Director/designer Jerry van de Beek and co-designer Betsy de Fries of
LITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS, the San Francisco digital animation and design
studio, finished an all CGI commercial for Lugz athletic shoes entitled
"Annakii." The 30-second spot features a video game like scenario, replete
with a hip-hop soundtrack, where the hero moves through a futuristic New
York City.

April 6-9, 2000, The Brisbane International Animation Festival will
represent Australia in the international animation festival alliance with
Ottawa, Holland, Fantoche and Anima Mundi animation festivals. It is
Australia's only festival dedicated exclusively to animation in all of its
forms. Playing host to national and international guests who will gather in
Brisbane, Australia, to experience the best of world class animation, the
festival provides a local, national and international forum for the

After 6 years, the organizers of the Oslo Animation Festival have moved
operations to Fredrikstad, Norway. Complete with a new name, the Nordic and
Baltic Animation Festival invites both animators and spectators on May 3-5,
2000 to take part in an event dedicated to promoting the screening and
better understanding of animation. This year's festival presents: Nordic
and Baltic films in competition, Nordic and Baltic Panorama, International
highlights, a Focus on British animation, Animation as Music, a Celebration

The Center for Digital Imaging and Sound has launched Imagine 2000 -- the
first Western Canadian high school media arts competition. The event will
offer 11th and 12th graders from BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba the
chance to win CA$200,000 in media scholarships. Categories include
animation, game development, Web site design, video and film production,
sound and music composition, graphic design, and fine art. This festival
gives any creative student the rare chance to get his or her work out to

Wild Brain, Inc., a leading U.S. animation studio, has brought to the
ever-expanding club its new child, wildbrain.com. The new Web channel will
broadcast animation from around the globe and will be the feature provider
of animation on Yahoo! Broadcast. In the deal, Yahoo! will provide Web
solutions for Wild Brain's video animation programming, which is available
on wildbrain.com as well as Yahoo! Broadcast. wildbrain.com will debut with
GLUE, an Internet exclusive toon featuring the adventures of a town full of

Toronto-based Nelvana Limited, an integrated family entertainment company,
has formed a multi-layered partnership with German-based production house
RTV Family Entertainment AG, a leader in children's programming in Germany.
The agreement includes a significant distribution deal for current and
library programs and a 3-year deal for future productions and
co-productions. Through the deal, RTV will bring Nelvana's library of shows
to TV, home video, and merchandising venues across Germany, Eastern Europe,

Cult comic and TV franchise THE TICK is getting a new lease on life.
Producers Barry Sonnenfeld and Barry Josephson (FANTASY ISLAND, MAXIMUM
BOB), via their deal at Columbia TriStar Television, will bring a
live-action, primetime half-hour version of the clueless hero's show to Fox
Broadcasting. The series is scheduled for fall 2000.



Read more about THE TICK from creator Ben Edlund in the Animation World
Magazine article "Tick Fever Endures" by Deborah Reber.

* Saturday, December 11, 1999 - Sunday, April 2, 2000. Valence, France.



Folimage, the creators of the 1995 Cartoon D'Or winner LE MOINE ET LE
POISSON (THE MONK AND THE FISH), will feature an exhibition of their
world-famous work. The event will take place from 2 pm - 6 pm every Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. An additional screening at 9 am - 12 pm will
be held on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. For more information contact
4, Place des Ormeaux, 26000 Valence, France; or Tel.: ++ 33 4 75 79 20 80.

* Friday, December 12, 1999. London, England.



The Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College will be
highlighting the unique graduate work done in their film, video, and
animation department since 1995. One can share in the rare chance of seeing
the cream of the crop from the school's library of productions. The
reception starts at 6pm to be followed by themed screenings at 6:30 pm,
7:30 pm, 8:30 pm and 9:30 pm. Due to limited seating the college requests a

* Sunday, December 19 - Monday, December 20, 1999. Turin, Italy.



ASIFA Italia, with the help of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the
Regione Piemonte and the Comune di Torino, together with the support of
Young Artists Circle and the British Council and Pro-Helvetia, is
organizing a meeting with a series of films on the subject of "Art &
Animation". The meeting aims to heighten awareness of animation as an art
form with a particular stress on independent short films of research,

* Monday, January 10, 2000 - Saturday 29, 2000. New York, New York, USA.



