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AWN Headline News

Media Headline News

1.1 VFX Streamlines Workflow With Xstoner V2

Maximum Throughput Inc., developers of ultra high performance software-based solutions for networked storage infrastructure and media management, announced that 1.1 VFX, a visual effects/creative finishing company in Venice, California, has deployed Xstoner v2 software throughout its facility to ease data management tasks and speed the flow of jobs through its production pipeline.

Headline News

Cascade SIGGRAPH Presents "Bring Your Own Art"

Cascade ACM SIGGRAPH, Oregon and Southwest Washingtons local SIGGRAPH chapter announced Bring Your Own Art (BYOA), scheduled to take place April 3 at 6:00 pm at The Art Institute, Exhibit Hall located at 1122 NW Davis in downtown Portland, Oregon. Equivalent to an open mic night, BYOA is a celebration of the Portland computer graphics community and offers artists a chance to share works in progress ranging from animation, 2D and 3D models to web and graphics design.

Effects Headline News

Gnomon Announces Spring Semester Lineup

Spring term for Gnomon School of Visual Effects begins April 3 through June 11. New classes include:

* Digital Sculpting and Texturing in ZBrush. This course is a comprehensive look at ZBrush's complete toolset for high-end 3D modeling and texturing. Instruction introduces a complete ZBrush workflow beginning with a base mesh and taking it to a complete ZBrushed finish. Instructor: Scott Spencer.

Creative Headline News

John Loiacono to Head Adobe’s Creative Solutions Business Unit

Adobe Systems Inc. announced the appointment of John Loiacono as svp, Creative Solutions. In this role, Loiacono will have responsibility for the development, delivery and marketing of Adobe's entire creative software portfolio, including flagship brands such as Adobe Creative Suite, Macromedia Studio, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Premiere Pro, Macromedia Flash Professional and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Based at the company's headquarters in San Jose, he will report to Shantanu Narayen, Adobe's president and coo.

Game Headline News

Emergent Game Technologies Launches New Tools at GDC 2006

Emergent Game Technologies has launched Emergent Elements, a powerful new set of modular game development tools that brings together stand-alone metrics, automation and 3D graphics technologies into a flexible, integrated framework. Emergent Elements enables developers to focus on the craft of game development, arming them with powerful new tools for building, testing and managing their games with more flexibility and control than ever before.

Live-action Headline News

The Simpsons Come to Life March 26

Ever wondered what Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson would look like in real life? Find out when a live-action main title sequence is unveiled on THE SIMPSONS Sunday, March 26, 2006, at 8:00 pm on FOX. The live-action show opening is an homage to televisions longest-running sitcom.

Anime Headline News

FUNimation Develops Anime Programming Block Distributed by OlympuSAT

FUNimation Ent. announced today (March 23, 2006) that it has developed a two-hour anime block for syndication, composed of programming from the FUNimation Channel, distributed by OlympuSAT and available to broadcasters nationwide. CoLours TV Network, available as part of DISH Network's basic satellite TV package, will be the first broadcaster to carry the block.

The FUNimation Channel a 24-hour digital network featuring programming of top-rated anime brands from Japan.

Nickelodeon Headline News

Nick Ups Marsha E. Williams to SVP Research & Planning

Marsha E. Williams moves up to svp of research and planning at Nickelodeon Networks, responsible for consumer insights for Nickelodeon and Nick Jr., including all brand, programming and production, merchandising, public affairs, online and other corporate consumer research for Nick.

World Headline News

Cars to Premiere May 26 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte

Disney-Pixar's new 3D-animated feature, CARS, will stage its World Premiere on May 26 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, North Carolina. Paul Newman, Owen Wilson, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy, NASCAR legends Richard Petty and Darrell Waltrip and others from the film's voice cast will be joined by a host of stars from the racing world and 30,000 guests that are expected to attend the CARS World Premiere, taking place at the same location as that weekend's famous Coca Cola 600 NASCAR race.

Dell Headline News

Dell to Purchase Alienware

Dell has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Alienware to further satisfy the growing number of consumers and businesses, including those used for gaming and multimedia digital content management. Terms of the planned purchase will not be disclosed.

Universal Headline News

King Kong to be Offered in U.K. as ‘Download-to-Own’

Universal Pictures U.K. will offer Peter Jacksons KING KONG and 34 other Universal movies on April 10 on a download-to-own basis, as part of a new broadband delivery model, various trades reported. The service allows viewers to download a Universal movie on the same day as the DVD release, allowing them to own the download permanently and watch it on a home computer or portable device.

Game Headline News

Introversion's Darwinia Wins Grand Prize at Independent Games Festival

Introversion's retro-stylish PC action-strategy title DARWINIA led the pack at the 2006 Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards, taking three prizes, including the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game. The winners were announced last night at the 8th Annual IGF Awards ceremony, hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) at the San Jose Civic Auditorium in San Jose, California.

Game Headline News

Shadow of the Colossus Dominates Game Developers Choice Awards

Sony Computer Ent.'s PlayStation 2 adventure SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS was the recipient of five top honors including Best Game at the 6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards. The ceremony, produced and hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and presented by the International Game Developers Assoc. (IGDA), is the only peer-based, open nomination awards program in the industry where honors are bestowed to developers by developers. Recipients were announced last night at the 2006 Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Jose.

Dreamworks Headline News

DreamWorks Animation Site Revamped

DreamWorks Animations website www.dreamworksanimation.com has been redesigned. The revamped site includes new info on upcoming projects such as OVER THE HEDGE, SHREK THE THIRD and the MADAGASCAR sequel.

