Over the past five years the changes in special effects technology for film and television have been monumental, causing large shifts and new issues for production companies and the software/hardware companies that service them. Bruce Manning outlines the issues and then sits down with Richard Taylor to discuss. Includes an image gallery from industry veteran Richard Taylor!
Swimming against the recent tidal wave of dotcom disasters, Heavy.com has announced a new US$3 million round of financing. In addition, Heavy has announced that David Pachter has been named president and COO. Prior to Heavy, Pachter served as senior VP of business development for Interactive Video Technologies, a streaming video solutions firm. "We feel extremely fortunate to have attracted a person of David's caliber," co-CEO David Carson said.
With today's new software packages becoming more and more efficient for less and less money, one can definitely do more with less. John Edgar Park discusses the different software and hardware combos that can get you on the fast track to great looking CGI work.
Exporting your animation to Flash so that it plays smoothly and soundly over the Internet is getting more complicated with every new product crowing about its 'Flash-export capability.' Mark Winstanley is here to make sense of it all for you.
From Russia to his new home of Norway, Pjotr Sapegin is bringing his own twisted sense of humor to his re-worked fairy tales. Who is this man behind a salt controlling troll, a genital loving cat and a rat seeking romance? Chris Robinson investigates.
The innate pitfalls, and opportunities, in successfully adapting a television show to the big screen are many. With millions in profits going to those who achieve the magic combo, and straight-to-video relegation for those who fail, it is a tight rope more studios are trying to rush across. Gerard Raiti takes a look.
This month the Animation Pimp Chris Robinson takes on the U.S. job drain to Canada and reveals it is actually a two way street and has been for many a year...
Have you ever thought that Ren and Stimpy's popularity was based on their abstract representation of our early '90s fears and anxieties regarding political uncertainty and the AIDS epidemic? Well, Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman has.
Tired of Teletubbies and need another bizarre pre-school fix? Well check out Consortium of Gentlemen's Yoho Ahoy on the BBC. Soon you'll know every line...
Jon Hofferman joins us to review short films: The Dance of the Saracen Asparagus by Christophe Le Borgne, Maria Vasilkovsky's Fur & Feathers, Run of the Mill by Borge Ring, Andreas Hykade's Ring of Fire and Paul Fierlinger's long-awaited Still Life with Animated Dogs. Includes QuickTime movie clips!
Fred Patten reviews the latest anime releases inbluding: Outlaw Star, Cardcaptors, Cardcaptor Sakura, The Vision of Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop and Generator Gawl.
* Saturday, March 3, 2001. Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Jacquie Kubin visted New York City's Toy Fair and has a full report on the hot properties for 2001 and beyond. What's going to be in your Happy Meal? Read on...
With the new Toy Story: The Ultimate Toy Box and Fantasia Anthology, Disney has clearly pulled ahead of the competition, putting together expansive bonus selections and features to showcase these great animated features. Gerard Raiti reports.
Cal Arts is presenting a project called "The One Second Film," a deconstruction of animation as an art form.
Animation historian Jerry Beck will be presenting a retrospective of animator Gene Deitch. The screening will scan Deitch's career from his innovative work at UPA to his independent work in Prague.
The Webisode Academy is holding a voice and sound capture workshop. Attendees will go to an actual sound studio and record their voices. A discussion will follow about the uses of voice capture on the Web.
Black Logic has wrapped on a new five spot campaign for the Nasdaq Stock Exchange: "Qualcomm" uses the modem port on a laptop computer as the entrance to a visual world of digital communications; "Immunex" uses transparent CG human forms and brightly colored double helixes to introduce the world of advanced immunology; "Amazon" portrays that company's familiar Website interface to show how it created online commerce; "Biogen" opens with a group photo of the scientists who broke the human genetic code; and "Yahoo" develops the company's groundbreaking search engines, as a road map through a maz
PDI/DreamWorks has completed production on three new commercials for Monster.com, MSN and Target. PDI/DreamWorks brought Monster.com's green mascot, Trump, to life, working with renowned advertising agency Arnold Communications and live-action director Kinka Usher, on the humor spots which debuted during the Super Bowl. The PDI/DreamWorks team, led by director Larry Bafia, created the monster spokesperson for all five spots' endtags.
Goodspeed & Associates, Inc. has promoted Patrick Bennett to the newly created position of design director. Formerly a designer with the company, Patrick will be responsible for the daily overseeing of all creative work. Before joining Goodspeed over a year ago, Patrick held a variety of creative positions in graphic design, Web design and consulting for several magazines and cultural institutions, such as ESQUIRE, VANITY FAIR and Dia Center for the Arts. "Patrick has proved an invaluable asset for our rapidly growing company," said agency owner Bill Goodspeed.
Giant Studios' new animated short film FRUITS OF LABOR premiered this week in San Jose, California, and received a warm and enthusiastic response. The film features a cast of simple computer graphics characters - a shiny red apple, a man and a fly - animated in a stylized way and rendering with startling photo-realism. Rudy Poat, creative director for the project described the look as being, "something that looks like stop-motion and that fooled both the mind and the eye.
Nothing Real, the producer of popular compositing tool Shake, has announced that their new Tremor compositing system has entered into worldwide beta testing. Tremor is a front room, client-based compositing solution, engineered to handle the most demanding needs of HDTV, commercial video and broadcast production professionals. The product is built around a new, simplified and streamlined interface and incorporates the mature and production proven technology based on Shake's rendering engine. Tremor will be sold as an integrated compositing hardware/software product.
QEDSoft's QEDStream product line now natively supports the Kaydara FBX format. QEDStream users are now able to read FBX files, simplifying their production pipeline and enabling Web-content creation from the Kaydara suite of real-time 3D authoring tools. Designed to provide an authoring hub between major 3D packages, FBX provides a centralized working file format for vendors wishing to acquire, author and retarget 3D data and animation. "Using FBX and QEDStream in combination provides a superb channel for streaming both current and legacy content on the Web," said Michel Veys, COO of QEDSoft.
Walt Disney Home Video is releasing the direct-to-video sequel to LADY AND THE TRAMP, entitled LADY AND THE TRAMP II: SCAMP'S ADVENTURE. Arriving on DVD and video on February 27, 2001, the film, directed by Darrell Rooney (LION KING II) and Jeannine Roussel (POCAHONTAS II), follows the exploits of Lady and the Tramp's son Scamp, who wishes nothing more than to play in a world without fences.
Image Entertainment is releasing a compilation of animated romantic tales from the National Film Board of Canada, which have either won or been nominated for the Academy Award. Hitting stores on February 27, 2001, BEST OF THE BEST: ROMANTIC TALES will feature Oscar winner David Fine and Alison Snowden's BOB'S BIRTHDAY, along with A CHAIRY TALE, GEORGE AND ROSEMARY, STRINGS, THE STREET, WALKING, PAS DE DEUX, THE ROMANCE OF TRANSPORTATION IN CANADA, THE DRAG and THE FAMILY THAT DWELT APART. The DVD will retail for US$24.99.
