Denver Center Attractions 2007 season contains the world-premiere production of Disneys THE LITTLE MERMAID musical at The Ellie Caulkins Opera House in the summer of 2007.
This project is terribly exciting and a huge coup for Denver, said Randy Weeks, president and coo of The Denver Center for the Performing Arts. We are looking forward to taking our relationship with Disney Theatricals to a new level this season.
The 2nd Annual Casual Games Conference (CGC), September 6-8, 2006, in Austin, Texas, is a developer-focused event that provides insights to design considerations and business opportunities required for developers to succeed in this rapidly-expanding game industry segment. The CGC, sponsored by Microsoft Casual Games, focuses on information necessary to develop online and downloadable casual games for a variety of platforms and will run alongside the Austin Game Conference.
The Game Initiative is hosting the first annual Game Audio Conference (GAC). As a new event, GAC is designed to offer advanced game audio sessions aimed at working industry professionals and is geared toward illuminating and proposing solutions to some of game audio's toughest problems.
Scheduled GAC sessions include: * Pre-production for Game Audio * Large Scale Dialog Management * Multi-channel Audio * Creating Audio for Mobile Games * The Lone Wolf * When Audio is the Game Experience * Music Design for Large Persistent Worlds * Sound Source Acquisition and Library Maintenance
The 2nd Annual, Game Writers Conference, September 6-7, 2006, in Austin, Texas, is dedicated to the art and craft of game writing and will run alongside the Austin Game Conference.
Scheduled sessions include: Narrative Design: Writing Stories With Gameplay In Mind, Writing for the Digital Actor, Playing the Writing Process: Increasing Collaboration and Creativity, Writing Comedy for Games, The Imago Effect: Avatar Psychology, and Screen/Play: Story Documentation.
New market research detailing the growth of the online game industry will be announced at the Austin Game Conference (AGC) this week on Sept. 6-8, 2006. The fourth annual Austin Game Conference will bring together more than 2,400 game industry professionals from 20 countries representing more than 520 companies.
Running until Sept. 21, 2006, participating McDonald's restaurants will feature six toys from the world of Mario, encouraging youngsters to get up, get active and "Take the Mario Challenge."
New York animator Patrick Smith premieres his latest animated short, PUPPET, in Los Angeles on Thursday, Sept. 7, at 7:45 pm in the Arclight Theater. PUPPET recently become eligible for the 79th Academy Awards, and has been selected to screen at more than 50 film festivals worldwide for the 2006-2007 season.
The Arclight is located at 6360 Sunset, west of Vine Street. The L.A. premiere is hosted by the 2006 Los Angeles International Short Film Festival and is part of a line-up of other shorts.
Illumitoon Ent. Ltd., a newly formed collaboration of business and creative professionals focused on delivering customized entertainment to the North American markets, announced that it will be utilizing Westlake Ent. Inc. for home video distribution on its new acquisitions, including BEET THE VANDEL BUSTER and AM DRIVER. The announcement comes on the heels of Westlake Ent.s announcement of the companys repositioning in the marketplace to release first-run features, including theatrical and new title acquisitions in other key core categories.
A trio of Kansas University students has begun to drum up interest for their upcoming webtoon ZOOK MAYHEM AND THE BANDITS by releasing a short one-minute prequel at www.zookmayhem.com, reports THE KANSAN.
Having worked on the cartoon for the past seven months, creator Nolan T. Jones felt the prequel would be a great way to introduce the characters and spur interest in the series before the first episode launches in October.
The Warner Bros. Television Group is establishing a new digital production venture, dubbed Studio 2.0, which will work with creative talent and advertisers to create original live-action and animated short-form programming for broadband and wireless devices. WBTVG has tapped multi-award-winning producer and senior advertising exec Rich Rosenthal to head Studio 2.0.
