London-based Passion Pictures has created a :60 spot for Virgin Cola,
"Roller Girl," which features a roller-blading 2D animated heroine designed
and conceived by Jamie Hewlett, creator of TANK GIRL. The spot was directed
by Robert Valley and Chris Hauge for agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe.
The spot was first pencil drawn and hand painted before being computer
painted in Toonz, with traditionally painted and airbrushed backgrounds
added.

Loop Filmworks has completed "The Honeymoon Suite," a stop-motion animated
spot for HBO. Directed by David Chartier, the spot features a
Brooklyn-accented bellhop who guides a newlywed couple through their
honeymoon suite. The couple are uninterested in what the bellhop says until
he mentions that the room comes with HBO.

Passion Pictures has created a new fully computer generated spot starring
Willy Wonka (WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY). Launching Rowntree's
new Wonka Xploder chocolate bar, the :20 spot shows Wonka and his chocolate
factory where teams of robots stir vats of bubbling chocolate, and brightly
colored machines create delicious chocolates. Willy tests his new
invention, the Wonka Xploder, on two boys who are inside a sealed testing
room. The boys are startled when the chocolates explode and the secret

J.J. Sedelmaier Productions has created "Lintbrush," a :30 spot for Quilted
Northern bathroom tissues. Directed by J.J. Sedelmaier, and designed by
Bonnie Timmons, the 2D animated spot shows quilters at work while they
discuss the amount of lint in other tissue brands, as compared to Quilted
Northern tissues.

Los Angeles-based Class-Key Chew-Po Commercials has created a series of
"Agent M" spots for McDonald's. Directed by Walter Santucci (EVIL CAT), the
2D animated spots feature two characters, Agent M and his partner Sidecat.
Their goal is to find and acquaint the public with the great food bargains
at McDonald's. Agent M, voiced by Adam West (BATMAN), is a detective with
the cool confidence of James Bond, but with the clumsiness of Inspector
Clouseau. Sidecat, voiced by Taurean Blacque (HILL ST. BLUES), saves the
day when his boss screws up.

San Francisco-based (COLOSSAL) PICTURES has created a hand-drawn 2D :30
animated spot for Old Navy Tie-dye shirts that is done in a retro-style.
George Evelyn directed "Pool Party," which features a pastiche of early
1930s rubber-hose style animation, and is especially reminiscent of Ub
Iwerks and color Van Beuren shorts. The spot opens with a black and white
scene of children and animals moping around a deflated backyard pool, and
begins to change to color when two kids arrive wearing Old Navy Tie-dye

Will Vinton Studios has produced two 3 Musketeers candy bar spots for
M&M/Mars Inc. The spots, "Trailer" and "Corruption," each with :15 and
:30 versions, feature 3D stop-motion animation of the Three Musketeer
characters scaling castle walls and fighting off evil guards. The spots
were directed by Matthew Brunner, produced by Sara Mullock, and animated
by Mike Johnson, Tony Merrithew, and Jean Poulot for agency Uniworld
Group Inc.

Frank Gladstone, Head of Artist Development at DreamWorks, and Clifford Cohen, founder and president of AnimAction, have joined forces as members of UNICEF's International Animation Consortium for Child's Rights to create an animated PSA that addresses the Right to a Name and a Nationality. The PSA will be screened on June 4 at the Annecy Film Festival in Annecy, France. Also at the Festival, Mr. Cohen will speak about "How Animation Can Change People's Thinking."

Tricky Pictures has created "One and Only," a promo for the new Noggin TV
network. Noggin is an educational channel that is a joint venture between
Nickelodeon and Children's Television Workshop, and is currently subscribed
to by nearly two million homes. The spot uses mixed-media and incorporates
faces of real children with painted bodies in an outer space scene where
the Noggin logo doubles as a planet being explored. The kids plant a flag
on the planet, which doubles as a face. Ann Marie Fleming designed and

TOPIX/Mad Dog has completed the animation for "Stick People," a :30 spot,
with a :15 lift. The colorful, playful spot, which promotes Crayola Color
Wipeoffs, removable water-based magic markers, for TBWA/Chiat Day (Toronto,
ON) and Binney & Smith Canada (Markham, ON), rolled out throughout Canada
March 15th and will continue to air through the end of the year. In it, a
boy's stick figure drawings come to life. "With Photoshop I drew the
figures, frame by frame, so that it's a bit like cel animation, but not

The adventures of Toucan Sam continue in a 30 second spot made by SimEx
Digital Studios for Leo Burnett/Chicago. The spot, entitled "Frog/Idol,"
promotes Kellogg's Marshmallow Blasted Froot Loops.


