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CAVE Academy v002
How we got here
Well, here we are. Almost halfway through the year and what a wild one it has been so far! So, this feels like a good time to do a little self-assessment.
We officially kicked off CAVE Academy back in March 2020.
Yup – the first week of Covid!
Since then, we’ve run numerous online courses, free webinars, free Dailies sessions, created a free Wiki and provided a series of high-end light rigs, HDRIs and assets for artists and studios. We’ve also had the opportunity to teach at numerous studios and educational institutions globally, and collaborate with clients on some top-secret projects by supporting them in production or behind the scenes.
During the tragic collapse of Technicolor in 2025 and with numerous other studios sadly closing across VFX, animation and games, we also provided free access to all our courses to everyone for 3 months.
Overall, some of what we’ve done was always part of the plan. Most…was not, and we’ve had to roll with the global changes happening across the creative industry.
And these changes don’t look to be slowing down. In fact, they seem to be moving at a faster and more unpredictable pace. So, we at CAVE have been doing a little thinking about how we’d like to move forward…
Returning to roots
When we first planned CAVE Academy, the primary vision was to:
Create high-end VFX, Animation, and Games training for the creative community and make the learning affordable for everyone.
And by everyone, we meant everyone globally as “affordable” means different things to different people.
And by create, we meant collaborate with students, hobbyists and professionals at all levels across the creative industry, so everyone can get the support they need.
So, we feel we’ve done some of that. But we also feel we could do more about the most important word in the above sentence, which is: community.
And that is where we will now focus.
So, what’s our plan?
For CAVE Academy v002, we will focus on the following:
- Make all our online Courses accessible globally and continue developing new courses.
- Run longer-form LIVE training Programmes.
- Run monthly online LIVE How-To sessions.
- Run monthly online LIVE community Discussions.
- Run monthly online LIVE community Dailies sessions.
- Continue growing the CAVE Wiki for the community.
- Run in-person Talks and Socials globally.
- Make all our Assets (HDRIs, models, rigs) easily accessible and continue providing new production-quality assets.
- Get more conversation going on our Discord.
- Develop Short Stories and Projects with the community.
- Support artist development via Mentorships.
- Be guided by the community via quarterly Public Meetings.
…and how do we plan to get all this going?
Hopefully with your help!
Over the years, we’ve had people get in touch about getting access to our courses at discounted rates or via sponsorships. Or they’ve mentioned that they live in a part of the world where our course fees are too expensive for them.
Where we could, we’ve provided discounts or worked with other companies to provide funding. This has helped many but not as much of the community as we’d like.
And sadly, we can’t flip a switch and make everything freely available as we have to cover the costs of maintaining our CAVE platform, hosting our video lessons, creating assets, and more.
So, our pitch to you is as follows…
For a whopping £2/month* we’d like you to become a:
That’s right. For less than a coffee, you’ll get access to EVERYTHING we currently offer and everything we plan to provide moving forward.
Now we’ve done the numbers and to make CAVE Academy v002 happen, 5,000 subscribers is the magic number.
Currently, we are looking to see if people would be onboard with this plan, so we are asking people to join our ‘waitlist‘ to show their interest.
A huge thanks to the 1,012 people who have already done so (as of June 12th 2027). If you think this plan has legs and would like to show your support to help us “version up”, please do smash that button!
Registered: 1,012 | Target: 5,000
*or £20 annually.
Thoughts?
So, that is the idea and it would be great to hear your thoughts.
If you have 5 minutes, we’d appreciate your time to complete our short survey below. It would be extremely helpful to get your input, so we can meet your needs.
And if you can, we’d really appreciate you spreading the word by sharing this page, so we can get a good idea of whether the proposed changes would be of use and interest to the VFX, Animation and Games fans of the world.
If all sounds good, you can join the waitlist HERE! And if we get enough support by the 31st of July 2026, we’ll flip the switch to v002 and go live 😉
On Monday 20th July 2026, we’ll also be running 3 ‘OVERVIEW‘ webinars at 3 different time zones, so if you’d like to find out more or ask any questions, please do swing by.
Lastly, if you got this far, thanks for taking the time to read our pitch. We look forward to hearing from you and (fingers crossed) having your join the CAVE Community.
All the best,
Jahirul Amin
Founder, CAVE Academy
I love the idea behind this project. I think it’s both generous and very affordable, which makes it accessible to a lot of people.
My main concern is that there are many ideas and expectations being placed on the table, and some of them may fall outside the realistic scope of the project. In my experience, people will always ask for more, and I hope the production team doesn’t end up burning out by trying to satisfy every request. A project of this scale needs clear procedures and boundaries if it’s going to meet expectations in a sustainable way.
