As part of its current expansion drive, KromA has promoted Adam Fisher to visual effects artist. He had been an assistant artist with the studio for two years. Fisher recently served as lead artist on three music video projects for director Benny Boom, including WHAT IF? from AMERICAN IDOL winner Rubin Studdard. He was also part of a team of artists who performed compositing work for the Britney Spears' TOXIC video and the Busta Rhymes video LIGHT YOUR ASS ON FIRE, both directed by Joseph Kahn, as well as the Exies video MY GODDESS directed by Diane Martel.

Dimension Films have signed on to distribute in the U.S. Gaga Communications and Crystal Sky Group's film adaptation of Namco's popular videogame franchise TEKKEN, reports VARIETY. In addition, Charles Stone (DRUMLINE) has signed on to direct. The film will have a budget around $60 million. Overseeing the production for Dimension are co-presidents Andrew Rona and Brad Weston, as well as Bob Weinstein.

VAN HELSING will screen digitally for free, followed by a Q&A with producer/editor Bob Duscay to launch the 2004 Digital Screening Series at the Hollywood Pacific Theater on May 24 at 7:00 pm.

VAN HELSING represents the first in what will be an expanded and improved summer digital screening series. This is the second year the series is being held.

Just how difficult is it to produce, distribute and market an independent animated feature? J. Paul Peszko provides a few answers with the promising Hoodwinked: The True Story of Red Riding Hood, the first independently produced 3D animated feature from the Philippines that screens at Cannes this weekend as a work-in-progress.

Explore the art of gaming as it makes its way in art history at E3Expo via an art exhibition and a multimedia, interactive museum called "The History of Video Games."

There are 16 pieces of artwork selected from more than 120 submissions by a jury of interactive entertainment industry art veterans and experts from the traditional art field to be featured in "Into the Pixel," a juried exhibition of computer and videogame art on display at this year's E3Expo.

Participants and attendees at E3 are obviously in the right game as a new survey reveals that computer and videogames are capturing increasing amounts of Americans' leisure time at the expense of television and movies.

The data from the Entertainment Software Assoc. (ESA) annual consumer survey shows 52% of gamers who are spending more time playing games report watching less television and, as a result, 47% go to movies less, and 41% watch movies at home less often.

Kaydara announced that Ubisoft has licensed HumanIK|Middleware, an advanced in-game character animation and rigging library, for its upcoming release of TOM CLANCY'S SPLINTER CELL 3 (working title). With HumanIK|Middleware, Ubisoft will be able to easily embed the same award-winning character animation and rigging technology found in MOTIONBUILDER directly into its game engine. Ubisoft is demonstrating SPLINTER CELL 3 using HumanIK|Middleware at E3, May 12-15, 2004, booth #1046.

Renowned sound designer and mixer, as well as USC alumnus, Gary Rydstrom will deliver the commencement address at the 2004 USC School of Cinema-Television Commencement Ceremony on May 14, 2004 at the Shrine Auditorium. Rydstrom will accept the prestigious Mary Pickford Outstanding Alumnus Award, given in recognition of his innovative and prolific work in film sound.

GameSpot a leading source for information about games, today announced the E3 Hot List, an up-to-the-minute look at the most popular videogames garnering the most interest among males, ages 18-34, for the first day of the show, March 12, 2004.

World-renowned designer, concept artist and futurist Syd Mead will speak and sign the books OBLAGON and SENTURY (his latest) at Gnomon School of Visual Effects on Thursday, May 20 at 7:00 pm.

Rebecca Ramsey, a producer with broad experience in commercials, feature films, theatrical trailers and broadcast media, has joined Steele VFX as exec producer. Ramsey will supervise the company's production team, oversee in-house production and manage bidding. She will also assist in new business development and will support Steele VFX's expansion effort, which targets growth both in the company's core markets-commercials and music videos-and in motion picture trailers, broadcast promotions and effects work for features and television.

Infinium Labs Inc. will debut its Phantom Gaming Service -- the first end-to-end, on-demand game distribution service -- at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), in Los Angeles, May 12-14, 2004, at Booth 746 in the South Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. The new service will offer subscribers a library of titles and make them available any time, day or night. The company plans to provide the service hardware free of charge to consumers who sign a two-year contract for a basic subscription to its flagship online gaming service at $29.95 per month.

NVIDIA Corp. and Epic Games announced the first public showing of the new game engine Unreal Engine 3 at this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Unreal Engine 3 is the first game engine to take full advantage of Shader Model 3.0 -- a key feature of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 -- enabled only by the NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series of graphics processing units (GPUs). Created by Epic Games, Unreal Engine 3 advances lighting and shadowing capabilities, shader effects and editing tools.

Discreet has purchased Unreal Pictures, developers of the advanced, award-winning character animation tool, character studio. This transaction brings in patents and core character studio technology allowing Discreet to further advance the state-of-the-art in intuitive character animation.

In creating visual effects for a new Coors Light spot, KromA conjured up the unique visions of a man bent on doubling his pleasure.

Conceived by Chicago agency Foote, Cone & Belding and directed by HSI's Joseph Kahn, the spot centers on a man who gets a new pair of glasses not to see better – just to see more. The glasses cause the man to experience double vision so that when he goes to the beach he sees twice the number of beautiful women. The spot is set to the Jan & Dean tune "Surf City," which includes the refrain "two girls for every boy."

Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications has announced it will deliver eleven mobile games from Sorrent on Sony Ericsson's most popular handsets. North American mobile subscribers using the T610/T616 or T630/T637 handsets will be able to purchase such single and multiplayer games as YAO MING BASKETBALL '04 PRESENTED BY FOX SPORTS, FOX SPORTS BOXING, FOX SPORTS FOOTBALL '04, FOX SPORTS HOCKEY '04, FOX SPORTS TRACK & FIELD '04, FOX SPORTS SOCCER '04, FOX SPORTS RACING, SHARK HUNT, 3D SLAM PING PONG, DURATRAX MOBILE RC and WILD 8-BALL. The games will be available in Q2 2004.

When ATI Technologies launched the latest generation of its Radeon graphics technology in April, the company wanted a visual demonstration piece that would show off the card's realtime rendering and graphics capabilities.

Softimage Co. announced that Archimation, one of Germany's leading architectural presentation firms, used SOFTIMAGE|XSI software to create 3D renderings for two of the architectural firms designing the buildings to be constructed on the World Trade Center site in New York City.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING was the big winner at the 30th annual Saturn Awards, garnering eight statuettes at the May 5, 2004 ceremonies held at the Universal Sheraton in Los Angeles. KING reigned in awards for best fantasy film, best actor (Elijah Wood), best supporting actor (Sean Astin), best director (Peter Jackson), best writing (Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) and best music (Howard Shore), among others.

L.A. How To Break Into Videogame Industry: Conference and Resume Workshop
Los Angeles, California, USA
May 8, 2004