The First Annual Amazing Kids! Animation Contest will give young animators a chance to be mentored by professional animators from DreamWorks Animation. The contest is part of a partnership between Amazing Kids!, a non-profit organization dedicated to inspiring excellence in children, and DreamWorks Animation. The event is hosted on the Amazing Kids! Web site and is open for kids 6-17 years old. As part of the contest, DreamWorks is providing original content for the Amazing Kids! Web site, including animation lessons for kids taught by DreamWorks animators. A panel of DreamWorks animators will choose the winners. Winning prizes include copies of the Web-based animation software program, Macromedia Flash, donated by leading Internet entertainment and software company shockwave.com. All contest entries will be posted on the Amazing Kids! Webspace in the "Amazing Kids! Animation Station," (premiering in late summer, 2000).

ASIFA-Hollywood and Glendale Community College are offering life-drawing workshops. The workshop offers live models in pose from one to fifteen minutes in duration, about forty poses per session. Professional assistance is available from the workshop supervisor. The classes run Wednesdays from 7 to 10 pm. The price is US$10 for the public and $7 for ASIFA-Hollywood members.

WAC will showcase more than 800 films, including the best in both classic and contemporary animation. As the main attraction, WAC will present awards to the best new animated works from around the world. The World Animation Celebration will present a trade show, an international business conference, world and American film premieres, seminars, symposiums, tributes, salutes to new European animation, special programs on new computer animation and a survey of the world's best animated commercials. Cash prizes, awards and commissions will be presented to winners in categories that include feature and short films, television series, television specials, commercials, public service announcements, educational films, experimental animation, computer animation, and animation intended for children.

The 24th International Festival of animated film is now accepting entries for animated short films, television series, commissioned films and student films. Entry forms are now available on the festival web site. The three selection committees will gather in Annecy March 2-12, 2000 in order to choose the 5 features and 10 programs of shorts which will compose the official competition together with the 3 or 4 school and graduation film programs and the 8 TV & commissioned film programs, representing in total more that 30 hours of viewing. After honoring Japanese Animation in 1999, the festival will celebrate a century of animation, in an unprecedented tribute to all forms of the art. The festivities even include the participation of Richard Williams. The triple Oscar-winning animator, regarded by many in the industry as a modern master, will offer a three-day Animation Masterclass on the principles of animation, June 3-5, 2000. The MIFA expo (International Animated Film Market) will be open June 7-10, 2000, and feature a sizable new technologies area. The MIFA conference themes and speaker names will be available soon on the festival web site. Participation forms for the scientific conference NPAR 2000 (First International Symposium on Non Photorealistic Animation and Rendering, June 5-7, 2000) will be ready in February.

NPAR 2000 is the first international symposium dedicated to non-photorealistic animation and rendering, including cartoon animation systems and techniques. Held in conjunction with the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, SIGGRAPH and Eurographics, the symposium will bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and the industry. It will showcase cutting-edge research in non-photorealistic animation and rendering systems and techniques, and present examples of their application in original computer-animated films. Papers ad animation submissions must be sent by November 15, 1999.

Early deadline for entries: December 17, 1999.



The Nashville Independent Film Festival (NIFF) will showcase the best in independent film and video featuring premiere screenings of award winning works, seminars, panel discussions and guest appearances by nationally recognized film/video makers. The festival is one of the few Academy Award qualifying festivals for animation. Adding to the Feature, Animation, Documentary, Short Film and Young Filmmaker categories, the festival has opened up some new categories this year: Television Pilot/Episodic Television, and Family and Children Films. Entry fees range from $10 to $50.

The DH Institute of Media Arts is hosting a one-day Drawing Workshop instructed by Glenn Vilppu. This class will introduce attendees to Basic Drawing and Figure Construction. The time will be 11 am - 3 pm, with a lunch break from 12:30 - 1 pm. The tuition will be US$75 for non-students and $60 for students. Vilppu is an instructor at Disney and Warner Bros. Feature Animation, as well as the American Animation Institute, UCLA, DreamWorks and Rhythm & Hues.

Want to get a hold of Glenn Vilppu's instructional drawing books? Visit the AWN Store at www.awn.com/awnstore.

The Singapore Animation Fiesta 2000 will highlight creativity in animation. The festival will feature screenings of top animation from around the world as well as workshops and forums. Sponsored by Temasek Polytechnic, the event will feature screenings ranging from Toei, Japan's largest animation studio, to Betty Boop, and from Aardman animation to the edgy wonders of Barry Purves. Workshops during the festival will center on stop-motion with clay, 3D Studio Max, creating human models in Maya and Anime-style drawing. Barry Purves, Digital FilmWorks' Chris Leone and Digital Anvil's Chris Olivia will all be conducting master classes. The forums will focus on computer games, video game modeling techniques and violence in anime.

The Nantucket Film Festival is dedicated to screenwriters. The event will feature film screenings, staged readings, morning chats with writers, panel discussions, forums and an awards ceremony for best writer, feature and short. This year screenwriter Paul Schrader (TAXI DRIVER, MISHIMA) will be honored. The sponsors for the event are Entertainment Weekly, NBC, Showtime, iCast and Listerine.

Cartoon Master, sponsored by Cartoon the European Animation Association, will delve into the expanding opportunities on the Internet. The focus of the event will be to take a look at the legal terrain of the Web and how it affects producers. In the first session on Friday, the program will define what new media is and how it will affect professionals in production, distribution and ownership. Later on Friday, the discussion will focus on how television programming will be affected by the new medium. The first session on Sunday will center on the field of rights on the Net. Finishing up the event will be a discussion on Internet rules, legislation and territory development.