That said, the marketing has been excellent—you definitely got me with the $2 offer! 🤣
One suggestion that might be worth considering is having community representatives or moderators distributed across different parts of the world. That could help provide support to a wider audience and make it easier for people to receive responses within a reasonable timeframe. In an age where AI is becoming increasingly common, I think there’s still tremendous value in having real humans behind the screen.
Regarding the community aspect of the project, I find it very interesting. However, many community activities tend to revolve around a single time zone, which can unintentionally exclude people from other regions. Not everyone can participate during the same hours, so it may be worth thinking about ways to make engagement more globally accessible.
And finally, count me in.
Hi Roberto,
Thanks for the feedback and very happy this is something you’d be onboard with.
In terms of the scope and boundaries, I agree that we would have to set clear expectations of what we’d be able to deliver during a set period. This would be all presented as part of the Public Meetings, so we can set and hit targets.
For the LIVE sessions, we’d pick a specific day (saw Wednesday), and then each week, we’d run a Dailies, or a Discussion, or a How-To.
And you are right, we do need to consider time-zones. In the past, we’ve stuck with 6pm UK time but this time, I want to mix that up a little, so we run LIVE sessions that suit others around the world. Ideally, we’d get support/members from key regions and then we can start running more local hubs/sessions as you have mentioned, so it is not all driven from one location.
And yes, real humans behind the screen (and in-person) is the aim.
Thanks and speak soon
J
While the 2/20 contribution is a small ask, the question remains, what are we receiving for that? There was mention of course and project work; not clear about what that includes. Is that course work that we can potentially access now? Is that a TBD project in the future? If these are obvious questions that have been answered elsewhere, I apologize for my ignorance. Please direct me to where I can gain more information. Thank you. – derek
Hi Derek,
Thanks for getting in touch and sharing your thoughts.
With regard to “what are we receiving?”, the list is above (under ‘So, what’s our plan?’ section). This includes all our current online courses and all upcoming courses. I’m happy to give a breakdown of what those new courses would be if that would help.
In terms of the project work, here are the overall aims… The majority of our projects are based on original IPs (for example, a shark project, a werewolf project), so the idea would be that members could (but only if they wish to) help out on the projects and then we’d get some nice projects for festivals, and who knows maybe more. And should they actually be a success, then we’d redistribute any profits from the projects fairly across the team. The majority of the projects are actually to help charities (the shark project for example), so from our side, the aim is not to be using the projects to make money, but to help charities and support causes that are important to us. But again, if we get enough members sign up, then we’d also be looking to get their thoughts on projects they are interested in and work towards developing their ideas in order to support them as best we can.
I hope that helps. Next month, I’d be happy to run a webinar to run through our planned offerings in more detail if that would be useful.
Thanks
J
Really hope you get the 5000 signatures because this is such a great idea!
I’ve been eyeing Cave Courses for a while, but the price point has always been too high for me as a South African 3D artist… £2 per month changes everything. At that price, demand isn’t a problem at all; anyone who’s ever wanted CAVE content will sign up straight away.
My one worry is discoverability. I only found out about v002 by chance from a single LinkedIn post… It doesn’t seem to be on your landing page or anywhere obvious…
So the risk isn’t whether people want it, it’s whether they hear about it in time to hit the deadline…
I’ll try to spread the word around my communities though!
Thanks Joss for the feedback and very happy to hear you like and support the idea.
The info is on the landing page, but you need to scroll down a little to the ‘Wiki’ section, so I can see how that is not ideal. And yes, we are primarily relying on people spotting the info on LinkedIn or Instagram and the spreading the word. And thank you for doing just that.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll continue to do this and hopefully it catches the attention of enough people. It would be fantastic to get this going as we’ve got plenty of ideas and plans should this get enough support.
Thanks
J
Very exciting. I suppose my main concern lies with the historical content that you will make available to subscribers – how useful will this content actually be? Is there a danger that such material will be rendered out of date or obsolete as new versions of the software become available (assuming it isn’t already)? But, yes, would like to see this initiative be a success 🙂
Hi Steven, thanks for the question. Our ‘primary’ learning approach is to always look at the “why”, so I would actually say that our historical content is in fact the good-good stuff, and more relevant now then ever before. For example: how light works, anatomy, kinesiology, etc.
Software does and will change, as do workflows, but understanding why to tweak a setting (for example, the ‘Metallic’ attribute on a PBR shader) is going to give you the knowledge to transfer your skills from one app to another. We are planning to do more training on the latest tools and should we get the support to switch to v002, we’ll do more regular software update sessions. But for the most part, I would say we are not “tool junkies” or fixed to any one app. We use the best tools for the task, as you’d expect from working in industry. Some things for sure will age (software-wise) but again, the foundational knowledge as to “why” should for the most part be consistent.
Thanks
J