Our partnership with Epic Games

Escape Studios has developed close relationships with an impressive range of industry partners and advisors, and they’re involved in everything we do - from the curriculum we teach and how it’s delivered, to our webinars and special events.

We have formed a unique partnership with Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite, Unreal Engine, Gears of War, Shadow Complex, and the Infinity Blade series of games. Epic's Unreal Engine technology brings high-fidelity, interactive experiences to PC, console, mobile, AR, VR and the Web.

As part of this collaboration, we are one of few Unreal Engine Authorized Training Centers in the UK. Through this partnership, we organise a variety of training sessions through the year.

Current courses

Game Art courses

Take a look at our range of Undergraduate, Postgraduate and short courses and learn how Unreal Engine is used throughout the Game Art pipeline, whilst picking up industry standard skills and techniques in other software necessary for a career in Game Art. 

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UNREAL ENGINE - LONDON CONNECTORS

An intensive training programme for Unreal Engine as one of Epic Games' Unreal Connector Training Centres. 

  • Location: Online
  • Start date: 27th June 2022
  • Tuition fees: £3995
  • Programme duration: Full time (Monday - Friday: 8am to 5pm)

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The Virtual Production Suite

Three free courses supported by ScreenSkills that will teach you the fundamentals about virtual production (VP) techniques and real-time production for on-set processes, production, workflows and crew roles.

  • Location: Online and in a London VP studio
  • Start date: Courses starting from June
  • Tuition fees: Free (check requirements)
  • Entry requirements: Aged 18 or over, a good understanding of written and spoken English. This course is free to freelancers, sole traders and professionals.

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UNREAL ENGINE FOR COMMERCIALS

Partnering with Epic Games we will deliver a special training experience for invited guests from the commercials sector who are looking to harness the power of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5).

  • Location: Online and optional two days in Epic Innovation Labs in central London
  • Start date: 9th September 2022
  • Tuition fees: Free
  • Programme duration: 9 weeks
  • Entry requirements: Creative professionals currently working in commercials

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UNREAL ENGINE - TRAINING FOR PROFESSIONALS

Choose from pre-developed courses to get your staff or artists upskilled in this high-demand software.

We've recently trained professionals from companies across a range of industries including 3D architectural visualisation, film and TV, advertising, motion desigin, animation and games.

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UNREAL ENGINE - FUNDAMENTALS

This course is designed to provide you with a comprehensive tour of Unreal Engine and develop your artistic and technical skills.

  • Location: Online
  • Start date: TBC
  • Tuition fees: £895
  • Mode of study: Part time
  • Programme duration: 10 weeks (3 hours of video content and 9 hours of self-study and practice per week) 
  • Entry requirements: Aged 18 or over, a good understanding of written and spoken English

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UNREAL ENGINE - BLUEPRINTS

The course will teach you the fundamentals of programming within a node network and how to leverage the visual scripting API. 

  • Location: Online
  • Start date: TBC
  • Tuition fees: £895
  • Mode of study: Part time
  • Programme duration: 10 weeks (3 hours of video content and 9 hours of self-study and practice per week) 
  • Entry requirements: Aged 18 or over, a good understanding of written and spoken English

Find out more

Previous courses

 

Step up to Unreal

In May 2022 Escape Studios and ScreenSkills collaborated to ensure the VFX industry gets the talent it needs by offering a free five day course to learn Unreal Engine. Our students also got the chance to take a paid placement with some of the best VFX film and TV studios in the UK!

ScreenSkills and BFI National Lottery
Students working in a Virtual Production Lab
Students working in in a virtual production lab

Summer of Unreal

In July 2021, we hosted the Summer of Unreal, a free, four-week boot camp created in collaboration with Epic Games where artists learn practical real-time skills from industry vets, higher education partners, and Escape Studios. It was not only our most ambitious free programme to date; it was the largest Unreal Engine training ever attempted! In the end, we helped over 1,000 people build their business or art practice with Unreal Engine’s animation tools.

Summer of Unreal graphic with sunset and palm tree background
3D animation image from student film showing parents with two kids and pink aliens
Video game environment scene of a house inner courtyard with stairs and statue invaded by leaves

The Unreal Spring Collection

In May 2021, we launched The Unreal Spring Collection which consisted of a suite of three indispensable courses; introduction to unreal fundamentals, lighting in unreal and cinematography in unreal. The programme was supported by the ScreenSkills Film Skills Fund and was designed for filmmakers, VFX artists, animators, graphic artists, film directors and producers. The course was also free to support freelancers and furloughed workers.

Unreal Pick and Mix

In March 2021, we partnered with ScreenSkills and Epic Games to deliver the ‘Unreal Pick and Mix’, an online suite of free workshops for freelancers and furloughed film/high-end television professionals. This was commissioned by the ScreenSkills Film and High-end TV Skills Funds with contributions from major VFX, Animation and Film production companies. 

The programme of specialist Unreal Engine training allowed beginners to take the complete two weeks, and intermediate users to ‘pick’ and ‘mix’ single or multiple days depending on where they wanted to upskill.  

With ScreenSkills’ help, we reached out to the UK nations and regions, encouraging a more diverse and often overlooked part of the film and TV industry.

ScreenSkills pink logo
Cartoon image of a man walking through a city alongside a busy road with trams and buses

The Unreal Engine Bootcamp

During 2020, we launched The Unreal Engine Bootcamp a curriculum to support furloughed and regrettably made redundant VFX artists to retrain and upskill in real-time production techniques. The objective was to prepare the industry for eventual growth during the time of lockdown by making the most of furloughed people’s free time, initiating new real-time techniques and workflows within the VFX industry. 

The course ran through August and September 2020, led by Saint John Walker, Andrew Brassington and Mark Spevick. The team were also complemented by guest Unreal Engine experts from the industry and Epic Games as well as leading VFX supervisors.

Industry Feedback

Paul Franklin, Co-founder of DNEG

“Films are held to a standard of objective reality which is the benchmark we’re always trying to achieve. We always want it to look like it's something we went out and filmed, so trying to figure out how to get that, to match that is key. You can see how successful many of the (student) projects have been in picking out the details and understanding atmosphere…and the way it is staged. I loved the fluidity of some of the camerawork I saw. It’s pretty exciting.”
 

Emma Turner, ScreenSkills’ CPD lead

“In these extraordinary times it’s more clear than ever that is important that we innovate and prepare industry to work with emerging and new tech. We believe that our investment in the Unreal Pick and Mix will help future-proof the industry, embrace virtual production and enable professionals whatever their background to get in and get on.”
 

Mark Flanagan, Education Partner Manager at Epic Games

“This has been absolutely inspiring for people who have been learning the Unreal Engine for four weeks. We’re hugely grateful for Escape pushing through with this”. For the students he had some comments “What you’ve managed to achieve is really quite remarkable. Hopefully you’ll grow the relationships you have formed. Hopefully you’ll continue sharing what you’re doing.”
 

Andrew Schlussel, Global Head of Talent Framestore

“The Unreal bootcamp was an extraordinary response to these unusual circumstances. All of the London visual effects companies are in a similar situation on two fronts: losing staff due to the slowdown of work as a result of covid, and a burst of excitement and buzz around incorporating real time tools like Unreal Engine into their use in virtual production and more of the visual effects pipeline.”