GDH K.K. has announced it will release PROJECT PAPO on both next-generation high-definition formats Blu-ray and HD DVD. The Blu-ray DVD will be distributed by Sony Pictures Ent. (Japan) lnc.
PAPO is a mysterious robot that also functions as a speaker. People who become mesmerized by PAPO's mystifying music experience various bizarre but unique events. What could the true identity of PAPO be?
HAPPY FEET wont be dancing in IMAX 3-D just yet. Warner Bros. Pictures and IMAX announced that due to time constraints the animated feature about a tap-dancing penguin from Animal Logic would open in IMAX 2-D rather than 3-D on Nov. 17. There just wasnt sufficient time to deliver the master print and then convert it to 3-D by IMAX.
A spokeswoman for Warner Bros. Pictures noted that a 3-D release of the film was still in the cards at some point.
NVIDIA Corp. redefined performance expectations for graphics cards at two of the most popular price segments for PC gamers. Available immediately, NVIDIA SLI-ready GeForce 7900 GS graphics processing units (GPUs) deliver exceptional performance and cutting-edge features at the widely accessible $199 to $249 price point. Available Sept. 14, the GeForce 7950 GT GPU brings increased performance and a 512MB frame buffer to the $299 to $349 price segment.
Digital-Tutors announced the availability of RENDERING TECHNIQUES IN XSI, the newest release in an expanding library of interactive video-based training for emerging digital artists. Artists will learn innovative techniques and a unique approach to rendering in XSI and compositing using the integrated FX Tree. RENDERING TECHNIQUES IN XSI provides over 2.5 hours of project-based training to increase the artist's productivity and understanding of rendering and compositing while using the powerful tools and features in XSI.
Debuting Sept. 7, Gap's new KEEP IT SIMPLE TV spots juxtapose classic footage of Audrey Hepburn from the movie FUNNY FACE dancing in skinny black pants to the 1980 AC/DC hit song Back in Black."
Antitrust conditions and preliminary approvals of AMDs proposed acquisition of ATI have been cleared, and the transaction is expected to be completed during ATIs first quarter of fiscal 2007, which ends Nov. 30, 2006. The proposed acquisition remains subject to the approval of ATI shareholders, court approval of the plan of arrangement and certain other regulatory approvals.
Amy Pascal has been promoted to co-chairman of Sony Pictures Ent. (SPE) and has extended her deal with the studio to 2011.
In addition to her new title, Pascal will continue to serve in her role as chairman of the studio's Motion Picture Group. Michael Lynton, chairman/ceo of SPE, and the two will continue to report to Sir Howard Stringer, chairman/ceo of Sony Corp.
Chris Landreth finds inspiration in all images computer-generated at SIGGRAPHs 2006 edition of the Electronic Theater.
Olivia King Canter joins Entertainment Rights Plc. as director of sales for Latin America and Canada. She will be responsible for driving ERs business in these key territories and will be based in ERs New York City office.
King Canter report to Kathleen Hricik, evp/md of the United States of America, Canada and Latin America, as well as heads up ERs U.S. operations.
Mark Simon takes on the knightly challenge between the Job Inquisitor and the Job Searcher, in this months Mind Your Business.
When Chris Landreth, the Oscar-winning director of RYAN, offered to cover the SIGGRAPH 2006 Electronic Theater in Boston, we were naturally thrilled. Chris has been attending the celebrated EA for 18 years and continues to find inspiration in the yearly CG offerings, though the former Maya engineer at Alias admittedly longs for more cutting edge technical demos too.
Atari and IGN Ent. are holding the "TEST DRIVE UNLIMITED
Test your skills and challenge your brain with AWN's Animation Trivia Quiz.
Pierre Berton's THE SECRET WORLD OF OG premieres as an animated series on CBC Television in Canada, Saturday, Sept. 9 at 9:30 am. The series of nine episodes will continue to air weekly on Saturday mornings.
This week in AWN's Forums, a member is looking for advice on pitching to Disney.
