Bill Plympton has updated his
page. This month, "Surprise Cinema" will be appearing in
various festivals and other events in the US, Canada, France,
Belgium and Germany. Bill will be appearing at the Comics Festival
in Angouleme, France, January 26-31, and at the Zagreb World
Festival of Animated Films in Zagreb, Croatia, June 12-25, 2000.
Visual Magic Magazine, AWN's 3D animation and digital effects
online magazine, has posted a new article: "Masters of Visual
Effects Videos Reviewed"...
Pam Thompson has a new Career Coach column - Setting And
Achieving Goals...
Plympton's new series of comics extracted from the comic book,
"Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton," is for ADULTS ONLY...
On January 8, 1999 the Walt Disney Company recalled 3.4
million copies of "The Rescuers" video release due to two
objectionable non-consecutive frames in the 110,000-frame
movie...
In December 1999, Mill Film announced that they united operations with
sister company Magic Camera. The combination will create a formidable
start-to-finish London-based feature film facility mixing Mill's visual
effects talent and technical strengths with the digital effects, miniature
construction and photography of Magic Camera and Magic Models. Antony Hunt
will serve as managing director of Mill Film and will take charge of day to
day operations of the combined companies. Hunt has been at the helm of
Several animation studios in Santiago, Chile, including Arce Studios, EMU
Ltd., ROOS Film S.A., and Trimedia S.A. have formed a partnership to
promote the animation business in Santiago. The partners are looking for
co-producers and/or investors for their products. Alvaro Arce, President of
Arce Studios, worked in the animation industry in the United States for
many years at Hanna-Barbera, The Walt Disney Company, and others. Alvaro
has several original series currently in development. Arce Studios is now
South Africa-based Triggerfish Animation, a leading stop-frame animation
company in South Africa, is currently shooting animation sequences for the
South African SESAME STREET, using an assortment of different materials
including local contemporary art work, creating a unique African feel to
the production. In addition, Triggerfish is shooting a 30-second commercial
using 7 plasticine characters for a new product being launched in South
Africa and Australia called Slo Jo -- a fruit smoothie.
CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG will come to life on PBS' fall 2000 schedule. The
show will be based on the 39-year-old CLIFFORD Scholastic book series
written by Norman Bridwell. John Ritter will provide the voice of Clifford;
while Kel Mitchell (KEENAN & KEL) will voice the dog's buddy, T-Bone; Grey
DeLisle (RUGRATS) will voice Clifford's best friend, Emily Elizabeth; and
Cree Summer will voice Cleo.
DIGITAL DOMAIN helped Plum Productions create a virtual jungle/city for the
new Fiat Punto spots. Plum Productions' director Eric Saarinen worked with
Digital Domain's visual effects supervisor Paul Kirsch to create a city
full of people riding around on lion, tigers, and bears. The Punto drives
in showing how different it is compared to the other animals on the street.
Digital Domain had the complex job of combining five-days of greenscreen
shooting on the Paramount backlot into a coherent flow. "We made the
Disney/Pixar's TOY STORY 2 is coming to Sega Dreamcast. In March 2000,
Activision, Inc., in collaboration with Disney Interactive, will release
Disney/Pixar's TOY STORY 2: BUZZ LIGHTYEAR TO THE RESCUE for Sega
Dreamcast. The new release will be a third-person free-roaming adventure
game that uses 3D animation to deliver a unique mix of gameplay elements.
As Buzz Lightyear, players take on five big bosses in a quest to save Woody
from a toy collector over 15 levels.
The new year is a time for making plans for what you want to accomplish. I used to make resolutions, which were quickly given up on before the month of January was even over. Now, I prefer setting goals. Goals are dreams with deadlines.
* Friday, January 28, 2000. Los Angeles, California, USA.
Art In Motion focuses on innovative content and diversity. The criteria for
entry is time rather than medium based, and therefore video, film and
digital projects, animations, Websites, CD-Roms etc. are all eligible.
Hybrids are particularly welcome. There will be a $1000 "Best of Show"
award and "first place" allocations in each exhibition category. For more
information contact Jim Keller or Janet Owen, festival organizers at:
* Monday, January 31 - Saturday, February 5, 2000. San Roque, Cadiz, Spain.
22nd International Short Film Festival of San Roque is open to all films
under 30 minutes made after January 1, 1997. Categories will include
fiction, animation and documentary. Cash prizes range from Euros 3,000 to
900. For more information contact Ilusre Ayuntamiento de San Roque, Semana
Internacional del Cortometraje, Cine-Teatro Alameda Alameda de Alfonso,
11360 San Roque (Cadiz) Espana; Tel.: ++ 34 (9)56-781074; Fax: ++ 34
* Friday, February 4 - Saturday, February 12, 2000. Clermont-Ferrand, France.
