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AWN Headline News

Nominations Headline News

The Simpsons Top WGA Animation Nominations

By Rick DeMott | Wednesday, January 21, 2004 at 12:00am

The Writers Guild of America, East and West have announced the nominations for outstanding achievement in television writing during the 2003 season. The big animation winner was THE SIMPSONS with three scripts nominated including Matt Selman for "The Dad Who Knew Too Little," J. Stewart Burns for "Moe Baby Blues" and Michael Price for "My Mother The Carjacker." FOX series weren't finished with THE SIMPSONS though. Tony Gama-Lobo and Rebecca May received nods for KING OF THE HILL's "Reborn To Be Wild" and Patric M.

International Headline News

Gray Departing Carlton Int’l

Mark Gray has resigned from his position as controller of program development Carlton International and will be leaving the company in early February 2004.

Gray joined CTE (Carlton) in 1995 as head of marketing and producer liaison, moving up to controller in 1999. He acquired new programming, largely in the U.K. independent sector, but also internationally, helping Carlton grow its catalog to more than 18,000 hours.

Marvel Headline News

Maisel Joins Marvel Studios as President/COO to Explore New Initiatives

Marvel Enterprises Inc. has hired David Maisel as president and coo of Marvel Studios. He will work on expanding Marvel's success into new entertainment arenas as well as maximizing the commercial success of Marvel Studios' future feature film releases. Four feature films based on Marvel characters will be released in 2004: THE PUNISHER (Lions Gate, April 16), SPIDER-MAN 2 (Columbia, July 2), BLADE: TRINITY (New Line, Aug. 13) and MAN-THING (Artisan, October).

Headline News

NVIDIA Helps NASA Reconstruct Mars Rover Data in 3D

NVIDIA announced that NASA is using its Quadro Graphics technology to reconstruct Martian terrain from transmitted rover data in photorealistic virtual reality, allowing scientists to explore Mars in 3D as if they were actually moving freely on the planet's surface.

Animated Headline News

NATPE News: face2face animation Smiles on NATPE

face2face animation will showcase its latest animated content, including recent work for Conan O'Brien as well as new children's animated characters, at NATPE 2004. New properties include SCRATCH TRIGGER ERROR, a first-person animated series pilot, as well as two new pilots that use face2face's proprietary "ghetto anime" style, which renders 3D images in a 2D approach.

Live-action Headline News

NATPE News: Eat Your Lunch Busts Loose Bzots

Eat Your Lunch is bringing is new live-action and animated musical series for the 8 and under crowd, titled BZOTS, to NATPE at Booth 1569. The company will have the first two episodes and the first CD on hand at the conference.

Grading Headline News

Discreet's Digital Intermediate Drive Continues with New lustre Purchase

Discreet announced that Ultimate (Ultimate Video Int.), The Netherlands, has installed high-performance digital color correction and digital intermediate (DI) capabilities based on lustre, Discreet's award-winning, realtime color grading system.

Spot Headline News

R!OT Manhattan Visualizes ‘Closer Than You Think’ GM Spot

R!OT Manhattan applied its artistic touch to turn New York City street scenes into Anytown, USA for a new spot promoting the GM Credit Card. Conceived by Mullen Advertising, CLOSER THAN YOU THINK promotes the cards benefits program through the story of a man who is being stalked by a growing fleet of General Motors vehicles.

Headline News

Polly Knocks Off The King; Teacher’s Pet Just Misses Top 10

Universals Ben Stiller/Jennifer Aniston comedy, ALONG CAME POLLY, blew away the competition, including THE RETURN OF THE KING, in its box office debut over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, ended Jan. 19, 2004, collecting $32.4M. After four weeks atop the chart, New Lines RETURN OF THE KING (with vfx overwhelmingly by Weta Digital) finally fell to second place with $12.4M and a grand $329M to date.

Animation Headline News

New Raven Animation to Target Former Disney Orlando Animators

Raven Moon Entertainment Inc. has formed a new animation company called Raven Animation Inc., with plans to target former Disney/MGM animators that recently lost their jobs on Jan. 12 because of the closing of Disney's animation operations at Disney/MGM studios in Orlando, Florida.

Series Headline News

Gundam Seed & Detective Conan Come to Cartoon Network

Cartoon Network is set to air anime series GUNDAM SEED and DETECTIVE CONAN, beginning in April.

The latest GUNDAM anime series will air on its weekend Action Block. GUNDAM SEED's appearance on the Cartoon Network will roughly coincide with the release of the first volume of the GUNDAM SEED manga from Del Rey on April 30. The series was a huge hit in Japan, where it brought the GUNDAM franchise back to the top of the TV ratings and stimulated tie-in merchandise sales. Rights holder Bandai America plans a huge new line-up of GUNDAM toys to roll out in 2004 as well.

