The Gnomon Workshop has partnered with Design Studio Press in the production of analog training DVDs. Leading concept designers from the film, game and industrial design industries will share their techniques in an effort to inspire and educate artists around the world.

combustion 3 for Apple Macintosh, the latest version of Discreet's award-winning visual effects and 3D compositing desktop software, was announced on Jan. 5, 2004 in conjunction with MacWorld in San Francisco. combustion 3 for the Mac will deliver industry-leading features benefiting customers who produce Web content and professional video motion graphics, repurpose video content for the Web and create effects for independent feature films and HDTV content.

The Gnomon Workshop has released three new training DVDs by feature animator Cameron Hood (lead character animator on DreamWorks' SHARKTALE). Focused on both the aesthetic and technical art of digital character animation with Maya, these four titles contain more than six hours of instruction, lecture notes and project scene files. Students new to animation, or artists transitioning from 2D to 3D, will benefit from these titles.

The Gnomon Workshop has released five new training DVDs by Ryan Church, one of the industry's leading concept designers and a conceptual art supervisor for STAR WARS EPISODE III. On each DVD, Church masterfully executes a digital painting, while sharing his insights into his own creative and technical process. The focus of these lectures is not on software, but on the fundamentals of design, composition, lighting, material indication, storytelling and workflow.

To help independent advertising agency davidandgoliath launch KIA's new luxury sedan, Amanti, Anonymous Content director Jeffrey Plansker collaborated with award-winning Zoic Studios to apply visual effects expertise to BOOKS.

Turbo Squid announced the release of Service Pack 2 (SP2) for cebas' finalRender Stage-1, a Discreet certified 3ds max plug-in. SP2 is a free download and provides the following to finalRender Stage-1 users:

*All-New Anti-Aliasing Core Engine Technologies – The latest advanced adaptive anti-aliasing sampling algorithms have been implemented within SP2 and provided as a new engine along with significant speed enhancements to the existing engines.

Platinum Studios has acquired the film rights to two indie comics – THE DARK FRINGE and RUST. Platinum head Scott Rosenberg will oversee the live-action projects.

FRINGE -- created, written and inked by Eman R. Torre for Atomic Rocket Prods -- follows a cop who must decide whether he can trust the top suspect in the murder of his wife to lead him to the possible true killer. RUST, created by Steve Miller, follows a man who is accidentally covered in metal and finds solace in sculpture.

The big-screen version of S.W.A.T., starring Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farrell and Michelle Rodriguez, comes to DVD on Dec. 30, 2003 (Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment, $28.95) with enough gunfire and other explosions (with vfx help from Pixel Magic) to satisfy action-movie junkies as well as fans of the '70s TV series.

Comcast is expected to acquire Paul Allen's computer-info channel TechTV for about $300 million, to merge it with Comcast's fledgling G4 channel, reports VARIETY, in an effort to boost its programming assets and subscriber reach.

The merger of G4 and TechTV, would combine the best original programming of each into a videogame-focused, computer and technology-based network, reaching around 45 million subs, targeted to the highly desirable male 18-34 demo.