The 3D Festival, running May 3-6 in Copenhagen, has announced new speakers and sessions from Weta Digital, ESC Ent. and more. This year's 3D Festival Conference is co-organized by CGNetworks and Gnomon School of Visual Effects.
HarperCollins Childrens Books will launch a book series based on the new television series, ASTRO BOY, produced by Sony Pictures Ent. Japan and Tezuka Prods. HarperKids Ent. has been granted North American English-language rights from Sony Pictures Consumer Products. HarperCollins will launch the 30 book program in September 2004 with seven titles: one color and activity book, one color and sticker book, two beginning readers, two storybooks, and one chapter book.
Following Finn Arnesen's promotion to head of programme production for Cartoon Network Int'l, Jo Sweby has been named director of acquisitions for Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Toonami in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In addition to acquiring content for Turner's European kids channels, Sweby will work alongside the European programming managers on programming strategy. Part of her new role will involve working with the business development team on new business opportunities.
Cartoon Network has announced that it will change its action-adventure programming line-up by shifting the Toonami block to Saturdays and creating the new block Miguzi.
Beginning April 17, Toonami will air from 7:00 11:00 pm. The Saturday night version of Toonami will continue to be hosted by TOM and feature series such as DRAGONBALL Z, YU YU HAKUSHO and TRANSFORMERS: ENERGON. Other series to air exclusively as part of Toonami's include GUNDAM SEED, DRAGONBALL GT and RUROUNI KENSHIN.
DRIVIES is a delightful new spot for the Renault Scenic in which a car is the family pet, featuring vfx and other post touches supervised by William Bartlett, Framestore CFC's head of Inferno and assisted by Darran Nicholson. The spot was directed by Daniel Kleinman for Large, with art direction by Alex Taylor, and was written by Adam Kean at Publicis.
Veteran filmmaker and stop-motion magician Ray Harryhausen (author of the newly published RAY HARRYHAUSEN: AN ANIMATED LIFE with Tony Dalton from Billboard Books) will discuss and present five newly restored prints of his classic fairy tales at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on April 23 at 7:30 p.m., in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The event serves as the Academy's 2004 George Pal Lecture on Fantasy in Film.
The 77th annual Academy Awards will be held Sunday, Feb. 27, 2005. Key dates currently scheduled are:
Monday, Dec. 27, 2004: Nominations ballots mailed.
Saturday, Jan. 15, 2005: Nominations polls close at 5:00 pm (PST).
Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005: Nominations announced at 5:30 am (PST), Samuel Goldwyn Theater.
Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2005: Final ballots mailed.
Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2005: Final ballots close 5:00 pm (PST).
Disneys western-themed HOME ON THE RANGE, which opens April 2, signals the last of the studios 2D animated theatrical features, according to studio chief Dick Cook. He told REUTERS that there are currently no more hand-drawn projects on the film slate. It is where things are going, Cook said about 3D animation. "I don't think it is the end of an era. I think hand-drawn animation will continue in one form or another," he added. Yet Cook defended RANGE, calling the comedy a kick.
Guava and Hornet Inc. have completed vfx and production for JACK AND THE BEANSTALK and 3 BEARS, the second and third :30 entries in a three-spot campaign for Quaker via Element79Partners. Hornet recently created character design work for the first spot, RED RIDING HOOD.
The voice cast of THE SIMPSONS has stopped working to force Twentieth Century Fox TV to finalize their new contracts, reported VARIETY. The cast's previous three-year contracts expired several months back. Apparently, the cast has not showed up for two script readings over the past few weeks. Actors participating in the stoppage include Dan Castellaneta (Homer), Hank Azaria (Moe, Apu, Comic Book Guy), Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns and others), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Julie Kavner (Marge) and Nancy Cartwright (Bart).
We bid farewell to March and our focus on new frontiers with Tito Belgrave's fascinating look at "Photogrammetry: A Study of Image-Based Modeling." IBM has caused quite a stir with the ability of artists to explore 3D objects and scenes captured from real world photography, and Belgrave breaks it down nicely. Meanwhile, April kicks off our timely emphasis on gaming, what with GDC behind us and E3 just down the road.
AWN and VFXWorld are giving our readers a chance to enter the NAB 2004 Festival Sweepstakes.
