Animation Foundation is Back on 28 May

Kevin Richards at Escape Studios

Our 10 week part-time Animation Foundation evening class in 3D animation is back, starting on 28 May at our High Holborn campus.

The class runs for 10 weeks on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, from 7-10pm.

The class, which is an introduction to the art and craft of 3D character animation, is taught by veteran animator and Escapee Kevin Richards.

Animation Foundation starts with the very basics - a bouncing ball - and builds towards a full understanding of locomotion and mechanics in 3D animation.

Character Walks Tutorial with Monty

Character Walk with Monty

We've added to our growing series of animation tutorials, hosted at Vimeo, with a tutorial/webinar on character walks.

The tutorial uses the free Monty rig, one of the rigs that we recommend for student use in the early stages of learning animation is the Monty Rig.

Monty was created back in 2007 by Raveen Rajadorai, and is free for download at Highend3D.com.

Home Sweet Home in LISFF on 11 April

LISFF 11 April 2019

Many congratulations to the makers of our short student film Home Sweet Home, which has been selected for the animation category of The London International Student Film Festival, taking place at the Close Up Film Centre in Shoreditch on Thursday 11th April at 6pm.

The LISFF is an annual film festival that takes place in London, and aims to provide a showcase for new filmmakers’ work. Tickets can be purchased for £5 from Event Brite. To see the full line-up, follow this link.

Run Cycle Tutorial by Amedeo Beretta

We've added a new tutorial to our growing list of online tutorials hosted at our Vimeo Channel.

This latest tutorial is a Run Cycle in six parts, using the free Rocket Girl rig from VMComix, and animated by 1st year animation tutor Amedeo Beretta.

Amedeo sets out an efficient workflow to animate human runs, as well as emphasising the effective use of reference material.

Carine Ong Line Producer at Framestore

Carine Ong, Escapee

Many congratulations to Carine Ong, an Escapee who studied 3D VFX and animation, who has just become a line producer at Framestore in London.

Prior to moving to Framestore, Carine worked as a production co-ordinator at London VFX pioneer One of Us, at Double Negative, Method Studios, and also at Rushes.

In 2018 returned to Escape Studios (at one of our "Evening with..." events), and gave an excellent talk about her work on many VFX projects, including Star Wars - The Last Jedi.

Steve Henderson, Our MA External Examiner

Steve Henderson

Meet Steve Henderson, our External Examiner for our Master's Degree in 3D animation at Escape Studios.  External examiners play an important part of quality control in UK higher education, ensuring that our courses meet the highest standards, and the grades awarded are correct and appropriate.

We're honoured to have Steve onboard; he is co-owner and Editor of Skwigly Online Animation Magazine, an excellent resource for the animation industry.

Steve is also director of the Manchester Animation Festival, one of the UK's largest animation festivals (and possibly the biggest), which takes place in November each year.

Escape Studios Opens Epic Games Sizzle Reel

We're proud to announce that this year's Epic Games "Sizzle Reel" showcase opens with the work of our very own games students at Escape Studios.  During this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC), Epic Games showcased a selection of the most impressive content created by students all around the world.  Not only were was the work of our students at Escape Studios selected for the start of the reel, but also we had the largest number of entries: seven in total.  Congratulations to all our amazing students and alumni for doing such great work.

BAFTA Scholarships for Post-Graduate Study

Want to do an MA in animation, games or visual effects - but short on cash? Why not apply for a BAFTA scholarship?

BAFTA has opened applications for its scholarship programmes, worth up to £12,000.

Vehicle Animation Tutorial at Vimeo

Jelly Cars by Lee Caller

We've added to our growing list of animation tutorials at Vimeo by adding a video tutorial in vehicle animation.

Animating vehicles is a big source of work in the visual effects world where, increasingly, digital effects have almost completely replaced stunt cars.

Animating vehicles and cars is fun to do and in many ways less complex than character and creature animation, but it's still important to have a good variety of work on your demo reel. Producers like depth in animation reels, and an animator who can tackle a variety of work will rarely be out of a job.

BYOA Tonight Monday 18th March

BYOA

BYOA (Bring Your Own Animation) is back - taking place in London tonight, Monday 18th March.

Organised by the London chapter of SIGGRAPH, BYOA is an animation event that takes place every month at a pub in central London, always on the third Monday of the month, and almost always at the same location.

This month BYOA is taking place  at its usual home - the Smugglers Tavern in Fitzrovia, a short walk from Escape Studios.

Kevin Richards to Teach at Escape Studios

Kevin Richards

Animator and Escapee Kevin Richards will be coming to Escape Studios on Monday to teach our short course and MA students.

Kevin is a traditional 2D animator who took our short course in animation at Escape Studios, and successfully made the transition to 3D animation in Maya.

