Summer of Unreal has ended on a high note

This free four-week bootcamp was organized by a UK college Escape Studios in collaboration with the company Epic Games to educate professional animators and 3D modelers for working in Unreal Engine as well as show more picturesque ways in which this powerful software can be used in the animation workflow.

As a southeast European partner (in practice much broader than that) we worked on this project shoulder to shoulder with the biggest European schools in the field of computer graphics, which are: Art FX (Montpellier, France), The Animation Workshop (Viborg, Denmark), Hochschule der Medien (Stuttgart, Germany), La Salle (Barcelona, Spain), and Screen Skills Ireland (Dublin, Ireland).

Interestingly this online classroom was held during workdays, in the span of four weeks on the platform Zoom. During the whole bootcamp, a private Summer of Unreal Discord server was active to enable students all around Europe to communicate as fast as possible. This was also the way they worked together on projects, and diligent studio representatives regularly informed them about all new information and activities. This type of organization flew flawlessly from a technical standpoint, so almost 1000 students joined in to follow lectures daily this way.

It was, as we already announced, really a surreal amazing experience!

Bojana Simić, program specialist and coordinator of all the events at our school took up a mantel of a “studio assistant” She was in constant communication with our recrutiees and made sure their expectations were met, ready to jump in and help at any moment. Now when the course has ended and the impressions have slowly settled, Bojana says:

“The course superseded all expectations, students’ as well as ours as organizators. We truly owe our greatest gratitude to Escape Studios for inviting us to join in as partners with the rest of the European training centers who are the best of the best when it comes to education in the field of computer graphics. Taking part in this kind of project truly is an enormous earned privilege.

In a truly paradoxical sense, from an organizer’s standpoint, the hardest part was convincing studios that this truly was a free course, that there are no hidden fees or agenda, and that the curriculum would follow through on the announced plan. More than 200 people went through our initial selection which we cut down to around 150 recrutiees from all around the world. The whole course had roughly around 1000 students, which was a cumbersome worry on its own, but alas the whole process went surprisingly smooth. Students were supportive, gave advice, and assisted one another, all in the most professional sense possible. If you ask me, one of the biggest results of this course was the formed kinship. Looking at it now, it truly seems like everybody knows each other – and like they have been knowing each other this well since forever.”

Milan Antić, painter and professor at the Faculty of Contemporary Arts in Belgrade has been a regular attendee of our specialized courses. During the summer he took up Summer of Unreal and just a month before that he took part in the Train the Trainers course during which we, with the help of 3Lateral/ Epic Games, educated 45 professors from domestic faculties in Unreal Engine.

“I am very pleased with the course, it was intensive and extensive. The organization itself was top-notch, especially the Discord networking and communication between the attendees. It’s there where I was able to keep up to date with the hot topics from presentations. The information we received during these lectures had an extensive study material at its backbone that was regularly updated and stored on Google Drive, which too was awesome” says Milan as he adds:

“The lecturers and mediators were very open-minded and charming, which made every session useful as it was fun. All in all – amazing! I hope to see more events like this in the future.”

Speaking of lecturers, here are some of the European UE experts who took the stage during the SoU: Phil Stewart (Blue Zoo Animations), Mark Flanagan (Epic Games), Carlos Ulloa (Epic Games), Luis Cataldi (Quixel/Epic Games), Greg Richardson (Epic Games), Nicky Gogan (Piranha Bar) and of course, many many more.

More than anything, we are especially thrilled for having our professor, Darko Subotin, at this event, where he held a one-day training in UE rendering. Aside from him, a team from 3Lateral/ Epic Games also joined in on the Summer of Unreal ride. It is thanks to them that the bootcamp attendees were able to feast their eyes on an exclusive premiere of Epic’s new MetaHuman Creator tutorial. One of ours, director Sava Živković from the studio Axis, also held an interesting lecture. He took this opportunity to shift the spotlight to the endless possibilities animators have when using Unreal Engine. Considering he himself recently debuted his new animated short “Irradiation” which he made in UE, it makes perfect sense why this was the topic he chose to present on SoU.

Judging by the messages we are getting these days from our attendees, it seems all, (and not just our recrutiees) would like for us to organize Winter of Unreal too. Besides, our Bojana said it best – these brilliant students wouldn’t mind a full-year education.