What Kind of Tablet Should I Buy?

What Kind of Tablet Should our Students Buy? This is a question we often get asked at Escape Studios, for those students looking to work from home. 

Nowadays there are many different kinds of tablets available, and cheaper versions than the traditional Wacom brand. 

PC -v- Mac - Which Is Best For Animation?

Mac -v- PC. Which is best?

One question we get asked a lot by animation students looking to buy a new laptop is "which is best for animating in Maya - a PC or a Mac?"

It's an important question because you don't want to spend a lot of money on a machine that doesn't do the job properly. Of course, while you are studying at Escape Studios we provide you will all the hardware and software you need. But lots of students like to have their own workstation at home, so they can keep working on their projects out of hours, or on holiday.

So, which is best? A Mac or a PC?

IT Spec for Escape Studios Classrooms

HP Z640

One question we get asked a lot by prospective students is "what is the current spec of the Lab Computers for students at Escape Studios"? In other words, "how good is your tech?".

Fortunately, we bought all our machines brand new in September 2016 and they are excellent workstations. The main workhorse in all our classrooms is the HP Z640 Workstation, which has more than enough capacity to do the job. It's a high-end HP Z series workstation with dual Xeon processors and Nvidia Quadro series graphics cards

The full spec is as follows:
Dual Intel Xeon E5-2630v3 2.4 GHz 8 Core
32 GB DDR4 RAM
2 x 256 GB SSD
Nvidia M4000 Graphics Card

How Do You Create The Perfect Animation Workstation?

A student watches a tutorial on his iPad
and does the exercise on a separate screen

In our industry, a good workstation is not a luxury - it's a necessity. The dirty secrets of the VFX business are carpal tunnel syndrome and repetitive strain injuries (RSI).

These are potentially serious health problems which affect many people working in our business.  No-one talks about it much - but it's there all the same.

So how can our students make sure they have a long, successful career, and a healthy workstation? Step one - get rid of the mouse.