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).

Discreet, a division of Autodesk, Inc., is offering one-day workshops for professional animators to check out the animation, modeling, texturing, character animation and rendering techniques of 3ds max and receive a free 30-day trail of the 3D software. Classes are being offered throughout North America for $99. Advance registration is required. To register, get locations and times in your area and other information call (800) 869-3504, e-mail events@discreet.com or go to www.discreet.com/events/shiftgears.

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Ex’pression Center for New Media has named one of its state-of-the-art digital media labs in honor of late animation legend Chuck Jones. The Chuck Jones Lab in Emeryville, California will be used by Ex’pression Digital Visual Media students to create 3D animation and modeling using Maya, After Effects, Flash, Vicon Workstation and Kaydara FiLMBOX software, plus Dell precision workstations with 2.2GHz processors and Trinitron monitors.

Anzovin Studio, a leading publisher of training materials for Hash's Animation:Master 3D animation software, has released a new instructional CD-ROM, SECRETS OF ANIMATION:MASTER 2003. Anzovin's Raf Anzovin and Bill Young take viewers step by step through some of the newest and least understood features of A:M 2003 (version 10/10.5). It features more than two hours of pristine, 800 x 600 QuickTime video and all associated project files, models and rotoscopes.

Lost Pencil Animation Studios Inc. presents a new training series: the 3D Apprenticeship Training Series for Maya. This video training series includes more than 15 hours of video training on 9 CDs covering modeling, UV mapping, texturing, rigging, weight mapping, lighting and animating a realistic elephant. The training material is aimed at the novice and intermediate 3D user.

The training material is available in four individual sets:
1. Modeling (3 CDs)
2. UV Mapping and Texturing (2 CDs)
3. Rigging and Weight Mapping (2 CDs)

It's finally here! Another AWN exclusive -- AWN's 2003 Global Animation School Directory is your complete, indispensable reference guide to over 550 animation-related schools and educational programs, from 40 countries. This year, we've added more schools, more countries and more program types. A must have resource for anyone considering a future in animation! Over 50,000 people downloaded our previous edition.

In what may be a first of its kind, this April VanArts (Vancouver Institute of Media Arts) will launch a series of online lessons and lectures featuring the late Academy-Award winning animator Lee Mishkin. This rare and recently edited collection, THE LEE MISHKIN LECTURE SERIES, features talks and instruction by the founding director of VanArts’ Classical Animation Program. The lectures cover a wide range of fundamental animation principles for 2D or 3D professionals.

Pixar animator Andrew Gordon and award-winning commercial director Mike Wellins will teach a one-day Animation Masters Seminar at Oregon3D Inc., The Center for Visualization Technologies, from 9 am to 5 pm on March 22, 2003 in Portland, Oregon. The one-day class will offer animation fundamentals, directing, performance staging, blocking and storytelling, editing for emotion, classic character animation and a look at animation as a career today. Gordon was lead animator on Mike in MONSTERS, INC. at Pixar where he is finishing up on FINDING NEMO and preparing to work on THE INCREDIBLES.

Lost Pencil Animation Studios, Inc. is offering a new training CD in the "Just Animate" Lightwave series, which focuses on Character Animation for games and game creation. Using Lightwave 7.5, the CD shows users how to create a number of character game loops (walk, run, jump, stand and death), and export the Lightwave model and animations into the GameStudio game engine, where a small game level is created.