edge, the education charity, caught my eye this week. It said that universities should now be required to teach employment skills as part of degree courses. According to its latest study, employers now believe too many graduates are unfit for the workplace.

We were absolutely delighted when Iain Mackenzie of the BBC chose to come to Escape Studios to chat to Lee Dankin and Mark Cass about the state of the UK Visual industry, which is currently booming.

Did any of you watch the first episode of a brand new BBC1 series called "Inside the Human Body"? It aired last night for the first time and I watched in total amazement. OK, so most of you who follow my posts will know that I avidly watch any science programs...  I know I am a captive audience, but seriously, the visual effects were absolutely beautiful and the program captivating.

Those of you who are fans of The Terminator, The Abyss, Avatar or even Titanic, will enjoy watching this video of James Cameron in which he explains what actually drove him to film making and the people and things that provided inspiration to him along the way.

It’s not often that I see something that just makes me pause and wonder in amazement, but a few days ago, I came across a short video that did just that.

Garreth Gaydon, Lee Danskin and escapee Ben Cantor are going to be joining a live Q&A session on 'How to Break into the Visual Effects Industry' hosted by the Guardian online.

Want to get an insider’s view on all things VFX? If the answer’s yes, then our next Twitter advice session is right up your street. 

I don't often get completed 'weirded out' by news announcements, but this one really made me stop for a second. Sports Business News published a story yesterday about this year's Wimbledon tennis tournament being shown in 3D. According to them, "The 3D coverage will be produced in partnership with the BBC, the host broadcaster of the tournament, and will also be offered to international broadcasters. Sony will also work with theatrical distribution partner SuperVision Media to take the action into cinemas".

We were all delighted for our friends at Double Negative on Sunday, as they scooped an Oscar for their VFX work on Inception, and the whole country was feeling a touch of national pride as Brits dominated the ‘big’ awards. No matter what your thoughts on the future of British film, it was certainly a good day to be a part of the UK film industry.

WETA are doing what they can for the victims of the Christchurch earthquake by hosting an auction on ebay of some famous collectibles. So, if you fancy getting your hands on some pretty cool and rare film memorabilia while doing your bit for charity, now is your chance. Check it out here.

No doubt you’ll all be looking forward to the Oscars this weekend. It's particularly significant if you’re a VFX fan, with five nominees in the Visual Effects category this year rather than three.

Want to know what it’s like to do one of our Mentored courses? Well we caught up with Escapee Ricardo Viana to find out how he got on – all the way from sunny Portugal.

Have you seen the interview with our friends at Union VFX (the company behind the visual effects for 127 Hours) on HeyUGuys? With the Oscars around the corner, it’s good to get an insider’s view on one film that’s up for a few gongs.

We know just how popular our webinars are on all things CG, well the next in line is all about our Mentored Training and includes a preview of our exciting e-Learning platform.

For those who can’t give up work for 12 weeks or come to our offices in London or Los Angeles, Mentored Training is just the ticket. You can study our VFX or Compositing online and still get expert mentoring and feedback from our tutors and share your creations with classmates on Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo (that’s thanks to our clever e-learning technology!).

At last, we have good news for graduates in the UK. The Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) have just released figures indicating that the number of graduate vacancies is actually on the increase for the first time since the recession started. 

Exciting news on the Escape Studios blog - we’re pleased to announce that 3D World’s very own online editor Andy Price is going to be giving us his take on the latest CG action. For those that don’t know, Andy covers everything that's up and coming in the world of CG and animation for 3D World.

Do you have lots of things to say about Escape Studios? We've put together a satisfaction survey which has been designed to help us understand what you'd like to see from Escape Studios. If there are things you think we can improve or are doing really well, we really do want to hear about it.

With 2011 around the corner, I wanted to reflect on some of the amazing things that Escape Studios has achieved this year.  Opening our offices in LA, launching our brand new US website, the phenomenal success of CG Whiz and the launch of our Mentored Training Courses is just the tip of the iceberg. We've had Paul Frankin of DNEG talk to our students about the incredible VFX created for Inception and Christan Manz, VFX supervisor on the latest HP7 talk about how Framestore wowed with their character creation.

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.

Our next ZBrush short course is starting on December 13th and we only have a few places left - so you need to hurry if you want to have a chance to take part. 

