Meet Mery!

Meet Mery! We're recommending this excellent character rig for use by our students at Escape Studios.

Mery is now live and available to download, and - best of all - she is completely free.

One of the many benefits of animating with Autodesk Maya is the large and growing global community of artists who collaborate on freeware projects, bringing to life excellent animation rigs like this one.

Giuseppe Candido Freelance Animator

Giuseppe Candido at graphicchameleon.paintmine.com

Giuseppe Candido completed the Maya core and animation short course here at Escape Studios a few years ago.

Today, Giuseppe is one of the many Escapees who has built a successful career as an animator and 3D generalist, working on many and varied projects for a wide variety of clients.

So, what does it take to be a successful freelance animator?

Escape Studios Online Animation Taster Now Live

Our new online animation taster, showing students how to do some cool creature locomotion (a crow in flight) is now live. It's a really useful taster because it teaches you the basics of animals in motion and also a bunch of other important stuff, such as motion paths, set design, cameras, simple lighting, batch render, and final export as a movie file.  So, you get to learn the basic elements of the whole 3D animation pipeline in Maya in just one exercise. The taster is aimed at beginners and no prior knowledge of Maya or animation is needed.  You can find it here at our official site. 

How to Get Ready for our Animation Short Course in June

Escape Studios, Shepherd's Bldg

What kind of preparation should students do before starting with us on our Animation Short Course in June?  It's always good to do a little preparation and get a bit of a head start.

Below is a brief list of stuff to get you under way. You don't have to do all of it, but tick off a few of the things on this list and you will be a making a great start on your animation career.

First, here is a short reading list to get you started. We've narrowed it down to two books that we recommend for all our students.

Blue Zoo at SIGGRAPH Wednesday May 25 at MPC

Why not come to the next SIGGRAPH event, on Wednesday May 25 at MPC in London's Soho, at 7pm.

The founders of Indie animation house BlueZoo will be talking about how they nurtured Blue Zoo from an idea into a multi-million pound animation powerhouse.  Best of all, the event is completely free!

Animation Demo Reel Clinic Wednesday 25th May

Our next webinar at Escape Studios is all about animation demo reels; how to make them, how to perfect them, and how to use them to land your first job in the industry.

If you're working on you animation demo reel (aren't we all?) and you'd like to make your reel the best it possibly can be - sign up now for our webinar.  Best of all - it's completely free!

Escapee Pedro Cabeleira Breaks Into TT Games

Traveller's Tales

Escapee Pedro Cabeleira took our animation short course at Escape Studios a few years ago and is now working as a character artist at Traveller’s Tales, a UK based games company which is owned by Warner Bros and specialises in Lego games.

We asked Pedro to talk about his career, how he broke into the games industry, and what advice he might offer to students hoping to enjoy similar career success.

Glen Keane is Coming to London!

Glen Keane

Legendary Disney animator (Pocahontas, Rapunzel), Glen Keane is coming to London! Glen will be here tomorrow, Friday May 19, to talk about the "Principles of UX Choreography", a new piece of tech described as "a new paradigm", developed by Glen and by Rebecca Ussai of R/GA.

So, what can animators and fans of Glen's work expect to learn from this event?

3D Animation Taster Day at Escape Studios on Tuesday May 31st

Come and learn about character and creature animation at Escape Studios on Tuesday May 31st - we still have a few places available.

We're running this animation taster day to give prospective students an idea of what it's like to study animation at Escape Studios. Your career as a 3D animator begins here!

You will work with industry-standard tools: Autodesk Maya and the Adobe Creative Suite, and you’ll get a hands-on introduction to 3D Animation techniques, all for just £25. By the end of the day you'll have your own piece of animation uploaded to your YouTube channel.  So, how do you sign up?

The Spline Doctors Are Coming! London Animation Workshop on June 3-4 in Greenwich

The Spline Doctors are coming ! We're excited to welcome two leading animators to London in June, running a superb not-for-profit animation workshop.

Andrew Gordon (Pixar Directing Animator) and Kyle Balda (Co-Director of Minions and The Lorax) are presenting a two-day workshop which will "raise your animation skills to the next level". And, best of all, "VFX Jam" are offering a special discount to friends of Escape Studios.

