DIGITAL DOMAIN helped Plum Productions create a virtual jungle/city for the

new Fiat Punto spots. Plum Productions' director Eric Saarinen worked with

Digital Domain's visual effects supervisor Paul Kirsch to create a city

full of people riding around on lion, tigers, and bears. The Punto drives

in showing how different it is compared to the other animals on the street.

Digital Domain had the complex job of combining five-days of greenscreen

shooting on the Paramount backlot into a coherent flow. "We made the

Disney/Pixar's TOY STORY 2 is coming to Sega Dreamcast. In March 2000,

Activision, Inc., in collaboration with Disney Interactive, will release

Disney/Pixar's TOY STORY 2: BUZZ LIGHTYEAR TO THE RESCUE for Sega

Dreamcast. The new release will be a third-person free-roaming adventure

game that uses 3D animation to deliver a unique mix of gameplay elements.

As Buzz Lightyear, players take on five big bosses in a quest to save Woody

from a toy collector over 15 levels.

* Friday, January 28, 2000. Los Angeles, California, USA.

Art In Motion focuses on innovative content and diversity. The criteria for

entry is time rather than medium based, and therefore video, film and

digital projects, animations, Websites, CD-Roms etc. are all eligible.

Hybrids are particularly welcome. There will be a $1000 "Best of Show"

award and "first place" allocations in each exhibition category. For more

information contact Jim Keller or Janet Owen, festival organizers at:

* Monday, January 31 - Saturday, February 5, 2000. San Roque, Cadiz, Spain.

22nd International Short Film Festival of San Roque is open to all films

under 30 minutes made after January 1, 1997. Categories will include

fiction, animation and documentary. Cash prizes range from Euros 3,000 to

900. For more information contact Ilusre Ayuntamiento de San Roque, Semana

Internacional del Cortometraje, Cine-Teatro Alameda Alameda de Alfonso,

11360 San Roque (Cadiz) Espana; Tel.: ++ 34 (9)56-781074; Fax: ++ 34

* Friday, February 4 - Saturday, February 12, 2000. Clermont-Ferrand, France.

This year, Clermont-Ferrand Short Films Festival will be featuring its 12th

international competition and 22nd French competition. The festival will

highlight animated films based off of comic strips. Filmmakers and buyers

can take advantage of the short film market, which attracted more than 50

TV channels, 50 distributors, and 60 international festival organizers last

* Thursday, February 10, 2000. Chicago, Illinois, USA.

The 29th Mobius Advertising Awards is a yearly event recognizing

outstanding television and radio commercials, as well as print advertising

and package designs. The competition is open to television commercials and

campaigns which have been produced, screened or aired in the past 12

months. The animation-related categories include: Animation-Computer,

Animation-Non-Computer, and Animation-Computer & Non-Computer. For more

On Wednesday, January 12, 2000, Walt Disney's legendary animator Marc Davis

passed away at Glendale Memorial Hospital shortly following a stroke. He

was 86 years old. Davis was a member of Disney's inner circle known as the

"nine old men." During his 43-year tenure at the studio, Davis brought to

life such classic characters as Bambi, Cinderella, Alice, Briar Rose,

Maleficent and Cruella DeVil. In addition to creating many of Disney's

female characters, he served as a key player in the development of many of

For over thirty years, Don Martin's crazy comics filled the pages of MAD

magazine. On Sunday, January 9, 2000, Marin died in a Miami hospital at the

age of 68. A representative of Baptist Hospital says the cartoonist died of

cancer. No further details were disclosed. Martin's weirdo humor disgusted

mothers and delighted young rebels for nearly three decades. No person or

tale was free from Martin's eye for twisted satire. For example, his strips

Sony's hit film STUART LITTLE remained at the top of the U.S. box office

this past weekend taking in US$11.21 million in ticket sales. The

giant-sized flick, with primary FX by Sony Pictures Imageworks, additional

animation by CFX and Rhythm & Hues, and miniatures by Thunderstone, has

taken home a little more than cheese with a total purse of $95.3 million.

