"Ask Me Anything" with Pixar's Mike Makarewicz on Wednesday July 1st at 6pm

Mike Makarewicz

We're delighted to welcome Pixar animator Michal Makarewicz for an exclusive webinar with our animation students at Escape Studios on July 1st at 6pm.

Mike is a 17 year veteran animator at Pixar Animation Studios, and Co-Founder of the Animation Collaborative in Emeryville, California.

Mike has generously agreed to give up an hour of his time to talk to our students about animation, breaking into the industry, and what it's like to work on a Pixar film. All questions are welcome.

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.

Meet Royce Wesley from Pixar on 28 June

Royce Wesley

Enter our competition and win a chance to meet Royce Wesley from Pixar. Royce is flying in from LA to mentor our animation students and give feedback on their work, and he's giving an animation masterclass at Escape Studios on Thursday 28 June.

Royce has worked on some of Pixar’s biggest hits including Toy Story 3, Brave, Cars 3, Coco, and - most recently - Incredibles 2.

To mark the occasion, we’ve organised a special evening where Royce will share his experiences working on some of Pixar’s latest animation films - and his tips on how to become a successful animator. We’re giving away 20 free tickets to the event.

An Evening With Royce Wesley on 28 June

Incredibles 2 - coming soon

We're excited to host Pixar animator Royce Wesley, fresh from working on Incredibles 2, as part of our next "Evening With..." series of events at Escape Studios.

Royce Wesley is a skilled animator who will be visiting London in June, when he will be mentoring our student animators.

Our "Evening With..." events are an opportunity for our graduates, students and soon-to-be-graduates to meet working professionals in person, listen to their experiences, and find out more about how the industry actually works.

Pixar's Royce Wesley to Visit Escape

Royce Wesley

We're excited to welcome Pixar animator Royce Wesley to London in June, when he will be mentoring our student animators.

Royce is an experienced character animator whose credits include Brave, Coco, Robots and Inside Out.  Royce will be visiting us in London right after finishing up on "Incredibles 2" to mentor our animators and help us to strive for Pixar quality animation.

Like Aaron Hartline, who visited us earlier this year, Royce brings industry talent to our classroom, to make sure our teaching techniques are as cutting-edge as possible.

Aaron Hartline on Animating Woody and Buzz

Aaron Hartline was visiting us this recently from Pixar, mentoring our animators, and helping to make sure we're reaching for Pixar standards with character animation.  Aaron was the lead animator on the team that animated the Buzz and Woody intro at the Oscars in 2016, presenting the award for Best Character Animation. As part of his visit, Aaron walked us through the process of delivering a piece of character animation featuring two of the best loved characters in animation in front of an audience of 900 million people - quite an intimidating job. So, how did he pull it off?

Pixar's Aaron Hartline Talks Creativity

Aaron Hartline at Escape Studios

Pixar's Aaron Hartline gave a great talk at the VFX Festival earlier this year on the subject of creativity, titled "Turning on Your Creative Light Bulb".

Aaron was here in London to mentor our short course animators, and help us reach Pixar-quality standards in our animation teaching.

Aaron's talk was aimed in particular at animators, who are always looking to come up with inventive and fresh solutions to animation problems.

Animation Course Starts May 29th

The Niffler - animated at Framestore in London

We're currently taking applications for our next animation short course - three months of intensive training in 3D animation - starting on 29 May 2018.

We're excited to welcome Royce Wesley, a Pixar animator who will be visiting us in London to mentor our trainee animators. 

Allison Rutland - Pixar Animator

Many congratulations to Allison Rutland, an Escapee who today works as an animator at Pixar, and worked on their latest box office smash: "Coco".

Allison is very much at the top of her game - In 2016 she won an Annie Award for Best Character Animation for her work on Inside Out - an exceptionally competitive award in which animators from all over the world compete - it's sort of like the Best Actor award at the Oscars.

In a recent interview with Escape Studios, Allison talked a little about her work at Pixar, offering advice for students on how to break into the animation industry.

Kim White Reveals Secrets of Pixar Lighting

Kim White, Director of Photography on Cars 3

At this week's VIEW Conference in Turin, Cars 3 Director of Photography Kim White talked about what is involved in lighting a Pixar film.

As you'd expect, lighting a Pixar movie isn't just about technical skill - it's about helping to tell the story, supporting the narrative and solving visual problems along the way.

As Pixar movies get more and more realistic in their visualisation, the lighting department has had to draw on sophisticated reference and resources to make their work believable.

Pixar's Aaron Hartline is Coming to Escape!

Aaron Hartline, Pixar animator

Veteran Pixar animator Aaron Hartline is coming to Escape Studios! We're excited to welcome Aaron as mentor for our next group of animators, who will be starting their animation journey in November this year.