After losing their jobs at Discreet in England because of outsourcing, a team of computer gurus who worked on THE LAST SAMURAI, THE MATRIX and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE have auctioned their services off on eBay, Britains GUARDIAN reported on Wednesday.
Pixar has released RenderMan Pro Server 11.5.3 for Mac OS X v10.3. This release supports both the G4 and G5 processors.
Bauhaus Software Inc., a leading provider of products and technologies for the digital vfx market, announced support for Leitch Technology's Velocity and VelocityQ NLE platforms in its flagship Mirage product line. Using Leitch's Reality and Quattrus hardware, respectively, to act as a frame buffer for Mirage allows broadcasters and post-production professionals to view the results of their work in real time on an external NTSC/PAL monitor.
Mondo TV has signed a new deal with Padmalaya Telefilms Ltd. to co-produce and commercial exploit four new animated TV series as well as the licensing of 1,000 Mondo TVs library episodes. The deal sees 104 half-hour episodes, each having a budget of $135,000, to be produced at Padmalaya Telefilms, worth $14 million to the Indian studio, which is a subsidiary of Zee Telefilms Ltd.
Since EM.TV head Werner Klatten sold his 24.8% stake in the troubled company to European investment firm Constant Ventures II, EM.TV has made several big acquisition and distribution announcements. These deals along with the announcement of a waiver agreement with 94.22% of the company's former bondholders is seen as a positive sign of the stabilization of the embattled production and licensing firm.
KING OF THE HILL exec producers John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky have announced that they will be entering their animated series in the live-action categories including outstanding comedy series, reports VARIETY. The move really was spurred to allow the show's writing staff a chance to be cognized because the Academy does not have a separate writing category for animation.
"We feel we're doing high-level work, and we want to be judged by our peers," Altschuler said. "We've always wanted to compete in that category."
Entertainment Rights Plc (ER) had announced that it has acquired the distribution rights to Mattel's fourth feature length film, BARBIE AS THE PRINCESS AND THE PAUPER. ER will release the title in the U.K. on DVD and video on its own label Right Ent. ER has also secured international TV rights, excluding North America.
Forget the image of M&Ms fading to gray-scale, as they did in a previous spot this year. Using THE WIZARD OF OZ for more colorful inspiration, M&Ms are back in a CG RIVER OF CHOCOLATE spot, the first of a five-part campaign produced by New York effects and design company Charlex. More abstract than the more familiar character advertising, the focus of this campaign is intended to broaden the brand and to utilize different interpretations of the Petula Clark song Color My World.
Bionatics, a leader in plant modeling software solutions, has been embraced by Gusto Games, the recently formed Oxfordshire-based development studio. Gusto has adopted the natFX package as their plant modeling reference tool.
Cal Art students swept the traditional animation category at the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation's 25th Annual College Television Awards Competition. Cal Arts' David Derrick, ByoungJik Lee and Chris Choy took first, second and third respectively for their toon work. Ringling School of Art & Design students did well in the non-traditional animation category taking second and third with first place going to Craig Van Dyke of Brigham Young.
Mirror Image Internet, a leading adaptive network for online content, application and transaction delivery, announced FUNimation Prods. has selected Mirror Image's complete portfolio of solutions to bring the company's animated series to the Net. Since implementing Mirror Image's Content Delivery, Streaming Media and Web Computing solutions on www.funimation.com, www.dragonballz.com, www.dragonballgt.com, www.dragonball.com, www.yuyuhakusho.com and www.kiddygrade.tv, FUNimation has reduced infrastructure costs and increased site traffic speed by 30%.
Now entering the world of gaming, Perky Pickle Studios has wrapped up creative consultant work on the concept and design of Vivendi Universal Games (VU Games), new CRASH TWINSANITY game, which will be available for PlayStation2 and X Box in the third quarter of 2004. Perky Pickle Studios was hired to integrate comedic story and situations into the game-play.
Coming in from Wizard World's Los Angeles convention, producer Tom DeSanto revealed to Inland Empire Strikes Back (www.iesb.net) that Oscar-winning FOREST GUMP director Robert Zemeckis will helm THE TRANSFORMERS feature. In addition, the site claims that New Line Cinema will distribute the film and TV series' voice actors Frank Welker and Peter Cullen will reprise their roles. The tentative date for the film's release is Dec. 2006. Until further confirmation can be made this is just hearsay, but both Zemeckis and New Line have been attached to possible participators in the past.
