Are Universities Failing the UK's Visual Effects Industry?

Pat Joseph, co-founder and chief creative officer of The Mill, certainly thinks so. In this post at the Televisual blog,  Joseph argues that higher education in the UK is not responding to the needs of the visual effects industry, and is not training students of the digital arts to a sufficiently high calibre. What can universities do to try harder?

Framestore signs off on our new course

Head of Animation at Framestore Kevin Spruce has signed off on our new course at Bucks. We're thrilled that Framstore have OK'ed our course outline, and especially the module which focuses on creature animation, preparing students to be able to animate animals and creatures to a professional level, and preparing our graduates for work in the expanding animation and visual effects industry.

What's wrong with VFX training in the UK? - Creative Skillset has the answers

A huge part of our mission at Bucks is to make our course industry-relevant. We want our students to have cutting-edge skills so that they have the best possible prospects of finding exciting, challenging and well-paid work in the animation, games and visual effects industry.

With that in mind, I came to the Creative Skillset Tutor Day at BFI yesterday at the South Bank, to find out what we can do better here at Bucks to improve our course. The focus of Creative Skillset is the VFX Course Handbook (you can download a copy here), a detailed document painstaking put together by Creative Skillset in close consultation with the VFX industry to identify exactly what should go into an industry-relevant course.

Disney kills 2D Animation - Official

The Princess and the Frog - Disney's last 2D feature

According to an article in yesterday's Guardian, 2D animation is officially dead at Disney, the studio which took the medium to its greatest-ever heights. At the annual shareholder meeting in Phoenix Arizona, CEO Bob Iger said:

FLIP: The animation student who created his own job

FLIP: The animation student who created his own job:   Marc Godfrey is an animation student with a passion to work in the entertainment industry. At a time when finding work can be hard eve...

Who Wants a Career in Animation?

I've been doing a lot of talks lately at schools and 6th form colleges, getting the word out about our new animation and VFX course here at Bucks. So far I've been getting a great response, though it is tough for students to get a good feeling for what a career in animation might involve, and what the options are. And, in a fifteen minute pitch, there is only so much you can say.