AWN Headline News

Native New Orleanian Mo Willems is hosting The Pigeons Auction For Children Affected By Katrina. The online auction begins Nov. 15 and runs through Nov. 25, 2005. Willems asked a group of friends who happen to be renowned childrens authors, illustrators and television creators to join him in auctioning off original art, signed books and signed memorabilia to benefit the Foundations for Recovery, a Louisiana-based group that has organized funds for children and education affected by Hurricane Katrina and Rita.

Artists participating include:

Dimension Films has obtained the North American distribution right to CASTLEVANIA, a thriller based on the Konami videogame franchise, reports VARIETY. Paul W.S. Anderson will adapt and direct. Just last week, production house Crystal Sky Pictures purchased the film rights to the franchise.

Electronic Arts and Warner Bros. Interactive Ent. have release the HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE videogame for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance and Windows PC. Launching in conjunction with the Warner Bros. Pictures film based on J.K. Rowlings fourth book, the game allows players to experience moments from the movie and master magic in cooperative play with up to two of their friends.

Los Angeles-based producer/distributor PorchLight Ent. has signed an exclusive agreement to collaborate with LeapFrog Enterprises Inc. to develop television programming based on LeapFrogs valued educational content and popular brand.

Under terms of the agreement, PorchLight acquires the rights to develop and attract new television properties that will be launched with the LeapFrog brand name and make TV stars of the lovable LeapFrog characters Leap, Lily, Tad and others.

This week in AWN's Forums, members are posting three sentences on CHICKEN LITTLE. A junior member wants to know why students first have cover 2D in colleges and cant go directly into 3D animation? Theres a thread on painting in Photoshop. Members are still talking about Cartoon Networks SUNDAY PANTS. Others have questions on exporting layers from Flash. Moreover, theres a thread on pricing animation. As well, lots of members have posted their work for others to check out and critique.

Artist-owned-and-operated Brickyard VFX announced the launch of a CG division, extending the companys on-site visual effects capabilities to include character modeling, animation and rendering in full 3D. The move, which includes the hiring of industry talents Jay Lichtman, Robert Sethi and Yafei Wu, is already allowing the bi-coastal effects studio to complete more and different types of client work.

In November, TELETOON steps it up a notch with a month-long KAPOW! extravaganza, starting with the Canadian premiere of the new series, ALIEN RACERS. KAPOW is TELETOON's all action, Saturday morning lineup, which runs from 10:00 am to 12:00 noon.

Softimage Co. announced the TD Love Training Tour, the first in a new series of technical seminars (free for a limited time) designed by and for CG professionals on how to use SOFTIMAGE technology for improving character creation and visual effects production processes. During the events, experts from CG Soup, Pixologic and the Softimage Special Projects teams will be on-hand to demonstrate how using SOFTIMAGE|XSI v.5.0, ZBrush 2 and SOFTIMAGE|FACE ROBOT software gives studios an advantage for producing high-quality 3D art in a realistic timeframe.