"Frog/Idol" is a continuation of last summer's "Marshmallow Temple/Extreme
Adventure." In it, Toucan Sam falls through a temple floor into an
underwater cavern. There he discovers an enormous frog idol, and swims into
its mouth. Once he surfaces, a multitude of frog marshmallows jump towards
him.

A team from HELIUM PRODUCTIONS, INC. and TWO HEADED MONSTER has created a new computer animated spot for Starburst which immerses the viewer in a simulated water environment designed for absolute believability. The animators used SGI Octanes, Side Effects' Prisms, and Pixar's Photorealistic Renderman software to create the realistic physics of water splashing and swirling. At Helium Productions, John Scheafer was creative director. At Two Headed Monster Christopher Willoughby was creative director and Ruth Schiller produced.

Marketing and communication company Pittard Sullivan (Culver City, CA)
engaged SIMEX (Santa Monica, CA) to help create a new full-motion, computer
animated logo to accompany all of King World's programs. The animated logo
features a star burst animated in Alias|Wavefront PowerAnimator. From
Pittard Sullivan, Reid Thompson directed, and Jim Capp and Debra Kaufman
produced. Nick Bates was the visual effects supervisor and George Mendoza
was the executive producer at SimEx Digital Studios.

The San Francisco office of CURIOUS PICTURES has created a pool of five
spots for Round Table Pizza through Wieden & Kennedy (Portland, OR). There
are four 15-second spots - "Steam Dance," "Rooster," "Full," and "Freedom
of Speech" - along with a 30-second spot, "Tornado." The commercials were
directed by Michael Bade and designed by Seattle-based alternative
cartoonist Peter Bagge (HATE), marking his first foray into both animation
and television. Featuring various characters, the commercials guarantee the

San Francisco-based RADIUM has animated more than a half-dozen 3D
computer-generated building block characters for "Toys," a national
television spot promoting Wrigley's Juicy Fruit Gum. Conceived by BBDO
(Chicago, IL), the 30-second spot revolves around a group of toy figures
that spring to life in pursuit of the sweet taste of Juicy Fruit. The
commercial blends 3D animation, 2D effects, live-action and cel animation.
Radium created the tiny plastic blok characters as 3D elements. Afterwards,

THE INK TANK has produced "Hockey Monkey," a mixed-media music video for
Nickelodeon's KA-BLAM!, which will air this spring. The 1-minute, 30-second
piece follows a group of live-action adults who are in search of a monkey.
Unbeknownst to them, the animated monkey is in an ice hockey match with a
group of cut-out animated kids. For The Ink Tank, R.O. Blechman was
creative director; Brian O'Connell, executive producer/co-director; Jesse
Gordon, live-action director/cameraman; Maciek Albrecht, cut-out

Hollywood-based CLASS-KEY CHEW-PO COMMERCIALS, in conjunction with Ogilvy & Mather, has created the newest Cocoa Pebbles cereal spot starring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. The 30-second commercial, directed by Raul Garcia, features a traditionally-drawn Fred and Barney placed in a computer-generated 3D video game environment, and eventually jumping into a live-action setting. The video game environment and other characters were created in Maya NT software. The 2D and 3D live action were combined using both Flame and Toon Boom software.

Chicago, Illinois-based TRICKY PICTURES has produced a 20-second main title animation sequence for Nickelodeon's I AM POEM series. In addition, Belgian director and animator Dirk van de Vondel, represented by Tricky Pictures, was selected from more than 200 candidates to create a visual adaptation of "I Used To Be," one of the 15 poems in the series. Produced by Nickelodeon's Creative Lab to serve as interstitial programming, I AM POEM is a new series of short-form films based on original kids' poetry.

New York-based SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION created a 10-second animated logo for design company Number 17 New York, which will be shown at the head of all future SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE (SNL) theatrical releases. It will debut later this year with the release of SUPERSTAR which features the neurotic Catholic schoolgirl Mary Catherine Gallagher, who is portrayed by Molly Shannon on NBC's long-running sketch comedy series. The opening is a dreamy and abstract representation of nightime in New York City with lights of different speeds, scales and densities resolving through to the SNL Studios Logo.

San Francisco-based (COLOSSAL) PICTURES created a 30-second PSA for Partnership for a Drug-Free America called "Hombeez Bee-Ball Game." The spot, which will begin airing in May, features bee-like characters from, HANGIN' WITH THE HOMBEEZ, a series of books written by Dann Gershon and illustrated by David Robinson. Music and narration for the PSA are provided by the well-known New York hip hop and R&B producers Full Force. The message-driven piece pits a group of Drug Bugs against the clean and sober Hombeez in a game of basketball, and the results are obvious.