Now posted, a new Career Coach, our monthly column by Pamela Thompson, a

noted authority on jobs and recruiting within the animation and visual

effects industries...

Now you can print out all of your favorite Visual Magic articles quickly

and easily with our printer friendly pages...

Plympton's new series of comics extracted from the comic book, "Sleazy

Cartoons of Bill Plympton," is for ADULTS ONLY...

Test your skills and challenge your brain with AWN's Animation Trivia

Quiz...

The 72-page festival catalog provides information in three languages

(French, Dutch, English) on all exhibitions, making of presentations,

retrospectives, biographies of festival guests, as well as technical,

production, story summary and distribution data on films. Available for

$6.00 plus s/h. The

Folioscope product

line includes a rare selection of videos, featuring pioneer Belgian

On Thursday, March 2, 2000, South Carolina's Democratic Senator Ernest

Hollings of the Senate Commerce Committee told Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin

and AOL chairman Steve Case that the "Disney people are afraid to come

testify" about their concerns regarding the proposed merger of the two

companies. Hollings told Levin and Case, who were in Washington D.C.

testifying about their merger, that Disney is concerned that Time Warner

will retaliate against the company by relegating its cable networks to

The promised land of prime time nirvana will escape GOD THE DEVIL & BOB in

Salt Lake City, Utah, whose NBC affiliate has refused to air the network's

upcoming animated comedy. KSL-TV VP and general manager Al Henderson said

the station decided to pre-empt the "not-so-heavenly" toon because it "was

not very funny." "We didn't think it was written well," Henderson said. "We

found some of the humor tasteless." The new series follows the

misadventures of Detroit auto worker Bob Alman (voiced by French Stewart),

3Dlabs, Inc., a professional graphics firm, has expanded its presence in

Europe with a new office near Frankfurt, Germany. 3Dlabs plans to use the

new branch as a base for expanding its market coverage in Central Europe,

one of the largest markets for its workstation graphics products. In turn,

3Dlabs announced the appointment of Frank Losch as country manager. Mr.

Losch brings many years of marketing and sales expertise to the new

position. "The ability to increase market penetration of Oxygen workstation

The newest Scooby-Doo adventure, SCOOBY-DOO MEETS THE BOO BROTHERS, and

classic episodes on DVD will soon float into stores across the U.S.

Debuting on March 14, 2000, SCOOBY-DOO MEETS THE BOO BROTHERS has the

heroes Scooby, Shaggy and Scrappy-Doo inheriting a haunted house from

Shaggy's uncle. The terrified trio calls for help from the Boo Brothers, a

family of ghost hunters. But wait, the Boo Brothers are ghouls themselves!

Check out the new adventure to find out if Scooby really hired ghost

Fans of the BUBBLEGUM CRISIS series can catch the new adventures in

mid-March. VOLUME 4 -- RAMPAGE will pop into stores on March 14, 2000. A

new terror clouds over Tokyo. An evil entity runs amok, pulling its victims

into the sewers and devouring their flesh. The Knight Sabers, Genom and the

AD Police all join in a desperate search to find and destroy the monster.

The English dubbed version is priced at US$24.95 and the Japanese with

English subtitles version is priced at $29.95.

Warner Bros. proudly presents an new adventure from Bedrock entitled THE

FLINTSTONES STONE-AGE ADVENTURES. Rolling into stores March 14, 2000, the

new escapade features 6 episodes from the classic FLINTSTONES TV series.

The promotion coincides with the theatrical release of the new live-action

FLINTSTONES movie VIVA ROCK VEGAS! The pre-historic price for the tape will

be US$14.95.

On Wednesday, February 23, 2000, the U.S. Recording Academy's premiere

recording awards, the Grammies, were presented, and a few toon-related

tunes took home golden statuettes. In the category Best Musical Album For

Children: "The Adventures Of Elmo In Grounchland" beat out "A Bug's Life

Song-Along" and Walt Disney's "Mannhein Steamroller Meet The Mouse." TARZAN

won for Best Soundtrack Album over THE PRINCE OF EGYPT and THE MATRIX.

Beating John Williams' score for THE PHANTOM MENACE, the award for

TOM & JERRY'S GREATEST CHASES is running into stores on DVD and VHS at the

end of March. The new compilation will feature 14 classic TOM & JERRY

cartoons. The DVD will feature the classic dance sequence with Jerry and

Gene Kelly from the film ANCHORS AWEIGH! Racing into stores March 14, the

DVD will be priced at US$24.98 and the VHS at $14.95.

ADV Films brings more anime to VCRs and DVD players with the adult drama

SAKURA DIARIES VOLUME 1 on March 15, 2000. The story follows the main hero

Touma's mishaps in trying to court Meiko, who only dates college boys. The

flick is from famed manga creator Ujin. The suggested retail price for the

DVD is US$24.98 and for the VHS $19.98. The DVD features English, Japanese,

and Japanese with English subtitled versions.

The big kids at Digital Entertainment Network (DEN), a Gen-Y geared on-line

programmer, have received much-needed play money to the sum of US$24

million. The new round of financing includes investments from NBC, Chase

Capital Partners, Enron Broadband Services Inc. and Intel, among others.

Missing from this round of financing is former Warner Bros. chairman, Terry

Semel. However sources say he has separately invested $2 million in the

company. Santa Monica-based DEN has also restructured its management team,

The big snow ball of Paramount's SNOW DAY picked up momentum and rolled in

to #2 at the U.S. box office. In its second week in theatres, the kid-pic,

with special effects by Curious Pictures, grossed US$8.34 million bringing

its gross to $43.1 million. USA Films' ALIENS-like PITCH BLACK, with

primary visual effects by Double Negative Ltd. and The Chandler Group,

finished at #5 grossing $7.14 million raising its total gross to $22.9

million. THE TIGGER MOVIE finished the weekend in sixth place, making $6.31

Last week Alias|Wavefront unveiled a new upgrade to its powerful 3D

animation system Maya, an upgrade which will add a major new feature to the

software, particularly useful to games developers. Trax is a new non-linear

animation editing solution which will allow games developers to manipulate

extensive amounts of animation and blend it together in a way that can be

reproduced in the final game play. Trax features include reusable time

independent motion clips, blending of hand animation, data filtering and

France-based company REALVIZ recently announced the release of its new

ImageModeler photo-modeling software. This release comes after the release

of several other photo-modeling systems designed to turn objects in 2D

photographs into 3D models. Unlike other solutions on the market, however,

ImageModeler is a high-end application aimed at professionals, and this is

reflected not only in the programs toolset, but in the quality of the

models it produces. The creation of a 3D model in ImageModeler is simple --

On Tuesday, February 29, 2000, Shockwave and sponsor CYBERWORLD launched a

Stan Lee premiere, live on shockwave.com. The star-studded event was hosted

by Dick Clark. The celebrities on the attendee list were Tom Hanks, Keanu

Reeves, Michael Jackson, Richard Dreyfus, John Travolta, Quentin Tarantino

and Leonardo Dicaprio. Excerpts from the event will also be televised

internationally on ET and other entertainment news broadcasts. On

Wednesday, March 1, Stan Lee/CYBERWORLD content will launch on their site

The Oscar shortlisted INDESCRIBABLE NTH has been picked up for distribution

on the Net at AtomFilms. The deal between NTH's creators Character Builders

and AtomFilms covers domestic and foreign television showings as well as

airline programming and Internet distribution. The film follows the story

of a boy and his understanding of the indescribable feeling called love.





Read Maureen Furniss' review of THE INDESCRIBABLE NTH and the other

shortlisted films at