Softimage's SOFTIMAGE|XSI software is being introduced to two Master of Fine Arts programs at USC's School of Cinema-Television: Interactive Media and Animation and Digital Arts. According to the university, this is to help meet industry demands for professionally educated animators and digital media creators.

U.S. high school seniors wanting to pursue a career in the arts can apply to Arts Recognition and Talent Search (ARTS) for the chance to share $900,000. Applicants will also be eligible for $3 million in scholarships by arts colleges across the U.S, which range from $100 to $25,000. The final application deadline is October 1, 2003 with the submission/audition materials deadline being November 1, 2003. Applications may be obtained through high school art teachers, by visiting www.ARTSawards.org or calling 1-800-970-ARTS.

Contrary to the high profile jobs at Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, PDI/DreamWorks and other prestigious studios, the real growth area for Bay Area animation jobs is coming from other industries looking for people trained in computer graphics, 3D environments, simulation and other animation-related skills.

Fernesh Akademie Mitteldeutschland will host a fifth European Animation Masterclass September 1, 2003 to January 30, 2004 in Halle, Germany. Applications for 10 participants are due by July 31 for the international training program co-funded in equal portions by the MEDIA Plus Program of the European Commission and the regional film promotion entity, Mitteldeutsche Medienforderung GumbH.

Special one-day 3ds max workshops will be sponsored by Discreet throughout the summer in Santa Monica and San Jose, California. Designed for professional animators as well as Maya, XSI, Houdini or LightWave users, the workshops will focus on animation, modeling, texturing and character animation and rendering techniques.

The workshops will focus on:
o Character modeling with cool polygon modeling techniques
o How to create 3D surfaces from patches
o How to create a complex material tree using material types

Video Symphony, one of Hollywood's leading TV, film and DVD education centers, has been awarded a two-year, $1.5 million contract by California's Employment Training Panel (ETP) to retrain professionals employed by the state's digital media production companies.

ETP funds are awarded to a select group of training centers, such as Video Symphony, to help keep California's digital technology companies competitive, and to diminish export of production work to other states and nations.

The Gnomon Workshop has released eight new training DVDs on texturing, lighting and particle rendering in Alias|Wavefront's Maya, as well as two "analog" titles on character sculpture, produced by industry veteran John Brown, a new addition to the Gnomon team. Each title contains two hours of instruction, lecture notes, resource spotlights and bonus materials. They are priced at $69 each and may be purchased at www.thegnomonworkshop.com.

Go to camp, make a short film, is the mission of the upcoming Oregon3DSM Film Camp, August 17-29, 2003 in Portland, Oregon. Oregon3D Inc., The Center for Visualization Technologies, offers a two-week film school-style camp where the students create a short film as a group under the guidance of award-winning director Mike Wellins and Oregon3D's Discreet-certified flame compositor Phil Guzzo (both previously from Vinton Studios).