THE GREEN MILE squeaks by live-action flick THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY to

secure the second spot on the box office charts. The Warner Bros. flick,

Bender will be back next year for more adventures on FUTURAMA. The animated

series from producers Matt Groening and David X. Cohen has been picked up

for the 2000-01 season by Fox. A decision has not been made yet on whether

the number of episodes ordered will be 13, 22 or some number in-between.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. announced the

simultaneous worldwide VHS release of George Lucas' STAR WARS: EPISODE I

THE PHANTOM MENACE. Young Jedi wanna-bes around the globe will snag their

copy the week of April 3 - 8, 2000. The biggest box office hit of 1999 and

second highest-grossing motion picture of all time worldwide, will official

go on sale in North America on Tuesday, April 4, 2000. The US$922 million

At San Francisco's MacWorld which ran from January 4-8, NewTek introduced

LightWave [6], the product's most significant upgrade in 10 years. The new

version of the already popular 3D tool boasts more new features than ever

introduced to the product in previous upgrades, many of which have never

been seen on the Macintosh system before. On the modeling side of things,

LightWave [6] introduces a whole new modeling paradigm, which gives users

control over the manipulation and animation of their models to a degree

PuppetTime Inc. recently announced that it has released version 1.0 of its

PuppetTime Producer software, an easy to use 3D character animation program

that the company claims makes "the TV-watching generation, the TV-making

generation." PuppetTime Producer is not a character animation package for

animators, but a package for non-animators which allows them to create

'movies' quickly and easily without any knowledge of animation technique at

all. Users can create 3D animation in minutes simply by selecting

Alias|Wavefront announced that they would be developing a version of their

Maya software for Intel's forthcoming IA-64 Itanium processor, and

Microsoft's 64-bit Windows NT operating system. The IA-64 operating system

uses a 64-bit architecture and offers the robust performance required by

data-intensive 3D visualizations and computer graphics. Alias|Wavefront is

among the first software developers to port their software to Itanium, and

in doing so it will allow its customers to take full advantage of the speed

* Friday, January 14 - Sunday, January 16, 2000. Boulder, Colorado, USA.

The Moondance International Film Festival's objective is to promote and

encourage women screenwriters and women who make independent films, in any

genre, including animation. There will be one winner in each category:

Filmmaker, Screenwriter, or Documentary Filmmaker. Awards: $2000 for best

original screenplay, $2000 for best independent film, and $1000 for best

documentary film. There will be 2 semi-finalists in each category. All

On Wednesday, January 12, 2000, The Walt Disney Co. announced that Joe

Roth, their movie studio chairman, was resigning to form an independent

film company. He will be replaced by studio president Peter Schneider. Roth

assumed the chairman position in August 1994 after the departure of veteran

Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. During his tenure, Roth helped Disney

lead rivals at the U.S. box office in terms of market share, with help from

BRUCE GIONET has become BLACK LOGIC's new CGI Supervisor. Gionet will lead

the New York-based company's artists in the production of computer

generated imagery for film, television and advertising. For the last eight

years, Gionet was the Director of CGI at Cyclotron/Post Perfect in New York

City. His credits range from his work on the opening of THE LATE SHOW WITH

DAVID LETTERMAN to Emmy-winning design on WWOR New York's News opening.

London-based Link Entertainment Television has sold the rights to

TEDDYBEARS to U.S.-based Trio Channel, a new satellite channel broadcast on

Direct TV and TCI Hits. Trio's 26 episode purchase comes on the heals of

another recent deal for Link with Canada's SCN for all 52 episodes of the

lovable bears television adventures.

Kellogg's Froot Loops spokesman Toucan Sam comes to life with help from

Santa Monica-based SIMEX STUDIOS for a new spot entitled "Time Flies." The

spot highlights the new 2000 Marshmallow Blasted Froot Loops by blasting

Toucan Sam through the air with an explosion of marshmallow "2s". SimEx

produced the spot for ad agency Leo Burnett of Chicago. The SimEx team on

the commercial was animation producer Christina Cox, animation director

Jean Perramon, live-action producer Bob McGinness and live-action director

Toronto-based TOPIX/MAD DOG provided the CG images for "Flying Ball" for

Sears' new Poke-Mart. The 30 and 20 spots were produced for Young &

Rubicam. POKEMON hero, Ash, throws the famous Poke-ball which leads

children like lemmings to Sears' Poke-Mart section to catch all the new

Pokemon products. Diana D'Amelio produced and Patrick Coffey animated the

tags for TOPIX/Mad Dog.