FIVEs Milkshake has ordered a second season of FUNKY VALLEY from British award-winning animation studio Honeycomb Animation.
The successful preschool show was first aired in May 2004 on FIVEs preschool strand Milkshake!, and has been sold to more than 30 territories worldwide, including Italy, South Africa, Canada and Australia. (A spin-off series, FUNKY TOWN, is currently in production.)
The latest Animation World Magazine Acrobat edition is now online and free for a limited time. This edition covers the ever-expanding world of gaming. Joe Strike uncovers the voice over actors finding lucrative work in the videogame industry. Janet Hetherington takes a look at how videogame art is jumping off the screen and into the gallery. Christopher Harz looks into the field of educational videogames, moving games from the home into the classroom and office.
Wrapping up its run on June 17, 2006, the 17th Zagreb, World Festival of Animated Films, awarded its Grand Prix to Joanna Quinn's multiple-Annecy winner, DREAMS AND DESIRES FAMILY TIES. Her short was a two-time winner, also taking home the Jury International Film Critics prize. The top audience award went to PRO IVANA DURAKA, (IVAN THE FOOL) by Mikhail Aldashin and Oleg Uzhinov.
Below is a complete list of winners:
GRAND COMPETIONGrand Prix DREAMS AND DESIRES FAMILY TIES, by Joanna Quinn, U.K.
Golden Zagreb Award
Autodesk Inc. announced that its technology was used to create high-definition television (HDTV) content for the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Autodesk solutions provide digital artists with the creative tools and processing power necessary to quickly and efficiently produce content containing the level of detail required for HDTV programming. Post-production facilities that relied on Autodesk technology include: Deep Blue Sea, Locomotion, METAphrenie, Method Studios and The Mill.
Target Ent. has germinated a batch of new licensing deals for Chapman Ent.s preschool property, FIFI AND THE FLOWERTOTS.
Although the property was only launched at the UK Brand Licensing Show in October 2004, the licensing team at Target has already amassed 34 separate agreements for the U.K., in addition to the master toy, publishing and home entertainment deals already done by Chapman Ent.
Young-Gu Art is the latest vfx facility that has selected Iridas FrameCycler DI as its new review and approval system. The facility, based in Seoul, provides cutting-edge work for the Korean film industry, one of the largest in the world.
"We chose FrameCycler for its realtime playback and primary color correction capabilities," said Ki-Wook Shim, visual effects supervisor at Young-Gu. "We work with 2K 10-bit files so we needed an application that can handle that. Iridas has a great track-record in the industry and that made it an easy decision."
Tenerife International Film Festival 2007Santa Cruz, Tenerife, Spain April 21-28, 2007Deadline: November 30, 2006
The SIGGRAPH 2006 Papers Program features the latest achievements in the worlds most prestigious presentation of the years best research innovations in computer graphics and interactive techniques. Of 474 international submissions, 86 Papers were accepted for SIGGRAPH 2006 taking place July 30-Aug. 3 in Boston. The SIGGRAPH 2006 Papers Program opens July 31 at 8:30 am and closes Aug. 3 at 5:30 pm.
Jeffrey Edell has been appointed president/coo of DIC Ent., replacing Brad Brooks, who returns to investment banking with a position he accepted at Imperial Capital. Brooks was asked to continue as a consultant to DICs senior management in finance and strategy assessment. Edell will manage DICs operating units worldwide, including consumer products, television and home entertainment. The companys creative division will continue to report directly to Andy Heyward, DIC chairman/ceo.
Timed to coincide with the upcoming release of SUPERMAN RETURNS (in theatres June 28), Warner Bros. and AOL have launched a special Superman Channel on In2TV (www.aol.com/in2tv) to celebrate the Man of Steel. In2TV is the largest offering of popular television series available online for free and the destination for watching full TV episodes. The Superman Channel is available now through the end of July 2006.
The 22nd Hamburg International Short Film Festival, which ran from May 31 to June 5, 2006, has announced its winners.
In the International Competition, a special mention went to Finnish animated short, ELUKKA / TIER by Tatu Pohjavirta.
In the NoBudget Competition, the NoBudget Audience Award went to the computer animated MAN OS 1 / EXTRAORDINATEUR from Roland Seidel and Achim Stiermann of Austria and experimental animation JULOT from Maya Tiberman of Israel.
DIC Ent. (DIC) has acquired the privately-owned, pan-European licensing agency, Copyright Promotions (CPLG), which significantly expands DIC's place in the European licensing arena.
Antics is offering an extensive pre-shipping Early Adopter Program (EAP) to customers showing an interest in Antics Version 2. This will include services such as free support, and up to 75% discount on launch price making this a hugely attractive opportunity. Antics is fast, easy to use pre-vis software designed for creative professionals and does not require any previous 3D animation experience.
