Webinar with Kevin McDowell on April 16th

Kevin McDowell

For our students at Bucks interested in entering the games industry, there are still many online ways of connecting with the industry.

On April 16th, London-based Escape Studios is hosting an "Evening With... " the leading games designer Kevin McDowell.

Kevin McDowell has been the Art Director for SEGA’s Massive PC strategy game series “Total War” for the past 20 years and has been working in video games for 23 years.

Kevin's games have sold over 27 million copies, and in 2012 he won a BAFTA for Total War: Shogun 2.

Enter the Character Design Challenge!

Character Design Challenge!

Calling all Bucks Character Designers! There are just two days left to enter this month's Character Design Challenge!

The CDC is a bit like the Eleven Second Club, but for character designers. It launched in 2015 and already has over 25,000 thousand members.

This month's design challenge is .....Carnival of Venice! So what are you waiting for? Let's get designing!

Turn Your Phone Into a Scanner With Scanner Pro

Scanner pro at iTunes App store

Researching your project in the library at Bucks just got a lot easier with a new app - Scanner Pro. You can find it at iTunes for $2.99. What does it do? It will scan a document for you using your phone camera, and then automatically size it correctly, and adjust the levels so you don't have to clean it up in Photoshop. What you get is an image which is presentation-ready, perfect to drop into your research document for uni. And the whole process takes just a few seconds.

How to Create a Great Animation Pitch

Learning to pitch is an important skill for any artist. Sooner or later you will be called on to persuade a client that you have a great idea to sell their product, or perhaps try to sell your own idea for a TV series or feature film to a network or production company. Either way, you're going to need to learn how to pitch your ideas. Pitching is not just about standing up and delivering a persuasive summary of your awesome idea, it's also about what should go into it in the first place. How much character work and design do you need to do? How well thought out does your story need to be?  In this excellent blog post, Disney designer Chris Oatley explains what goes into a great animation pitch and bible.

VFX Supervisor Paul Franklin Reveals The Secrets of Dark Knight and Inception

VFX Supervised by Paul Franklin

Paul Franklin gave a free lecture at Escape Studios in London on 15th October about the work of a visual effects supervisor. He talked about what goes into the making of the sophisticated films he has supervised, such as Dark Knight, Inception, and Interstellar - coming out this November. Franklin is an Oscar nominated VFX supervisor with two BAFTAs on his shelf. Clearly, he is a man who knows VFX inside out, offering a unique insight into how big budget visual effects blockbusters get made.

The Art of "Frozen" comes to London on 28 April

The Art of Frozen is being showcased by Disney in London on April 28th. For full information see this link here: http://www.disneyanimation.com/events/item/28 Here at Bucks we strongly recommend that our students do their best to attend events like this if they can - you will always learn something new about the animation industry and - who knows - you might even meet someone looking to hire an animator.