The Force Is With Us at The Escape Studios VFX Festival Today

Today is the final day of the 2016 Escape Studios VFX Festival. It's been an amazing week, full of fascinating presentations by many of London's leading animation and VFX houses.

The Festival has been taking place at London's O2 this week, competing for attention with the BRIT awards that were the main event yesterday.

Today is very much the climax of the VFX festival. This evening ILM will talking about their awesome BAFTA-winning work on Star Wars, but throughout the day there are many excellent speakers. Let's take a closer look at what's happening at the VFX festival today...





Day 3 - Thursday 25 February 2016 - VFX, Games & Animation Professionals

10:30 am
Creative Assembly: Creating a Killer - Alistair Hope gives us a look behind the design and animation of the game Alien: Isolation

11:00am until 15:00pm

• Studio Recruitment Talks 
• Axis Animation
• Jellyfish
• ILM
• MPC

12:00 pm
Third Floor presentation
Why studios use previsualisation.

13:30 pm
Aardman Unwrapped: A 360° Xmas Delivery

Aardman will be present an overview of their new 360 degree animated short: Special Delivery.
One of the first films to use Google's new Spotlight Stories format to create an immersive, non-linear story designed to be viewed on mobile devices.

15:00 pm
DNeg: In the heart of the sea

15:45 pm
VR Panel: Virtual Reality is the future of VFX. But what are the drivers and barriers to the technology, and does it have legs? Featuring:

• Adam Cox – Future Source
• Andy Mcnamara – Rushes
• Karl Woolley – Framestore
• Mohen Leo – ILM
• Jon Starck – The Foundry
• Mike Bithell – Games Designer
• Adam Grint – The Mill

16:15 pm
Industry Panel: The Industry Panel is your opportunity to understand how the leaders of today see the industry of tomorrow. Featuring:

• William Sargent – Framestore
• Joce Capper – Rushes
• Eamonn Butler – Cinesite
• Will Cohen – Milk
• Hector Macleod – Glassworks
• Mark Benson - MPC
• Darren O’Kelly - The Mill

16:45 pm
Creativity in Education Panel: Come and learn what talent the top London studios are looking for, and what you need to do to get yourself ahead in industry. Featuring:

• Seetha Kumar – CEO, Creative Skillset
• Ian Livingstone CBE
• Alex Hope – DNeg
• Gina Jackson - NextGen Skills Academy
• Sir John Sorrell

17:45 pm
Headliner: ILM Presents Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Scott Pritchard will present ILM London’s work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Scott will focus on two characters created exclusively at the London studio, detailing the challenges that each character presented in taking them from concept art through to delivering their performances on the big screen!

And to give you a flavour of what the Festival will be like, below is a panel talk on careers in VFX from the 2015 Festival, featuring a discussion of what it takes to break into the industry.



VFX is a constantly changing landscape. Last year's "big thing" is this year's old news. So come along, and find out about the latest trends in our industry.

To see some of the recent work done by students at Escape studios, watch the video below. My personal favourite is the shot of London's BT Tower coming down, made by Escapee Michael Battcock - it's the last shot on the reel. Skip forward if you're in a hurry!





The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our new BA/MA starting in September 2016, follow this link.