Blue Zoo: Real Time Rendering

Blue Zoo's Tom Box at BlueGFX Expo

Blue Zoo's Tom Box explained the Blue "real-time animation pipeline" at today's BlueGFX Expo, exploring new ways to speed up the animation process.

Tom described Blue Zoo as a studio that, since its inception, has "refused to accept industry standards", and has forged its own path in the industry.

Recently Blue Zoo have been pioneering the use of real-time rendering using Unreal Engine - trying to find ways to make the production process faster and more efficient. 

Blue GFX Expo November 12th

It's that time of year again. Blue GFX Expo 2019 is taking place in London on Tuesday 12th November.

As ever, we strongly recommend that any of our students who are in the London area attend, so that they can catch up with latest in animation, VFX & Games.  You can buy student tickets for just £15 here.

BlueGFX Expo 21 Nov 2018

Registration will open soon for the Blue GFX Expo, taking place in London on Thursday 21st November 2018. 

We encourage all our students in the UK attend this excellent (and free) annual event.

Design (and Animate) Like a Rockstar

Eugene Riecansky, founder and CEO of Rockstar, a motion graphics company based in Norwich, East Anglia, gave a superb talk at the recent BlueGFX Expo in London titled "How to Design like a Rockstar". 

It was an excellent talk because it brought to life the extraordinarily fast-paced nature of doing video work for clients, working to insane deadlines to create unique video content for bands doing live gigs and performances.

Storyboard With Panel Forge Pro

At last week's Blue GFX Expo, Blue Zoo’s Tom Box announced that Panel Forge Pro, their new storyboard and pipeline tool, is now available for free for student use.

Blue GFX Expo Tomorrow 9 November

Registration is still open for the Blue GFX Expo taking place tomorrow in London on Thursday 9th November 2017.

We're encouraging all our students in the London area to attend this excellent (and free!) event.

Register Now for BlueGFX Expo

Registration is now open for  Blue GFX Expo is taking place in London on 9th November 2017.

We strongly encourage all our students to register now for this excellent free event.

Blue GFX 9 November 2017 - Save The Date!

Save the date! For all our students in the London area, Blue GFX Expo is taking place in Waterloo on 9th November 2017.

Last year speakers included Tom Box from Blue Zoo, one of the UK's biggest TV animation company, Stuart Penn from Framestore, and the folks from Autodesk showing the latest tools.

Blue GFX Expo is Back! Thursday 17th November 2016

Blue GFX Expo is taking place in London on 17th November 2016. 

Last year speakers included Tom Box from Blue Zoo, one of the UK's biggest TV animation companies, Stuart Penn from Framestore, and representatives from Autodesk showing the latest Maya tools. 

MPC Software Developer Marco Romeo Creates a Better Facial Rigging System with Fabric

At the recent BlueGFX Expo at London’s South Bank, Moving Picture Company (MPC) Software Developer Marco Romeo talked about some of the recent work done by MPC on the film Terminator Genisys.  In particular, he described how MPC painstakingly rebuilt a digital version of the young Arnold Schwarzenegger, using a better facial rigging system with Fabric, and using new facial simulation research.

We encourage all our students to attend events like BlueGFX Expo; not only are they often free for students to attend, they are an excellent window into where the industry is heading, and what the latest techniques are that make up the digital animation pipeline.

Blue Zoo Explains the Challenges of Running an Animation Studio

Tom Box is one of the founders of Blue Zoo, one of the UK’s leading TV animation studios.  Blue Zoo does animation in a broad range of styles, both 2D and 3D, for many different clients.

All their work is done in CG, and almost all of it is made in Maya - they describe themselves as doing “CG character animation with a bold quirky style”. At last week's Blue GFX Expo at London’s South Bank (we highly recommend that our students attend events like this whenever possible), Tom talked about the eight biggest problems involved with running an animation studio, and how Blue Zoo goes about solving them.

BlueGFX is Coming on 19th November....and It's Free!

Blue GFX Expo is taking place in London on 19th November 2015, an event we highly recommend for any of our students who are in the neighbourhood.  This year speakers include Tom Box from Blue Zoo, the UK's biggest TV animation company, Stuart Penn from Framestore, and representatives from Autodesk showing the latest Maya tools.  For all our students, this is a great chance to catch up with new technology and meet in person people from the UK's top animation and visual effects houses.  And best of all, it's completely free.

Calling All Animators - Blue GFX Expo is taking place in London on 19th November 2015.

Blue GFX Expo

Blue GFX Expo is taking place in London on 19th November 2015. Previous year's events have been superb - in attendance in 2013 were the founders of Blue Zoo, the UK's biggest TV animation company, the guys from Framestore who did the animation for the Skyfall title sequence, and representatives from Autodesk showing the latest simulation tools.

There are so many talks on cutting edge CG tools that can be hard to choose which ones to attend.  For all our students, this is a not-to-be-missed chance to catch up with the latest technology and meet in person the people who run the UK's top animation and visual effects houses.  And best of all, it's completely free.

Animation Apprentice Goes to Blue GFX

Blue GFX

Last week Animation Apprentice went to the Blue GFX Expo in London – a massive annual visual effects event sponsored by Autodesk, and a great opportunity to find out about the latest developments in our industry. There were presentations about Autodesk Maya, 3D Studio Max, a chance to try out the latest Cintique tablets, and best of all a talk by Framestore about the work they did on Gravity, a film that looks and feels like a live action movie, but is entirely animated. OK, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock were real – but the rest is CG magic.

Calling all UK animators - Blue GFX is on 6th November

Blue GFX - in London 6th November

Blue GFX Expo is taking place in London on 6th November 2014. Last year's event was superb - in attendance were the founders of Blue Zoo, the UK's biggest TV animation company, the guys from Framestore who did the animation for the Skyfall title sequence, and representatives from Autodesk showing the latest hair simulation tools. There were so many talks on cutting edge CG tools that it was hard to choose which ones to attend. For all our students, this is a not-to-be-missed chance to catch up with the latest technology and meet in person the people who run the UK's top animation and visual effects houses. And it's completely free.

Hair Simulation in Maya 2014 - the XGen Tool

Rapunzel - great hair!

One of the best features of Autodesk Maya 2014 was a big step forward in its hair simulation capabilities. The new tool is called XGen, and is embedded free with Maya 2014. It was developed by Disney/Pixar and was used on their film Rapunzel, to generate the heroine's gorgeous, bouncing tresses.

At the BlueGFX Expo in London last year, Autodesk demonstrated their new hair simulation tool, giving us a step-by-step tutorial in how to go about creating great hair effects in Maya with this new instancing system. So how exactly does it work?