The Ottawa Student Animation Festival web site has been updated. French-Canadians can now find a French version of the festival regulations and on-line entry form...

This week's comic is about super man "Consumo The Great"...

Featured in the Animation World Store this week: Brussels '99 Festival Catalog by Folioscope and Weston Woods Rare Classic Children's Collection.

Award-winning animation director David Chartier has launched Loop Filmworks (www.loopfilmworks.com), a new animation production company. His stop motion animated spot, "Talk Show," won both the Gold Medal and Grand Prix award at this year's New York Festival. Since starting in the industry in 1991, he has worked for Olive Jar Studio and Curious Pictures, and recently designed two stop motion/cut-paper animation campaigns for Nickelodeon. "I started Loop Filmworks as a means of rededicating myself to creating innovative animation for advertising," said Chartier.

Teletoon, Canada's all-animation channel, is holding their second annual Animation Scholarship Award Competition, recognizing the efforts and financial needs of young Canadian art students. A total of C$29,000 will be divided between 10 talented students with the prize amounts ranging from $1,500 to $5,000.

* Wednesday, March 24 - Saturday, March 27. Auch, France.


For its 12th edition, the Festival National du Film d'Animation (National Animation Festival) moves to Auch, Central France from its previous home in Marly-le-Roi. Programs include screenings, panel discussions, tributes, exhibitions, the workshop "Introduction to Animation," and opportunities for audiences to meet the filmmakers. For more information, call ++ 33 (0)1-4543-2359, e-mail afca@afca.asso.fr or visit www.afca.asso.fr.

Julia Pistor, a founding executive of Nickelodeon Movies, has been promoted to Senior Vice President of the division. Pistor, who will continue to report to Albie Hecht, President of Film and Television Entertainment for Nickelodeon, will relocate to Los Angeles from the company's headquarters in New York. She will be responsible for broadening Nickelodeon's feature development slate and continue its mandate to produce kids-first movies, star-driven family films and animated features.

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.

On March 25, 1999, 7-10 pm, you are invited to join Santa Monica-based DH
Institute of Media Arts (DHIMA) in celebrating demo reels of new graduates
and current work produced by our students. After a ton of hard work, these
DHIMA students are ready to blow off some steam with staff, students,
alumni, and industry. See why SIGGRAPH '97 and '98 recognized 11 of DHIMA
students with awards. Past graduates have gone on to work at companies such
as Digital Domain, Pixel Envy, SEGA, Namco, Square, Alias|Wavefront, etc.

* Thursday, March 25. Santa Monica, California, U.S.A.


DH Institute of Media Arts (DHIMA) will have a year-end exhibit/screening of works from graduating and current students starting at 7:00 p.m. Demo reels and current projects will be shown, and visitors can enjoy beer, wine, snacks and music throughout the evening. Past DHIMA graduates have gone on to work at companies such as Digital Domain, SEGA, Namco and Alias|Wavefront. To RSVP, call (310) 899-9377 or e-mail rsvp@dhima.com

Warner Bros. THE KING AND I, produced by Rich Animation, opened in North America last weekend (March 19-21) in 2352 theaters with a lackluster total of $4,007,565 million. . . . DOUG'S 1ST MOVIE, produced by Jumbo Pictures and released by Disney, will open in North America on Friday, March 26, just in time for spring break.

Sony Pictures Entertainment's (SPE) new family entertainment division (AF 03/09/99) has announced their first two development deals. The group has acquired worldwide rights to Kevin Eastman's UNDERWHERE, and has signed Eastman to develop an animated children's series based on his popular book. The series follows the adventures of 10-year-old Jacob who travels to UNDERWHERE, a land that exists in the same space as ours but can only be visited by those who possess the gift of imagination.

New York-based CURIOUS PICTURES has added Michael Bennion to its directorial roster for representation in the United States. Bennion, collaborating with Curious director David Kelley, recently completed his first job under the Curious Pictures banner, a pool of spots for CDnow. For the last year, Bennion has been associated with The End (London, England), which will continue to rep him outside of the US. While there, he created ads for MTV and LUCKY, a live-action short film.

New York-based THE ATTIK has hired STEPHEN KINNEY as senior producer. In addition to managing creative aspects of projects and branding strategies, Kinney will focus largely on building creative resources and live-action production. Kinney, 28, joins The Attik from Pittard Sullivan (New York, NY), where from 1997-1999 he was a producer working on a variety of network broadcast branding projects including the launch package for Canadian cable sports network CTV Sportsnet, and projects for ESPN, AOL, CBS and Lifetime, among others.

Intel recently introduced the latest addition to their Pentium III range of processors, the Pentium III Xeon. Running at a speed of 500 megahertz (a 550 megahertz version will be released next month), Intel expects Xeon to make a prominent presence in high-end workstation solutions. But more interestingly, Intel is pitching Xeon as "the new chip [that] is intended to bolster its presence in e-commerce." Xeon contains a security feature that makes buying goods over the Internet much safer.

The nominations for the 26th annual Daytime Emmy Awards, airing live on CBS, May 21, from New York's Madison Square Garden Theatre, have been announced. Unsurprisingly, the nomination leaders in the animation field are Warner Bros. and Disney. Among the major cartoon categories are:


Children's Animated Program:

ARTHUR (PBS)

DISNEY'S 101 DALMATIONS (ABC)

DISNEY'S DOUG (ABC)

STEVEN SPIELBERG PRESENTS: ANIMANIACS (WB)

STEVEN SPIELBERG PRESENTS: PINKY & THE BRAIN (WB)


Special Class/Animated Program:

Alias|Wavefront, the producers of Maya, and Eyeon Software, the producers of Digital Fusion, have partnered to create a new video compositing solution for NT...Maya Fusion.
The two companies are pitching Maya Fusion as a program that will bridge the gap between 2D and 3D by introducing a new production technique for blending 3D character animation with live action environments.

Cartoon producer NELVANA's fourth quarter results indicate a strong year in '98, due largely in part to proprietary shows...

Hollywood-based RUGRATS producer Klasky Csupo has promoted Hal Waite to senior vice president of Feature Animation, which now plans to produce one feature film per year, and Cella Duffy to senior vice president of Television Animation. Waite, who has been with the company since '96 and was a co-producer on THE RUGRATS MOVIE, is currently working on the RUGRATS sequel, scheduled for Christmas 2000.

Paramount's THE RUGRATS MOVIE has crossed the $100 million milestone at the North American box office. This makes it the first animated non-Disney film to achieve this mark. As of March 22, the domestic box office total for the film is $100,130,568. . . . Warner Bros. THE KING AND I, produced by Rich Animation, opened in North America this past weekend in 2352 theaters with a lackluster total of $4,007,565 million.