Winners in the 12 competing categories at the Australian Effects and Animation Festival (AEAF) 2003 Awards were announced Dec. 9, 2003 at the Sydney Convention Center, Darling Harbor.

The winners were:

FEATURE FILM VISUAL EFFECTS
THE MATRIX RELOADED: ESC

FEATURE FILM ANIMATION
FINDING NEMO: Pixar

VFX industry veteran Jeff Ross has joined Hollywood-based visual effects shop Eden FX, in the newly created position of evp.

Ross has built an extensive career guiding, managing and overseeing the growth of numerous successful, high-end post-production companies. For the past two years, he served as evp/coo of Sunset Digital, a high definition facility specializing in feature film mastering, digital restoration, linear and non-linear editing and DVD compression and authoring.

SEABISCUIT, writer/director Gary Ross' acclaimed screen adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's revered bestseller about the legendary race horse and his place in American lore, comes to DVD Dec. 16, 2003 (Universal Home Entertainment, $26.98) with several noteworthy extras: commentary from Ross and director Steven Soderbergh, production notes, three featurettes ("Racing Through History," "Bringing the Legend to Life" and "Anatomy of a Movie Moment: From Script to Screen") and co-star Jeff Bridge's on-set photographs.

The Independent Games Festival has announced the finalists in the sixth annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) Competition, which will exhibit their games the Game Developers Conference March 24-26, 2004 in San Jose, California. Selected by a panel of game industry professionals, game development teams will compete for more than $40,000 in cash prizes, double the payout from previous years.

The 10 games selected for the "Open" category are (in alphabetical order):
ACMI by Selectparks (Richmond, Victoria, Australia)

Kevin Mullican has been named cto for iO Film, a technologically advanced, full-service digital film finishing facility specializing in film and video projects from every sector of the entertainment industry.

Billed as a Victorian-era X-MEN, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, led by Sean Connery and a cast of legendary monsters, arrives on DVD on Dec. 16, 2003 (Fox Home Entertainment, $27.98).

When the Visual Information Technology laboratory at the Canadian National Research Council started developing its high resolution 3D scanners in the early 1980s, it probably had no idea that 20 years later one of its spin-offs, XYZ RGB Inc., would be contracted to help bring the characters of THE LORD OF THE RINGS to life on the big screen.

Softimage has launched SOFTIMAGE|BEHAVIORv.1.5 - the latest version of its cutting edge crowd effects software. This third release includes an array of customer-driven improvements as well as new and innovative features that enable users to build sophisticated behavioral simulations quickly and creatively.

Discreet announced it has significantly increased its share in the 3D animation tools market this year with expansion in core and emerging markets. Having exceeded 200,000 license sales of its 3ds max software, Discreet has forged ahead with 3ds max 6, the most recent release of its acclaimed 3D modeling, animation and rendering software.

HBO has greenlit a second season of the cult TV series, CARNIVALE, reported HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. The David Lynch/Stephen King-like series will get another 13 episodes, debuting at the end of 2004. Production should start in the spring with the original cast members all returning. The series didn’t pull in audiences like THE SOPRANOS or SEX IN THE CITY, but it averaged a solid 3.5 million viewers each week.