This year, Clermont-Ferrand Short Films Festival will be featuring its 12th
international competition and 22nd French competition. The festival will
highlight animated films based off of comic strips. Filmmakers and buyers
can take advantage of the short film market, which attracted more than 50
TV channels, 50 distributors, and 60 international festival organizers last
* Thursday, February 10, 2000. Chicago, Illinois, USA.
The 29th Mobius Advertising Awards is a yearly event recognizing
outstanding television and radio commercials, as well as print advertising
and package designs. The competition is open to television commercials and
campaigns which have been produced, screened or aired in the past 12
months. The animation-related categories include: Animation-Computer,
Animation-Non-Computer, and Animation-Computer & Non-Computer. For more
On Wednesday, January 12, 2000, Walt Disney's legendary animator Marc Davis
passed away at Glendale Memorial Hospital shortly following a stroke. He
was 86 years old. Davis was a member of Disney's inner circle known as the
"nine old men." During his 43-year tenure at the studio, Davis brought to
life such classic characters as Bambi, Cinderella, Alice, Briar Rose,
Maleficent and Cruella DeVil. In addition to creating many of Disney's
female characters, he served as a key player in the development of many of
For over thirty years, Don Martin's crazy comics filled the pages of MAD
magazine. On Sunday, January 9, 2000, Marin died in a Miami hospital at the
age of 68. A representative of Baptist Hospital says the cartoonist died of
cancer. No further details were disclosed. Martin's weirdo humor disgusted
mothers and delighted young rebels for nearly three decades. No person or
tale was free from Martin's eye for twisted satire. For example, his strips
Sony's hit film STUART LITTLE remained at the top of the U.S. box office
this past weekend taking in US$11.21 million in ticket sales. The
giant-sized flick, with primary FX by Sony Pictures Imageworks, additional
animation by CFX and Rhythm & Hues, and miniatures by Thunderstone, has
taken home a little more than cheese with a total purse of $95.3 million.
THE GREEN MILE squeaks by live-action flick THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY to
secure the second spot on the box office charts. The Warner Bros. flick,
Bender will be back next year for more adventures on FUTURAMA. The animated
series from producers Matt Groening and David X. Cohen has been picked up
for the 2000-01 season by Fox. A decision has not been made yet on whether
the number of episodes ordered will be 13, 22 or some number in-between.
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. announced the
simultaneous worldwide VHS release of George Lucas' STAR WARS: EPISODE I
THE PHANTOM MENACE. Young Jedi wanna-bes around the globe will snag their
copy the week of April 3 - 8, 2000. The biggest box office hit of 1999 and
second highest-grossing motion picture of all time worldwide, will official
go on sale in North America on Tuesday, April 4, 2000. The US$922 million
![NewTek Introduces LightWave [6] For Mac](https://www.awn.com/sites/default/files/styles/small_featured/public/image/featured/6037-newtek-introduces-lightwave-6-mac.jpg?itok=9LvQkzND "NewTek Introduces LightWave [6] For Mac")
![NewTek Introduces LightWave [6] For Mac](https://www.awn.com/sites/default/files/styles/tiny_featured/public/image/featured/6037-newtek-introduces-lightwave-6-mac.jpg?itok=_4M997Az "NewTek Introduces LightWave [6] For Mac")
At San Francisco's MacWorld which ran from January 4-8, NewTek introduced
LightWave [6], the product's most significant upgrade in 10 years. The new
version of the already popular 3D tool boasts more new features than ever
introduced to the product in previous upgrades, many of which have never
been seen on the Macintosh system before. On the modeling side of things,
LightWave [6] introduces a whole new modeling paradigm, which gives users
control over the manipulation and animation of their models to a degree
PuppetTime Inc. recently announced that it has released version 1.0 of its
PuppetTime Producer software, an easy to use 3D character animation program
that the company claims makes "the TV-watching generation, the TV-making
generation." PuppetTime Producer is not a character animation package for
animators, but a package for non-animators which allows them to create
'movies' quickly and easily without any knowledge of animation technique at
all. Users can create 3D animation in minutes simply by selecting
Alias|Wavefront announced that they would be developing a version of their
Maya software for Intel's forthcoming IA-64 Itanium processor, and
Microsoft's 64-bit Windows NT operating system. The IA-64 operating system
uses a 64-bit architecture and offers the robust performance required by
data-intensive 3D visualizations and computer graphics. Alias|Wavefront is
among the first software developers to port their software to Itanium, and
in doing so it will allow its customers to take full advantage of the speed
* Friday, January 14 - Sunday, January 16, 2000. Boulder, Colorado, USA.
The Moondance International Film Festival's objective is to promote and
encourage women screenwriters and women who make independent films, in any
genre, including animation. There will be one winner in each category:
Filmmaker, Screenwriter, or Documentary Filmmaker. Awards: $2000 for best
original screenplay, $2000 for best independent film, and $1000 for best
documentary film. There will be 2 semi-finalists in each category. All