Bringing Aaron to London is all about making the experience of studying animation as industry-relevant as possible. And who better to mentor our students than an animator from the world's most successful animation studio?

Our next group of trainee animators will receive personal feedback from Aaron, who will also be giving a talk about his work at Pixar at the 2018 VFX Festival. The students will also benefit from his help during the aftercare part of our animation course. So, who is Aaron Hartline and what can our students expect in November?

The History of Pixar

Above is an excellent short film about the history of the Pixar studio. It's a promotional piece, but also a great introduction to the history of the modern medium, the second "Golden Age" of animation. Among the impressive insights into the story-telling process at Pixar are John Lasseter suggesting that "every Pixar film at one point in time was the worst motion picture ever made". Why? Because "it's a process". In other words, it's not the doing of the thing, it is the re-doing of it that really counts.

Learn 3D Lighting for Free with Jeremy Birn

Anyone who wants to learn the art and craft of 3D lighting in Maya would do well to watch this excellent series of videos by Pixar lighting expert Jeremy Birn, hosted at Vimeo.

The videos are recorded in an older version of Maya, so there will be a bit of a gap between what you are watching and the latest version of Maya that you are running.

But, the basic principles of lighting remain unchanged, even though the interface is a bit different.

Finding Dory Directors in London Monday 11 July!

Come and grab your free chance to meet Andrew Stanton and the rest of the team behind Finding Dory, Pixar's new sequel to the original Pixar classic - finding Nemo.

It's not that often that Pixar royalty make it to our shores - so don't miss this chance to meet some of the greatest animation film-makers of our age.

The event is at the Apple Store in Covent Garden on Monday 11 July at 6pm.

So what's stopping you? Book your place now!

"Putting Your Best Foot Forward" - Animation Careers Advice at Annecy

Annecy Panel "Putting Your Best Foot Forward"

Yesterday I got the chance to speak on a superb panel discussion organised by the School of Visual Arts (SVA), talking about how animation graduates can best find work in the industry.

The panel discussion was titled:  Putting Your Best Foot Forward: Animation Talent Search. On the panel were recruiters from Pixar, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network. It was fascinating to hear these representatives of top studios talk about what they are looking for in fresh talent.

So, what then are the secrets of breaking into the animation industry?

Get Ready For Annecy! Thursday, June 16 at 2pm

Lake Annecy, in the French Alps

We'll be at the Annecy animation festival this summer, attending the world's biggest animation festival to take a look at the current state of the animation industry and spot the latest trends.  What skills do animation graduates need in today's job market, and who is hiring?

I'll be speaking at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) panel on Thursday June 16 at 2pm, talking about  how we can help our students to find jobs and kick-start their careers in the global animation industry.
 

Meet Pixo Jr - Our Favourite Animated Lamp

Pixo Jr - a great training rig for Maya animators

Meet Pixo Jr - a free Maya rig created in homage to Pixar's pioneering animated short - Luxo Jr. - the film that made the studio's name and proved that CG animation could connect emotionally with audiences.

We recommend Luxo for the early stages of learning animation - it's a great way to get used to the Maya animation controls without things getting too complex, too quickly.

Pixo Jr is an excellent rig, free for student download at highend3d.com.

Making of Finding Nemo

Above is an excellent documentary on the making of the Pixar animated classic - Finding Nemo (soon to have a sequel - Finding Dory). YouTube is great source of material on the making of animated films, and watching documentaries like this is the perfect way for our students to educate themselves on how such films get put together. Of course, "making of" films like this also have a marketing function for the studios themselves, to promote the movies, so you can expect a certain amount of marketing and PR. But that's a small price to pay for a genuine and useful insight into how animated films get put together at a top studio like Pixar.  Curious to understand the animation pipeline? Look no further.

Pixar's John Lasseter on the Art of Storyboards

John Lasseter is one of the co-founders of Pixar animation, and now the head of animation at the Walt Disney Studio. he's also one of the so-called "Class That Roared", the 1970s CalArts alumni who collectively transformed the animation industry, leading to the new "Golden Age" of animation. In the video above, John Lasseter goves an Introduction to the Art of Storyboards, explaining how Pixar animators tell stories in pictures - and how they pitch their work.

Pixar's 22 Rules of Story telling

John Lasseter famously described the three most important things about film-making as "One: story. Two: story. Three: story".

Obviously, Pixar do a bunch of other stuff really well too, like, say character animation. But there is no doubt that great stories are at the heart of their work and their success.

So what can we learn from Pixar about great story telling? Fortunately, Pixar are not guarded about their secrets. Recently, these "22 rules of storytelling" were tweeted by Pixar Story Artist Emma Coats.