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Moto Sakakibara to Direct CG-Animated GON Feature

Moto Sakakibara, co-director of FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN, will direct Sprite Animations Studios first CG-animated feature film, GON. The film, slated for a 2007 release, will be based on Masashi Tanakas widely popular manga series. GON is a comical adventure about a foot-tall dinosaur living in a modern-day savanna. He shares his wit and humor in a subtle but sometimes outrageous way as he takes on beasts 10 times his size, revealing a sense of justice never before seen in the wild.

Im very excited at the opportunity to bring this extremely popular character GON to life in a movie, said Sakakibara. To stay true to the uniqueness of the manga classic, we are taking on the challenge of portraying GONs character without dialogue in the feature. GONS physical language in the manga is so compelling we are confident that this will translate well over to the big screen.

Sakakibara founded Sprite Animation Studios in June 2002 with a few of his colleagues from Square Pictures that worked on FINAL FANTASY: THE SPIRITS WITHIN with him.

Sprite Animation Studios will premiere the original short film, JOURNEY TO THE WEST, at the 2005 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festivals Animation Theater. JOURNEY TO THE WEST is directed by Sakakibara and produced by Junichi Yanagihara and Kyoko Aihara.

Sprite Animation (www.spritee.com) is based in Los Angeles and is committed to create and produce CGI animation for film, TV, videogames and commercials.

Bill Desowitz's picture

Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.

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