AWN Headline News

WIA Meeting With Playhouse Disney's Paula RosenthalNew York, New York, USAMay 11, 2004

WIA's next meeting will feature Paula Rosenthal, exec director, Playhouse Disney Original Programming, Current and Development. Rosenthal will give the low down on what is happening at Playhouse Disney. The event will take place from 6:30 - 8:00 pm at Little Airplane Prods, 86 Franklin St., 5th Floor. RSVP to Lisa Goldman at LGOLDEE@aol.com.

Cartoon Network is in development on a potential series with OutKast's Andre 3000, reports HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. The project will start out as an Adult Swim special, which will go to a series if successful.

Mike Lazzo, svp of Cartoon's "Adult Swim" program block, who at first was reluctant about working with the star, said, "I'm extremely wary of it, but in Andre's case, I think he is a creative genius. He has definite opinions of what he likes visually."

Infinium Labs Inc. will debut its Phantom Gaming Service -- the first end-to-end, on-demand game distribution service -- at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), in Los Angeles, May 12-14, 2004, at Booth 746 in the South Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. The new service will offer subscribers a library of titles and make them available any time, day or night. The company plans to provide the service hardware free of charge to consumers who sign a two-year contract for a basic subscription to its flagship online gaming service at $29.95 per month.

NVIDIA Corp. and Epic Games announced the first public showing of the new game engine Unreal Engine 3 at this week's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). Unreal Engine 3 is the first game engine to take full advantage of Shader Model 3.0 -- a key feature of Microsoft DirectX 9.0 -- enabled only by the NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series of graphics processing units (GPUs). Created by Epic Games, Unreal Engine 3 advances lighting and shadowing capabilities, shader effects and editing tools.

This week in AWN's Forums, a junior member wants some help on deciding between UCLA and USC. A senior member is looking for other Web designers to talk about delivery optimizing. Another member is looking for freelance animator rates. Another thread deals with 2D artists learning Maya. Others are discussing the short ROCKFISH and series SAMURAI JACK. A member is looking for databases of cartoony sounds. Another thread posts a link to Miyazaki's HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE.

Nickelodeon will air the first five minutes of SHREK 2 on May 18, 2004 at 7:00 pm, the night before the DreamWorks film opens in theaters nationwide.

"Giving kids the opportunity to see something top secret reinforces Nickelodeon's relevance to kids," said Nickelodeon president Cyma Zarghami. "It's very exciting to offer kids an exclusive insider's look at one of the biggest pop culture events of the year."

IMAX Corp. and Warner Bros. Pictures have struck a deal where the CGI feature, THE POLAR EXPRESS will screen in IMAX 3D format day-and-date with the release of the film in conventional theaters, Nov. 19, 2004. The film will be digitally converted into IMAX 3D using both the proprietary IMAX 3D conversion process and IMAX DMR(R) (Digitally Re-mastering) technology.