Sail Your Shorts to the Fort Myers Beach Film Fest
Fort Myers Beach Film Festival Fort Myers Beach, Florida, USAApril 21 - 24, 2005Deadline: March 15, 2005
Fort Myers Beach Film Festival Fort Myers Beach, Florida, USAApril 21 - 24, 2005Deadline: March 15, 2005
CARTOON MOVIE, the only event dedicated to promoting European animated feature films, has announced the nominated companies for the Cartoon Movie Tributes 2005. These tributes highlight the initiatives that contribute to the recognition and the success of the European animation cinema. Three of them will be chosen by the professionals attending the event, taking place March 10-12 in Potsdam, Germany.
The nominated companies are:
NVIDIA Corp. introduced the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra mobile GPU. Available immediately, the Dell Inspiron XPS Gen2 is the first notebook with the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra mobile GPU and features unprecedented notebook gaming performance achieving more than two times the performance of the previous Inspiron XPS, based on industry-standard benchmarks.
Sheer Force of Will Pictures Llc, a new feature film production company, has opened in Glendale, California. The new company is owned by co-founders Kevin Kutchaver, a visual effects veteran who concurrently remains head of visual effects design and production company HimAnI Prods. and feature film producer Linda Drake. Sheer Force of Will Pictures plans to produce two-three original feature films a year. The duo also announced the start of production on the companys first feature film, RESCUE ROCKET X-5, which begins in late February 2005 in Los Angeles.
The Gnomon Workshop adds to its digital and analog collections this month with eight new titles covering visual storytelling, character design, environment creation and industrial design. Joining the Digital library, the Gnomon Workshop welcomes art director Aaron Sims with his new two-DVD collection on Creature Design. These titles reveal the artist's use of Adobe Photoshop, XSI, DeepPaint3D and ZBrush. Sims, an art director at Stan Winston studios, worked for years designing creature effects make-up with Rick Baker before perfecting his digital skills.
New York City-based Noodlesoup Productions, Inc. is expanding to form a new original content creation division - Noodlesoup Entertainment that will solely focus on the development and production of high quality original animated feature films and television programming.
Noodlesoup Prods. is best known for its breakout Cartoon Network hit series, THE VENTURE BROTHERS, as well as for the work of its commercial divisions campaigns for MSN and Earthlink. Noodlesoup Ent. is already beginning development on several new programs with major U.S. distributors.
Gamers will get to play Dirty Harry, literally, in a new series of videogames Warner Bros. Interactive Ent. and Clint Eastwood's Malpaso and The Tehama Companies are producing based on the DIRTY HARRY film franchise, introducing the legendary detective "Dirty Harry" Callahan to the interactive world for the first time on next generation consoles.
Academy Award-winning director, producer and actor Eastwood is consulting on key creative aspects of the game design and will lend his voice and likeness to his renowned role of police detective Harry Callahan.
On Feb. 23, 2005, negotiations broke down in the ongoing dispute between the Spanish-language voices of THE SIMPSONS union and a Mexico City-based dubbing studio, spurring the cast to go on an official strike, reports HOLLYWOOD REPORTER.
The cast alleges that its employer, formerly known as Grabaciones y Doblajes, breached its contract with their union, the National Actors' Assn. Union, by hiring union-member actors. The company claims that the contract was made void when its administration and company name changed to Grabaciones y Doblajes Internacionales (GDI).
Focus Press has released the new book, ANIMATION WRITING AND DEVELOPMENT: FROM SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT TO PITCH, written by former Hanna-Barbera animator Jean Ann Wright.
The book takes students and animation professionals alike through the process of creating original characters, developing a television series, feature, or multimedia project, and writing professional premises, outlines and scripts. It covers the process of developing presentation bibles and pitching original projects as well as ideas for episodes of shows already on the air.
Burbank-based Furious FX enters its sophomore year with a wide assortment of their first years work erupting into theaters and onto DVD shelves. Currently in production are MR. AND MRS. SMITH and FEVER PITCH.
The newly ignited facility has completed nearly 500 shots in the last 12 months. Their work is featured in more than 15 high profile films, including THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK, SPIDER-MAN 2, SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW, FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, the upcoming UNDERCLASSMAN, as well as Sundance indie CHRYSTAL starring Billy Bob Thornton.
