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.
Top 8 tips for the perfect show reel
Everyone knows the importance of a well put together show reel, but it's surprising how many there are out there that fail to tick all of the right boxes. Very often a show reel will fail to showcase the breadth of skill of the candidate, or will let itself down with a few issues that are fairly simple to fix. Therefore, we've put together a list of points to help you perfect your show reel and to maximise the impact it has on prospective employers. After much discussion at Escape Studios, plus a fair bit of back and forth on Twitter, we have whittled down the list to these 8 tips:
VFX Showreel: Part 2
Last month, we showcased some fantastic work which came off the back of our Visual Effects Course. Seems that everyone really enjoyed it so we thought we'd treat you to another. The quality of work from these guys, especially as it's after just 12 weeks of training, is pretty amazing. Hat's off to them!
Calling all Uni Grads
We are launching our new online competition to uncover the crème of the CG class of 2010 on both sides of the Atlantic. The CG Graduate Design Awards is the first international competition of its kind, where we’ll be giving the most talented graduates out there a helping hand into the competitive computer graphics world.
Latest VFX Graduate Showreels
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.
Feedback competition winners
We’re pleased to announce the winners of our latest Facebook competition. Having submitted their showreels to the Escape Studios Facebook fan page, five people were selected at random.
Head of 3D at The Mill shares his showreel must-do's
Our friends over at The Mill, namely Head of 3D Jordi Bares, has compiled a list of crucial do's and don'ts to help you create a sought-after showreel. So, if you're aiming to catch the attention of a potential employee, you best read on...
Sixty Seconds with Featured Artist: Compositor Tara Roseblade
The compositing industry is booming right now which is why we were grateful to Tara for taking a couple of minutes out of her busy day to answer a few questions about what it’s like working in the industry since leaving Escape Studios. Tara’s reel shows everything that a good junior compositing showreel should. It includes examples of roto, rig/wire removal, colour correction and some good CG comping. Each shot is accompanied by a detailed breakdown - which is a great way of demonstrating these skills.
Announcing The Winners of the CG Whiz Competition...
Congratulations to all the finalists of our CG Whiz competition. We had a great time at the Reveal Event last night, meeting the future stars of the CG industry. As we’ve said before, we were overwhelmed by the sheer number and quality of the entries we’ve received.
Showreel or Show off!
Many of our candidates present their CG work on a website or Blog. In most circumstances this method is totally acceptable – when we need to send a candidates details over to client at short notice this is the perfect method.