Effects Headline News

DKP Produces VFX for ‘See the Town’ Internet Service Spot

Cossette Communications of Toronto came to nearby DKP Effects to do vfx honors for the Bell Sympatico high-speed Internet service spot titled SEE THE TOWN 310 FAST. Cossette was looking to create a world that didnt exist to support the metaphor of the Internet at high-speed, in which stores would be stylized versions of media-rich Websites. Each storefront was designed to be deep into the interactive content, and streets were perfectly clean to represent the DSL broadband service.

Film Headline News

DPS Film Roman Goes For Cracked Humor

DPS Film Roman announced today that it has joined forces with CRACKED MAGAZINE to create television and DVD productions featuring the best gags, humor and characters from the 45-year history of the publication (ala MAD TV and MAD MAGAZINE). Licensing and merchandising rights have also been optioned, with DPS Film Roman looking to create T-shirts, novelties and possibly a game in the near future.

Color Headline News

Digital Anarchy Unveils Primatte Chromakeyer 2.0 for Photoshop

Digital Anarchy announced the availability of Primatte Chromakeyer 2.0, a chromakey compositing plug-in for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Primatte allows users to use blue and greenscreen masking technology with Photoshop and digital still images to create complex layered effects.

Digital Headline News

Digital Days 2004 From Santa Barbara International Film Festival

The Santa Barbara International Film Festival Presents the 6th Annual Digital Days, an interactive showcase and forum featuring screenings, presentations, seminars and classes to be held Feb. 7, 2004.

Story Headline News

Deadline Extended for Greatest Story Never Told Competition

The deadline to submit entries for The Greatest Story Never Told Competition has been extended from Jan. 15 to Feb. 7, 2004. The extension is in response to the popularity of TGSNT competition and the participation of several new sponsors, including Alias, IHT Publishing and Wacom.

College Headline News

Columbia College Loses Head of Semester In L.A. Instructor

Robert F. Enrietto, Jr., former production manager, assistant director, producer and, most recently, administrator of Columbia College Chicagos Semester in L.A. program, died of a heart attack during the holiday break (Dec. 27, 2003) while vacationing in Chicago. He was 62.

Animation Headline News

Savannah College’s Beckmann named Education Chair for SIGGRAPH 2005

Patricia Beckmann, chair of the animation department at Savannah College of Art and Design, has been named Education Chair for SIGGRAPH 2005. In addition, Matthew Munn, a second-year graduate student in animation from Calymont, Delaware, won the 10 Second Club monthly Character Animation Competition for the month of November 2003. This online international competition posts a 10-sec sound clip at the beginning of each month.

Series Headline News

Animated Spider-Man Web Slings On DVD

SPIDER-MAN THE ANIMATED SERIES may have been dropped by MTV last year, but the good news is that all 13 episodes of season one have arrived in a terrific DVD set with plenty of extras (Columbia TriStar Home Ent., $29.95). Mainframe Ent.s computer-animated series (written and exec produced by Michael Bendis, who was responsible for the ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN comic) puts a new spin on Peter Parkers plight, putting him in college opposite Harry Osborn and Mary Jane Watson. Voiced by Neil Patrick Harris, the animated SPIDER-MAN had its fans and foes.

Tools Headline News

Vicon Advances Mo-Cap Workflow with New Vicon iQ Update

Vicon announced Vicon iQ 1.5, a new release of the companys intelligence-based motion data processing application. Now shipping, the new software encompasses a number of production-critical capabilities to enable automated handling of motion data from capture through to animation.

Headline News

Samwise Gamgee to Direct Fantastic Four Feature?

Brazilian magazine, SET, has posted an interview with THE LORD OF RINGS actor Sean Astin, where he mentions being in the running to direct the FANTASTIC FOUR feature. Upon the success of his short film, THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT, which he filmed while making LORD OF THE RINGS, he has had interviews to direct 20th Century Fox's feature adaptation of the Marvel comic classic. The article quotes the budget between $100 to $130 million.

Ratings Headline News

Adult Swim New Year's Eve Bash Triples Previous Year's Ratings

Starting the new year off with a big bang, Cartoon Network's Adult Swim annual New Year's Eve Bash (Wednesday, 11:00 pm 2:00 am) out-scored last year's time period by double and triple digits, according to Nielsen Media Research. The Sunday-Thursday night Adult Swim telecasts also continued to climb in delivery and ratings for targeted young adults.

Highlights of Adult Swim's performance vs. the same time period last year include the following:Adult Swim New Year's Eve Bash* Adults 18-24 delivery (171,000) increased by 34% and ratings (0.6) by 20%.

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