Dom – our CEO – sent me a link to Alexa Meade’s website some time ago and I have been meaning to write about it ever since.

Here I am, sat in the airport with some time to kill – so I start reading the papers and the front pages are all covered with reviews of last night’s premiere of Harry Potter (The Deathly Hallows Part 1) in London. That’s lucky, because I really like Harry Potter and I am quite looking forward to seeing the film.

We’ve had some fantastic entries for CG Whiz 2010, but the deadline is fast approaching. Any entries submitted after midnight tonight (Pacific Time – 8 am GMT or 7 pm in Sydney, Australia) will not be counted, so you’ve only got a few more hours to get your reel in.  You can do this via Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube or Facebook, but remember to email CGWhiz@escapestudios.com with your contact details too.

Last week, we launched our first academic qualification, an MA in Visual Effects Production, which we’re running with the University of Bradford. You’ll probably be wondering what we’re up to, what with everything that’s been in the news about how much university tuition is going to cost in the UK. Having collaborated on this project with some leading industry pros, however, I reckon we’re on to a winner. Here’s why: 

Judging by the high number of re-tweets and Facebook shares of the story I posted on October 19th about Mandelbrot, I figured this was a subject that interested many of you. I am glad I am not the only one!

I read something last week which made me angry, sad and yet hopeful at the same time… This one is a bit of a long story, and I hope it won’t sound too much like a rant, but I feel I owe it to all the people who, like me, felt rather disappointed when they watched “Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit”.

The coalition government released last week a whole host of new measures aimed at universities in a bid to make these institutions more transparent. You can read the full story published in the Telegraph here. I for one fully applaud the sentiment behind these measures, but if you'll allow me a cliché, "the devil is in the detail".

Those of you into weird mathematical equations will probably have heard of Benoît Mandelbrot - who is famous for being the father of fractal geometry. Sadly he died a few days ago, but not without leaving us with the most amazing body of work.

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.

Calling all aspiring artists and CG wannabes!  Here’s your opportunity to build your dream career.  Today we launched CG Whiz 2010 our annual search for the hottest amateur computer graphics talent. We’re offering over £15,000 or $24,000 worth of prizes for the winners, thanks to our co-sponsors, The Mill, CG Society and 3D Artist.

When Adam Droy entered the CG Whiz competition, he didn't believe he'd even make it to the runners up stage.  Like many, knowing that the competition was tough, he submitted his showreel and forgot all about it. When he got the call asking him to come along to the CG Whiz reveal event he was astounded, and when we called his name as winner, he just about managed to find his feet to collect the prize. 3D Artist caught up with Adam to find out what life has been like in the aftermath of winning the competition.  As a judge of this year's CG Whiz, we're excited to know what he's going to be looking for.

We’re really excited about this month’s free tutorial because it’s taken from our new soon-to-be launched ZBrush Course. This tutorial is great if you’re looking to up your ZBrush skills to an advanced level. It’s an in-depth tutorial that demonstrates how to use tools to create fine details, specifically ‘Wear and Tear’ on a pre-made Gas Mask model. Plus, it’s only 12 minutes long so you’ll be able to squeeze it into your lunch break.

For those that may not have heard, the UK Film council is under threat of closure after having its funding cut. The UK Film Council has done many great things for the industry since its inception in 2000. We now have the highest cinema attendance in 7 years, UK film exports are also the highest in 7 years, and inward investment in the industry has doubled from 2008 to now.

Escape Studios is going to SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles next week. We’ll have a booth at the SIGGRAPH 2010 Job Fair (booth #26) and we’d love to see you there. Drop by and pick up some of the Escape Studios goodies! 

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.

We’ve launched the CG Graduate Design Awards aimed at uncovering talented uni grads in the UK and US. This is the first international competition of its kind, where we’ll be giving fresh talent, a helping hand into the competitive computer graphics world with our partners The Mill. So, if you’re a student or recent graduate dreaming of breaking into the industry, this is the opportunity for you.

As many of you will know, we are running our first Animation course with our new tutor Alex Williams starting on July 5th, and we still have a couple of places remaining. If you are interested in learning how to become a professional animator, and want to take advantage of Alex’s expert knowledge, then please get in touch to reserve your place. There are only a couple of weeks to go, so make sure to get in touch straight away!