Eovia, developer and publisher of leading 3D animation, modeling and rendering software, introduces the Eovia TransPoser 2 plug-in. TransPoser 2 allows users to import Poser v5 and v4 characters and animations into Eovia Carrara 4 software, where they can be integrated in more complex scenes and brought to life. In addition to improved workflow, this new version includes Poser files into the Carrara 4 network rendering. Through special arrangement with DAZ Prods., TransPoser 2 comes with the Victoria 3.0 and Michael 3.0 models.
Butch Hartman, the award-winning creator and exec producer of THE FAIRLY ODDPARENTS and DANNY PHANTOM, has signed a multi-year deal with Nickelodeon Networks to create original animated and live-action programming for Nickelodeon and Noggin.
SCI FI Channel has renewed BATTLESTAR GALACTICA for a second season. The critically-acclaimed show has been a ratings powerhouse catapulting SCI FI to the top spot in cable among P25-54 for five consecutive Fridays. With an order for 20 episodes, BATTLESTAR will begin production in Vancouver in March for a summer premiere, returning as the anchor of the channel's SCI FI Friday block of primetime original series.
Discreet will introduce 3ds max 7.5 in mid-April, just in time for NAB, an upgrade exclusively for its 3ds max subscription customers that will deliver a broad range of new features and capabilities ranging from a robust integrated hair and fur system, the most current version of mental ray 3.4 by mental images and a new design toolset that combines the feature sets of 3ds max and Autodesk VIZ software.
With the Academy Awards just around the corner on Sunday, I had the chance to speak with three of the supervisors vying for the visual effects Oscar: John Dykstra (SPIDER-MAN 2), Andy Jones (I, ROBOT) and Tim Burke (HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN).
2nd Annual Billyburg Short Film FestivalWilliamsburg, Virginia, USAMay 20-21, 2005Deadline: March 1, 2005
Billyburg Short Film Festival highlights the best in various media including narrative, documentary, animation, experimental, commercials and music videos.
2005 ASIFA East Animated Film FestivalNew York, New York, USAMay 1, 2005Deadline: March 1, 2005
2005 ASIFA East Animated Film Festival screens the best in independent, commercial and student animation. All films are judged by a panel of ASIFA-EAST members and prizes are given in each category for first through third place. For more information, visit www.asifaeast.com.
Warner Bros. Consumer Products kicked off the world's largest toy trade show, the 2005 American International Toy Fair -- in New York City from Feb. 20-23, 2005 -- with a new lineup of licensed toys and products inspired by one of the world's most popular superhero franchises: BATMAN.
The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art is hosting its second online exhibit titled, NOW THEN. The theme of the exhibit is -- what did professional comic artists draw like when they were 12 years old?
Comic artist Dave Bamundo had the idea for an exhibit that featured comic artists current work, compared to something they had done as a child. This idea was combined with Robert Zimmermans idea to poll professional comic artists, asking who their favorites in the business were. The top 25 artists current and childhood are displayed in the exhibit.
MATRIX producer Joel Silver confirmed that BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER creator Joss Whedon is being talked with to write and direct a new film version of WONDER WOMAN, reports SCI FI WIRE.
"I'm trying," Silver said in an interview at WonderCon in San Francisco on Feb. 19, 2005. "I'm trying to work a deal with Joss... I was just in the other room [where Whedon was talking about his upcoming SF movie, SERENITY]. I don't know if I could work that out. It's a complicated deal to do, but I would love him to do it. It would be great if he could do it."
New York Universitys Tisch School of the Arts offers a four-week intensive immersion into the world of animation. Traditional, hand-drawn animation and high-tech programs will be offered. The course will run from July 11-Aug. 5, 2005. Deadline for applications is March 11.
NaturalMotion Ltd. will launch version 2.0 of endorphin, its award-winning 3D animation software, at GDC 2005 (Game Developers Conference) in San Francisco (March 9-11, 2005, booth #548). Scheduled to ship on the same date, endorphin 2.0 boasts major new features, including multi-layer behaviors, support for the Avid Alienbrain Studio asset management and Perforce software configuration management systems, an improved GUI (including layered behavior support on the timeline) and further enhanced adaptive behaviors.