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BLUE SKY STUDIOS, a leading animation house, has promoted LINDA ZAZZA to Operations Manager. She will oversee day-to-day operations of the facility and office, including recommending and hiring administrative staff, working with vendors, planning events and budgeting. Zazza began her tour of duty at Blue Sky as an executive administrative assistant.

shockwave.com, a leading Internet entertainment site, announced new holiday additions to its award-winning site. The additions include new creative applications Toonmaker and Puzzlemaker; new festive greeting cards; and an improved Shockmachine experience. These free on-line gifts can be sent to friends and family. Toonmaker enables users to create personal cards and cartoons using well known characters such as the kids from South Park. Puzzlemaker allows users to turn their own photos into puzzles, add messages and then send them to friends.

Early in December 1999, Macromedia, a leader in digital and Internet software, announced it had completed its acquisition of Andromedia Inc., a leading provider of eMarketing software solutions for e-commerce. Macromedia previously announced a definitive agreement to acquire Andromedia on October 7, 1999. As part of the merger, Macromedia will obtain all of the outstanding stock in Andromedia. The company will issue 5.2 million shares of stock in connection with the deal and will incur one-time charges from the merger of up to $5 million in its fiscal third quarter.

DreamWorks has obtained the screen rights to Nathan Never, a comic published in Italy by Bonelli Editore and imported by Platinum Studios. The story focuses around Nathan Never, a 21st Century Dirty Harry, who, in the wake of a terrible crime, is charged to protect the lone witness. The comic was acquired by DW's Walter Parkes and Glenn Williamson. The pic will be produced by Platinum chairman Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, co-produced by Platinum pres Ervin Rustemagic and senior VP Gregory Noveck. Parkes and Rosenberg teamed up together on MEN IN BLACK.

ZDTV, a 24-hour cable television channel about computing, technology and the Internet, will have Atari founder Nolan Bushnell on BIG THINKERS. Hosted by Mark Eddo, BIG THINKERS features in-depth discussions with the most visionary and influential men and women working in the high-tech industry today. The episode with Bushnell, the creator of PONG, will air January 5, 2000 at 10:30 pm. These interviews, plus additional footage not shown on air, will be available in streaming video on the show's companion Web site.

As we reported in the past [AF 7/1/97], the

world-renowned Japanese animation director Hayao Miyazaki had decided to

hang up his white film gloves and never make a feature film again. Well

cheer up anime fans! The master is back to work on a new feature film. This

announcement ends a 2 1/2 year hiatus after PRINCESS MONONOKE broke box

office records all over Japan. What's the follow-up to the US$150 million

hit at the Japanese B.O.? The project is titled SEN TO CHIHIRO NO

As was reported [AF 12/21/99], a federal

court jury convicted former Walt Disney Internet executive, 34-year-old

Patrick Naughton, of possessing child pornography, but deadlocked on

charges that he crossed state lines seeking sex with a "13-year-old girl"

which he arranged via the Internet. On Wednesday, December 22, 1999, U.S.

District Judge Edward Rafeedie reversed his own ruling and released

Naughton from jail, saying it was likely that he would win a new trial. On

London-based Passion Pictures has recently finished stings, bumpers, and

indents to promote PBS KIDS. The interstitials were directed by Alyson

Hamilton, who received an Emmy nomination for her work on the title

sequence for U.S.-based TV channel CBS' THE PROMISED LAND.

Boston-based animation house Fablevision is slated to create two new shows

for Noggin, the new 24-hour educational network for kids from Nickelodeon

and the Children's Television Workshop. Fablevision will produce CECIL AND

HER VERY OWN UNIVERSE and SWAMP DOG. CECIL will feature a 12-year-old girl

and her robot dog who live in a underground society in the future. Cecil

dreams of leaving her mole-like life to see what above ground has in store.

If you're planning to kick back with the Rockettes this holiday season at

New York City's Radio City Music Hall look forward to a more interactive

show. To be featured in the Christmas Spectacular, Black Logic, a visual

effects, 2D/3D animation and live-action production house, has created a 3D

animated sequence to interact with the Rockettes. A happy "Man in the Moon"

character, based on Georges Melies' A TRIP TO THE MOON, smiles, winks and

MetaCreations, a renowned provider of graphics software, recently announced

that the Board of Directors has made the baffling decision of effectively

dropping their range of graphics products to concentrate purely on their

MetaStream technology. This decision comes shortly before the release of

Carrara, MC's "next-generation 3D software for print, video and the Web."

On the third line of their Carrara announcement, MetaCreations stated that

it would continue to support their existing graphics products. However,

Discreet recently released a maintenance update to 3D Studio MAX 3 which,

in the coming weeks, will be distributed free of charge to all registered

users of the software. The announcement comes shortly after the company

declared success at clearing well over 100,000 copies, and are reinforcing

their commitment to users by bringing them new features so soon after the

initial release of the software. The update includes data containers for