December 22, 2022

Hi everyone,
Roberto “Cepp” De Rose here: I have some news to share. After many years of working together, my business partner Gianpiero has decided to move on to new opportunities. It has been an incredible ride together, and we want to thank Peo for our shared path and wish him the best of luck in his future challenges!

Rob & the SOA team.

So you may be thinking, “what about soa now?”. Well, the business has to run anyway, so let me tell you something about our past and future.

Artwork by Pushkaraj, Masterclass#54
One of the last Masterclass images, produced by the students. New dates for the Online Courses and Masterclasses will be available soon.

SOA PAST

Almost fourteen years ago, I pushed to create an Academy because of my love for teaching and passing knowledge, and also because there was a lack of professional archviz artists (in Italy, mainly). I’ve been lucky to get the trust of my two partners: sharing your craft with others may seem counterproductive. You can be afraid of new competitors, but competition is good since it pushes you to do better. Anyway, we fought fear and jumped in, uncertain about the future. It turned out better than expected. We worked on many great projects and helped more than a few thousand artists to find their way into the GC world. And now?

SOA is now changing and doing it for the better.
I don’t want to say too much straight away: I’d love to under-promise and over-deliver from now on.

SOA FUTURE

SHORT PERIOD

  • We’ll start with a massive discount on our courses (UnrealEngine, Postproduction, Masterclass) for Christmas.
  • In the following days, we’ll update every online class with new lessons (hours of content).
  • We found most students find webinars hard to follow due to work hours, so we’ll review how that works to make everybody happy.
  • In-class Masterclasses will start again (the first in March 2023) with a renewed methodology, a better price, new (and old) teachers, and a new space! (always here in the SOA headquarters). More details soon.
  • The Online Corona Course will not be available for purchase anymore. For now, Corona Renderer will be exclusively taught during the In-class Masterclass here at SOA.
  • Custom online courses for companies are now available! Get in contact now.
  • We’ll soon collaborate with new Artists to release in-class courses on new topics/software (like Revit).
  • We opened a “help” channel on our Discord, available to everyone.
Anne-Emmanuelle, Masterclass#29
One of the exercises you can find in the SOA Online Postproduction class, for a total amount of +100 hours training.

MEDIUM RANGE

  • SOA Studio will entirely focus on Unreal Engine 5 projects (VR, videos, products adv,  interactivity, configurators, pixel-streaming, and web apps), aiming to become a leading company in the field.
  • New online courses: Substance Designer & 3dsMax Modeling.

LONG RUN

Today a new project starts, code-name “SOA NEXT.”
Talking with students and analyzing their needs and feedback for all these years made me think that teaching can evolve and be better than it is now. Again, I don’t want to spoil too much; you’ll see and hopefully try it first-hand soon.

A significant change deserves a little restyle too. I want to share the fixed final (final_final.psd?) SOA logo with you right now 😀

WRAP-UP

These are just a few things that will happen in 2023 here at SOA. A special thanks to all the people that trusted us from the bottom of my heart. I want you to know that we’re working for you and for every new artist willing to learn something about this fantastic world.

And now, another jump without fear. I’ll wait for you on Discord 😉
If we don’t catch up, well, Happy Christmas!

Love, Rob.

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