Annecy Animation Festival - Escape Studios' Top Ten Survival Rules

Lake Annecy - Old Town

Next month, from 13-18 June, is the world’s biggest animation festival.  It takes place in the pretty little mountain town of Annecy in the French Alps, and it can be an overwhelming experience; there is so much going on at once that you can't possibly see everything.

Alongside the Annecy film festival is MIFA – the world’s biggest animation marketplace, a huge congress of industry people buying and selling.

But Annecy is an event that every student of animation should visit at least once – if only to get a feeling for the sheer size and diversity of the modern animation industry. Below are our top ten rules to make the best of Annecy.

What Animation Rigs Do We Use at Escape Studios?

Morpheus - endlessly flexible

One of the many benefits of learning animation using Autodesk Maya is the excellent range of free rigs and sets available for student use.

Animation is a complex craft to master and it's important to start off using the right tools.  For student animators, it is best to avoid complex, production-ready rigs - they are simply too complicated for a beginner to master.

Below is a list of some of the best free animation rigs we recommend for student use, and where to find them.

Locksmith, Paramount, DreamWorks and Comcast

London is a busy hub for animation these days, and animation is much in the news. The business is growing, with industry crying out for talent with the right training. Here is a link to a great story at arstechnica.com about how London became one of the global centres for visual effects work, creating global smash hits made right here in the UK.

London's cutting edge VFX skill is, of course the reason we're all here. Escape Studios has been training talent for the VFX industry for the last fourteen years, with around 4,000 Escapees working in the business. For my part, I came back to London from Hollywood in 2007 to work on a series of LA-funded pictures that had their VFX work done in London.

Why Animators Should Pitch at Cartoon Forum

What is Cartoon Forum? And why should animators know about it? Well, Cartoon Forum is Europe's biggest TV pitch-fest for animation, so if you have an idea for a TV series in your head, Cartoon Forum is the place to pitch it.

The deadline to submit your TV project is 11 May. So, you have just one week to sharpen your pencils, fill out some forms - and make your pitch perfect.

Animation Taster Day on Thursday 5th May!

Bring this bird to life at Escape Studios on Thursday

We still have a few seats left for our animation Taster Day on Thursday May 5th.  Come and learn the nuts and bolts of creature animation at Escape Studios and start your career as a 3D animator.

We're running this animation taster day to give prospective students an idea of what it's like to study animation at Escape Studios.

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.

Essential Plugins for Maya Animators - The Tween Machine

The TweenMachine plugin is one of the most useful tools available to Maya animators.

Created by animator Justin Barrett, the Tween Machine helps animators to create breakdown poses in Maya on stepped curves.

It's a time saving tool that takes much of the labour out of breaking down your poses - once you are happy with the timing of the main blocking of your animation.  And best of all, it's completely free.  It has recently been updated (2024) for py3 - you can find the updated version here. 

Blue Zoo Animation Lunch Club at FaceBook - "Graduates Special"

Blue Zoo, one of London's biggest and most inventive animation studios, has been doing a series of round table discussions on the craft of making animation and working in the industry.

The most recent "Lunch Club" Round table took place on Facebook took place at Facebook today, and can be viewed here.

In this video, Blue Zoo interviews some of its recent hires, to hear animation graduates explain how they broke into the industry. It's full of useful information and tips on how to make it in this fast-growing but very competitive field.

Do Animators Need a Demo Reel and a Website?

Who needs a blog or a website? Only everyone who is a freelancer. And, in the entertainment industry, we are all freelancers.  Jobs for life, if they ever existed, are long gone, and for most of us a gig that lasts a few years is a long one.

One of the biggest mistakes an animation student can make is not to finish their demo reel and then host it prominently at their own blog or website. Nowadays, employers won't wait for you to mail in a DVD of your work. They want to click on a single link and find out all they need to know about you.

Is your work suitable for the job they have in mind? Do you have industry experience? Is your site easy to navigate, and does it give producers the information they need quickly and efficiently? If your website doesn't deliver, jobs will go elsewhere.

Greg Woodcock Animator at 360 Studios

Escapee Greg Woodcock took our three month intensive animation course here at Escape Studios back in 2011, before launching his animation career in the Games industry. 

Since leaving Escape he has worked for a number of leading games companies including 360, CM, Mew Lab, MI, Easy Tiger and Serious Parody. 

We asked him to talk about his current projects and also to explain how he succeeded in breaking into the games industry - a rapidly expanding but highly competitive field.