Most recently Kevin has been working as an animator on the "Shane the Chef" YV Series at Cloth Cat animation in Cardiff.

Escape Studios Shortlisted for WUSCA

Escape Studios is proud to have been shortlisted for the Independent HE category of the What Uni Student Choice awards, which are based on student reviews.

The annual Whatuni Student Choice Awards (knowns as the "WUSCA"s) will be hosted by comedian Omid Djalili on April 25th at The Brewery in London.

MoCap Tutorial at Vimeo by Steve Lall

Our very own studio assistant Steven Lall has recorded an excellent video tutorial demonstrating the use of motion capture in animation, showing animators how to take a character with motion capture data and clean it up to create polished animation.

Performance Capture, aka Motion Capture, aka "MoCap", is a growing part of the animation industry. It's something our students need to be able to work with effectively, as many animation studios - and especially games studios - rely heavily on MoCap for their animation pipeline.

The tutorial uses the popular and dependable Norman rig, which can be downloaded free here. You can find the tutorial here.

Home Sweet Home in "Cortoons Gandia"

Congratulations to the makers of the animated short "Home Sweet Home", who have just made the official selection for the "Cortoons Gandia" animated film festival in Gandia, Spain.

The Cortoons festival, currently in its 16th year, celebrates international animated short films. "Home Sweet Home" was completed this year at Escape Studios as part of a final year collaboration between animation students and 3D artists, and is nominated for the category "International animated short film from 1 to 4 minutes".  

Animation Reel by Jamie Floodgate

Check out the animation reel of 3D animator Jamie Floodgate, who recently completed our Advanced Animation course at Escape Studios, learning from tutors Lee Caller and Aardman director Simone Giampaolo. Jamie's reel has some excellent animation, showing skill in both character and creature animation. His work is also easy to find; do a quick Google search for "Jamie Floodgate animation" and you will be taken straight to his website.  The website itself is simple, clear, attractive and easy to navigate - exactly as it should be. Congratulations to Jamie on his excellent work.

An Evening With...Hayes Davidson

For our next An Evening With event… on Monday 11th March, Escape Studios is welcoming Olga Banaszyk, 3D Artist, and Daniel Cherry, Technical Director at Hayes Davidson - a studio that specialises in architectural visualisation.

Walk Cycle Tutorial by Amanda Costa

Walk cycles are part of the foundation of the study of animation. Animating a walk cycle introduces student animators to the basic principles of human locomotion.

Adding to our growing body of tutorial videos at Vimeo, we now have an introduction to walks by our very own Studio Assistant Amanda Costa.

The tutorial uses the Ultimate Walker rig, free for download, and can be found at our Vimeo Channel here.

Blue Zoo Animation Recruitment Tips

Blue Zoo's Bader Badruddin at an industry event

Blue Zoo Animation, one of London's animation powerhouses and one of our long-standing industry mentors, has offered their Top Ten "Recruitment Stand Tips" for students and graduates hoping to impress at a recruitment stand.

Some of the tips are pretty obvious (number 1 is "turn up"), but overall this is a useful and informative read on how to approach potential recruiters at an industry event. 

Interview with DreamWorks' Simon Otto

Above is is a great video interview with DreamWorks animator Simon Otto on animating dragons - and on animation in general. It's pretty long; runs about an hour, but if you've got some time, get yourself a cup of tea and some decent headphones and settle in for an hour of animation instruction from one of the masters.  If you want to be a great animator, following in Simon Otto's footsteps is a great place to start.

Luxo Lamp Animation Tutorial at Vimeo

Lamp animation by Kamile Pranckunaite

Character animation at Escape Studios starts with a lamp - a version of the angle lamp made famous by Pixar in their 1986 short "Luxo Jr".  

As with much of our animation classroom content, we now have a series of tutorial videos hosted at our Vimeo Channel for any students who missed the class, or need to go over the tutorial a second time.

How to Make an Animated Teaser/Trailer

Our second year undergraduate animators at Escape Studios are currently working in teams on their first studio project - making a teaser or trailer for an upcoming film, TV series or video game. Of course, the project itself isn't a real one, but the finished teaser/trailer should make it feel real, and should make the audience want to go and see it. Making a teaser or trailer is a lot like making a short film, albeit a rather specialised one. There are many elements to consider, from concept to script through storyboard, design, 3D layout, cinematography, animation, lighting and final render. So, how do our students go about successfully making a teaser or trailer?

Storyboard Summer School Starts 5 July 2019

Iliana Franklin - Storyboarding at Escape Studios

Mark your calendars - we're running a four week intensive storyboarding class at Escape Studios next summer, starting on Friday 5th July 2019.

Story board artist Iliana Franklin, whose production credits include The Tale of Despereaux, is returning to Escape Studios to teach the art and craft of storyboarding, a vital part of the pre-production process.