After the crimson dust clears from the apocolyptic Armegedeon of Y2K, go
enjoy some animation at the School of Visual Arts' "Animation Dreams:
Millenium Nightmares" exhibit. Films presented at the screening center
around the theme of the students' most horrific nightmares. The exhibition
will also feature 3D character models, storyboards, animation cels,
background drawings, murals, video tests of films, and a reel of

LIPSinc. recently announced that they have released a version of
Ventriloquist, their lip-synchronization plug-in, for 3D Studio MAX version
3. Ventriloquist is a voice-recognition lip-synching system which drives
the animation based on the input of audio files. Timing and keyframe data
within Ventriloquist for MAX are linked together automatically, providing
easy access and manipulation for animators who feel the need to 'tweak'
Ventriloquist's work. The voice recognition system is based on LIPSinc.'s

Digital Video SLR recently announced the release of Toonz Linetest, a
pencil test tool that is designed to preserve the animator's original
concept. Linetest, which relies heavily on the Toonz exposure sheet
technology, offers a wide range of editing tools to manipulate frames,
levels and sequences. One can insert new drawings, change the step of the
animation, and replace already grabbed images. One can also enlarge, reduce
and rotate images, or create complex movements with ease thanks to the

Is Pikachu anti-Semitic? The answer is no, even after questions to the
contrary circled when parents complained of a swastika-like symbol
appearing on the Japanese language cards for Pokemon's Golbat and Ditto.
These two cards, not yet released in the U.S. card collection, include a
Japanese symbol called a "manji," which is a mirror image of a swastika.
The symbol, however, is a centuries-old, Japanese symbol for good fortune.
Not wanting to create any bad financial karma, Nintendo has announced that
it will discontinue the questionable cards.

Vivid Animation, a new high-end CGI animation studio specializing in
sophisticated digital characters and animated effects for commercials and
interactive media, has been formed by Jeff Lotman, CEO. "Vivid Animation
opens its doors with a trio of world-class digital animators as its
creative nucleus," said Lotman, CEO. This nucleus, all of whom come from
senior positions at Digital Domain, includes Animation Supervisor, Stephane
Couture, Digital Effects Supervisor, Gonzalo Garramuno and Vivid

SOFTIMAGE|Avid's Sumatra, which is set to redefine computer animation, has
recently been used in a UK production for the BBC called "Everyman." The
animation system, which is currently in beta, was used by Aldis Animation
to create the 20 second title sequence of the show. Kim Aldis, the founder
of Aldis Animation said that Sumatra increased the company's productivity,
while at the same time giving them "more flexibility to experiment
creatively." Sumatra is due to be released at the end of the first quarter,

With Avid's recent announcement that they are effectively 'dropping' their
continued development and support of Media Illusion and Matador,
Interactive Effects has stepped in to offer customers using those products
a new solution. Interactive Effects is already an established provider of
digital tools for visual effects artists, filmmakers and broadcasters.
Their flagship product, the Piranha HD Visual Effects System, is in use by
many top studios all over the world (Pixar, Industrial Light + Magic, and

Shockwave.com has announced that they have signed Trey Parker and Matt
Stone, the creators of SOUTH PARK, to concoct 39 new works. The new shows
will first air on shockwave.com beginning in March. Stone and Parker's new
disfunctional toons will range from 2 to 5 minutes and could be one-off
shorts or pieces of an on-going series. In the L.A. Times on December 8,
1999, Stone was quoted as saying that "the real allure of [the deal] is
that we get to create another TV series but on a much smaller scale. We

As we reported previously [AF 11/16], U.S. District Court Judge Terry J.
Hatter Jr. had ordered Disney to stop using its Go Network logo until after
a trial on the matter next year, agreeing with the plaintiff GoTo.com that
Disney's logo was confusingly similar to its own. Now however, it looks as
if the green and yellow traffic light logo of Disney's Go.com has gotten a
stay of sentence at least until December 19, 1999. Soon after the initial
ruling, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the

TOY STORY 2 has repeated its performance in the top spot at the U.S. box
office. The film took in approximately US$28.3 million over the weekend to
bring its two week total to $117.3 million. The remaining three films in
the top four also stayed the same from Thanksgiving with: THE WORLD IS NOT
ENOUGH, with primary visual effects by Digital Film, Cinesite London, and
Magic Camera, coming in second with a gross of $10.6 million and a cume of
$90.4 million; END OF DAYS, with primary visual-effects by Rhythm & Hues,