Features include: * an Animation 101 on how we make movies;* an exclusive interview with the producer and directors of OVER THE HEDGE* a look behind the scenes of MADAGASCAR* a photographic tour of DreamWorks' northern and southern California campuses

Headline News

U.S. Director To Bring Indian Superhero to Screen

U.S. director Vincent Edwards has said he is working on an animated film based on a widely known Indian cartoon hero, reports HINDUSTAN TIMES. The top-secret project will feature several of India's best known Bollywood actors and actresses.

"It's an Indian heritage project that will be acceptable to a global audience without alienating the local viewers," he said.

Edwards, who directed the animated series GODZILLA, THE STARSHIP TROOPERS and SPIDERMAN, said the film would also be turned into a television series by next summer.

Services Headline News

RCN Launches Boomerang Cartoons on Its New Digital Vision Lineup

RCN Corp., a leading provider of triple play cable, high-speed Internet and phone services, announced that Boomerang, the 24-hour classic animation network from Turner Broadcasting, will now be featured in its New York City (RCN Channel 186) and Philadelphia (RCN Channel 147) new digital lineups. These additional launches complete RCN's roll out of the network in all of RCN's markets.

Boomerang offers classic cartoons like THE JETSONS, JABBERJAW, SNAGGLEPUSS, TOM & JERRY, THE SMURFS and more than 4,000 episodic half-hours of classic cartoons, primarily by Hanna-Barbera.

Films Headline News

Annecy Announces Lineup

The Annecy International Animated Film Festival has announced the films to be shown at this years event, which will take place June 5-10, 2006, in Annecy, France.

Five feature films will compete including Oscar-winner WALLACE & GROMIT: CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT from Nick Park and Steve Box. The other features include international sensation ASTÉRIX ET LES VIKINGS by Stefan Fjeldmark and Jesper Moller, GIN-IRO NO KAMI NO AGITO by Keiichi Sugiyama, RENAISSANCE by Christian Volckman and XXXHOLIC by Tsutomu Mizushima.

Game Headline News

IBM Enters Deals to Spur Innovation in Gaming & Animation

IBM announced it is joining forces with Hoplon Infotainment, Online Game Services Inc. and RenderRocket under separate agreements to help them innovate in the gaming and animation industries. IBM is working with small and medium gaming companies around the world to empower innovative business models.

Mobile Headline News

Nokia Debuts New Advances at GDC Mobile

Nokia unveiled a new software development kit (SDK) and consumer interface for its next generation mobile gaming platform. The new tools and consumer interface are designed to empower the mobile games industry to create high quality 3D mobile games for Nokia smartphones.

Game Headline News

Game Developers Choice Awards Honors RPG Pioneers, Hecker & Harmonix

The 6th annual Game Developers Choice Awards will devote a portion of the ceremony to honoring a group of individuals whose efforts stand out in the advancement of the interactive entertainment industry. The ceremony, which is produced and hosted by the Game Developers Conference (GDC) and presented by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), will take place on Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at the San Jose Civic Auditorium.

Animation Headline News

Gnomon Workshop Offers Three New Training DVDs

The Gnomon Workshop is offering three new spring training DVDs. Kevin Hudson brings a modeling title, Robert Coddington offers a character animation title and Dustin Brown introduces The Gnomon Workshop's first StudioTools DVD.

Hudson, modeling supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, presents his second title for The Gnomon Workshop. In this overview of modeling cars for a polygon/sub division surface pipeline, he applies his modeling techniques to different car models, showing you how to build a model, create surface details and prepare the model for texturing.

Headline News

NVIDIA Releases New Gelato, Acquires Hybrid Graphics

NVIDIA Corp. announced the release of NVIDIA Gelato 2.0 rendering software, the latest major release of its high-end, GPU-accelerated rendering software.

Gelato also comes with the Mango plug-in for Maya and (coming soon) the Amaretto plug-in for 3ds Max. With the plug-ins, users have access to all the features found in Gelato. Amaretto is currently in beta testing with availability planned in coming weeks. Artists can use the plug-ins to render images right out of the box, or can use Gelatos API to combine the renderer with other production tools.

Version Headline News

Luxology modo Available for Intel-based Macs

Luxology Llc., the creators of modo, a leading subdivision surface and polygonal 3D modeling platform, announced the immediate availability of a universal binary version of modo for Intel-based Macintosh computers. Used by Apple to conduct iMac performance benchmarks, modos universal binary version boasts more than twice the speed when running on iMacs that use Intel Core Duo technology, and performs up to five times faster than previous top-of-the-line PowerBooks when testing the rendering speed of the modo 201 beta version.

Headline News

AGEIA’s PhysX Processor Available for Interactive Gaming

AGEIA Technologies Inc., a pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics for games, announced the availability of its PhysX processor, the first physics processing unit (PPU) designed to power pervasive realtime physics in PC gaming. With immediate availability from the worlds leading gaming system and personal computer manufacturers Alienware, Dell and Falcon Northwest, the AGEIA PhysX Accelerator brings true physics interaction on a massive scale to serious gamers for the first time.

Film Headline News

IDT’s Yankee Irving Now Everyone’s Hero

IDT Ent. has announced that its changing the title of its first CG feature YANKEE IRVING to EVERYONES HERO. The family comedy, originally directed by the late Christopher Reeve, features a voice cast led by Rob Reiner, Whoopi Goldberg, Brian Dennehy, Raven-Symone, William H. Macy, Mandy Patinkin, Robert Wagner, Richard Kind, New York Yankees manager Joe Torre, Jake T. Austin, and the late Dana Reeve, one of the films exec producers. The film will be distributed through 20th Century Fox and will open nationwide on Sept. 15, 2006.

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