Thanks to everyone that responded to our graduate survey a few weeks ago. It uncovered some interesting thoughts on the industry and challenges you face getting into CG.

Check out some of the latest work from the VFX Course that's just finished.  The work is really imaginative and demonstrates real technical ability - all pretty cool considereing they were here for just 12 weeks.  If you're interested in VFX now is the time to get in touch so you can take advantage of our early bird discount.

In conjunction with their fantastic upcoming Ray Harryhausen – Myths and Legends Exhibition, the London Film Museum are offering the chance to meet the great man himself.

Following the success of our 500 competition, we’re launching another one exclusively on Facebook. We’ve improved the prize as well – not only will the winner get three months access to an online course of their choice, they’ll also receive a free critique of their work by one of Escape’s tutors, all experts in their fields. Four runners up will also receive critiques of a piece of their work.

At the Animation and Story Master Class which took place recently, we caught up with Matthew Luhn to get his thoughts on animation. He has worked on some of the biggest animated films produced, including Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Monsters’ Inc., Finding Nemo and Up. Prior to joining Pixar in 1992 Matthew worked on The Simpsons as an animator.

We’ve got a great competition for those of you on Facebook. One lucky person will be selected from members of our fan page to have free access for three months to one of our new online courses.

We’ve got some exciting news: we’ve hired games industry veteran Tim Flett. Tim will be our new Business Development Manager for Games and Interactive, in charge of growing our professional services, which include training, technical consulting as well as hardware and software solutions.

We’ve just made another free tutorial available to you all: Camera Projection in Nuke is a great opportunity for those of you who want a better understanding of Nuke's 3D environment.

Over the last few months we've spent a lot of time meeting various people from the CG world on Twitter, and have been discussing everything from the latest Autodesk upgrades or Softimage updates, to Nick's doodles and even elephant clocks (this conversation really did happen). After all of this interaction, we thought it was about time that we got to meet some of you face to face, so on Friday we invited three of the more vocal Twitterers to a beer and CG evening at Escape Studios.

It's the moment you've all been waiting for... Escape Studios and The Mill are delighted to announce the shortlist of our CG Whiz competition. We’re astounded by both the level of interest and the standard of entries: we’ve had 136 entries, whilst the videos have received over 8,300 views! The shortlist (in no particular order) is:

The deadline has passed, and we’re now reviewing all 136 entries we received. We’ve been amazed by both the number and quality of the submission, so well done to all who’ve entered.

There’s just two days until the end of the CG Whiz competition, so if you’re going to enter you’d better post your videos soon! We’ve had 96 entries so far, will yours be joining them? Remember, the deadline is Friday 30^th October, and to enter you need to post your entry to this video. Don’t leave it until the last minute, get posting now!

We are so excited about the launch of our brand new Advanced Shading online course, we decided to give you access to over an hours worth of free tutorials from it. You can sign up and start learning right away; all you need to do is register on our website to access our online learning centre, then follow the instructions.

Our CG Whiz competition has got off to a fantastic start - we’ve already had an impressive 27 entries but there’s still time to submit your best work.

I’m sure you’ve all seen that our website’s undergone a bit of a makeover recently. We’ve added lots more news on our latest courses, free tutorials and information on events including the launch of our fantastic competition CG Whiz.

The summer is upon us, and school leavers across the land are wondering what next year will bring. Will I go to University? Will I go to College? Should I pursue my dreams or compromise because I have little chance to succeed?

Welcome to Escape Studios’ very own blog. Come here for updates on the latest news and opinions from a selection of the Escape Studios team including, CEO Dominic Davenport, Development Director Lee Danskin, Recruitment & Training Director Paul Wilkes, Escape Tutors Simon Fenton and Jeff Pratt and Marketing Director Isabelle Duarté. You’ll find all you need to know about our latest courses, competitions and the Escape Awards. We’ll also be sharing our expertise, graduate success stories plus our views on the hottest issues in the computer graphics world. Find out what we’re passionate about and get insider knowledge of the latest goings on at one of the most successful and well-respected CG academies. We’d like to hear your thoughts, so please share you comments with us. Escape Studios