Blue GFX and Escape Studios visit

Took a trip to London on the 22nd, and just got round to writing my notes up in neat :).

The Blue GFX festival was quite exciting, it was the first time I had been to it and it offered exactly what I expected. Not really a chance to network but a really good opportunity to talk to the companies who's software I use and get an idea of what they are going to be bringing out. I enjoyed talking to V-ray, Intuos and HDR Light Studio. The graphics on their banners attracted me more than any thing. They all had some 3D modelling demo's going on, which is not what I do but it was interesting to talk to them about how much they were focusing their programmes to create better lighting and reflections to create a better, more realistic composite. Except for Intuos who simply had bigger and bigger tablets.

I also had the chance to talk to both Adobe and Autodesk. I have been considering moving over from After Effects to learn Nuke and Smoke for compositing so it was good to see what the rival companies had to say about each others programme interface and user satisfaction. I attended a talk given by Niels Stevens on the new Adobe 6 Suite which won me over and made me realise that I should be looking at Adobe Premier Pro CS6 as my compositing software because it interacts seamlessly with AE6.

I enjoyed the talk given by Daryl Shail for Pixel Farm. They are a visual effects company who are currently working on creating time effective 3D composites. The demo was fun to watch as each statement was backed up with videos (which seamed difficult to manipulate), made 3D quickly and simply.

We later went over to Escape Studios, who presented a tutorial  using dynamics in Maya to demonstrate how they run classes. It was very impressive, and if i struggle getting work after Uni I will definitely consider  studying there. There is a lot of talented staff who have worked on some big productions. Talking to the students there gave me a good insight on how the course was run and how much they learn.. But with a great course comes a great price. About £9000 for 12 weeks, is not funny. But working in the animation industry is more of a dream than a job so I'm definitely keeping my options open.