The coveted short film grand prize at the 30th International Festival of Animated Film at Annecy went to TRAGIC STORY HAPPY ENDING by Regina Pessoa for France while the black-and-white French film, RENAISSANCE, won the Cristal for Best Feature. The awards were presented at the closing ceremony held on Saturday, June 10, 2006 in Annecy, France.
There were many films submitted to the latest Annecy animation festival, now running June 5-10, 2006, along with the MIFA market (June 7-9), in Annecy, France, and loads of screenings but many festival goers are in search of a film that really wows them. The films have been described as abstract, too long, lacking story with only a few, so far, gaining any note, and even those are not generally agreed upon.
Imagi Animation Studios, in association with Tatsunoko Prod. of Japan, will produce a new CG-animated feature-length theatrical release based on the long-running anime franchise GATCHAMAN. The new film will be written and directed by Kevin Munroe, who is writing and directing Imagis TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES CG feature that is being distributed by Warner Bros. in the U.S. and The Weinstein Co. internationally.
MTV2 has joined up with Aardman Animations to broadcast a series of shorts featuring the character Big Jeff.
MTV2 is MTV Networks U.K. & Irelands channel dedicated to guitar-based music. The 10 BIG JEFF films range from 90 to 180 seconds in duration and will be scattered amongst the MTV2 schedule from mid June. The animations were created, written and directed by Aardmans Tom Parkinson and exec produced by Miles Bullough, Pete Lord and Dave Sproxton.
NVIDIA Corp. announced a reference design with Intel Corp. that will provide device manufacturers with a fast and easy solution for bringing powerful, media-rich handheld devices to market based on the Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.
The Weinstein Co. has sold most of the world on Exodus Film Groups CG-animated feature comedy IGOR, following Cannes.
Key territorial sales include the U.K. to Momentum, in France to TF1, in Germany and Switzerland to Constantine, in Spain to Aurum, in Russia to West Film Group, in Eastern Europe to EEAP, in Benelux to RCV, in Brazil to Europa, in the Middle East to Italia, in Portugal to Lusomundo, in South Korea to Jung-A Ent., in Turkey to Film Pop and in Taiwan to Applause.
General secretary/deputy program director in charge of drama production at M6, Nicolas Coppermann, will soon take over as head of Télé Images. Coppermann will team with Pascal Breton (Marathon), Vincent Chalvon Demersay (Marathon Media) and Denis Mermet (Adventure Line Prods.), who joined forces in January 2006 with the fusion of the temporarily named Finhera group, currently presided over by Pascal Breton.
e-on software announced the pre-release of two new versions of its xStream suite of plug-ins: xStream for LightWave and xStream for Cinema 4D.
Vue 5 xStream is a suite of plug-ins that enables the seamless integration of Vue environments into the industry's leading 3D applications. Versions of xStream were already available for Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya. As of June 1, versions of xStream for Newtek LightWave and Maxon Cinema 4D are also available. xStream for SOFTIMAGE|XSI is still under development.
Iridas announced that Industrial Light & Magic has purchased universal site licenses of FrameCycler Professional 3.5 for its facility in the Letterman Center in San Francisco, Lucasfilm Animation in Singapore and the Skywalker Ranch in San Rafael. Now artists at all three locations will have immediate access to uncompressed frame-based playback for review and analysis of their work on every workstation.
Monster Distributes just sold its new animated series, IM AN ANIMAL, from Oscar-nominated Brown Bag Films to Nickelodeon UK. Produced with the support of RTE and the Irish Film Board, the series has already been sold to Rai Italy, TV Ontario, Knowledge Network Canada, Cartoon Network Australia, Cable TV Hong Kong, Sanctuary UK, Hungama TV Indonesia, Malaysia and India and Al Sayyar in the Middle East.
IM AN ANIMAL was one of the top programs at MIPCOM Jr. last year, and will have all 52x2 episodes completed this month.
Mumbai-based Crest Animation Studios Ltd., one of Indias leading animation studios has moved to a new state-of-the-art digital studio in Ghatkopar and has landed a big series deal with French producer Marathon.
The shift to this spacious 45,000-square-foot studio will accommodate the companys expansion plans to moves up from work for hire into production of its own full-length 3D animation feature films for a global audience.
LAURA'S STAR, the acclaimed German animated feature, directed by Thilo Gruf Rothkirch and Piet de Rycker (THE LITTLE POLAR BEAR), makes its way to DVD Sept. 26 (Warner Home Video, $14.98).
LAURA'S STAR was released theatrically in Europe and won numerous awards, including the Adults Jury Price, Animation, at the 2005 Chicago International Children's Film Festival, a Lola for Outstanding Children or Youth Film Award at the 2005 German Film Awards, and was nominated for Best Film at the 2005 Carrousel International du Film.
