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Liquid Light Studios of Los Angeles helped give birth to Valencia,California's theme park Six Flags Magic Mountain's new roller coaster --"The Goliath." Liquid Light created a 3D simulation of the ride, so execscould take in the thrills before tracks were even laid. Last year, theanimation studio completed a similar 3D simulation for the park's"Riddler's Revenge." Built around an "Indiana Jones," jungle theme, themain highlights of this new coaster is that it travels up to speeds of 85

The 7th World Animation Celebration (WAC) arrives in L.A. on Tuesday, May30, 2000 - Sunday, June 4, 2000 for its festival and internationalcompetition. WAC will showcase more than 800 films, including the best inboth classic and contemporary animation. As the main attraction, WAC willpresent awards to the best new animated works from around the world. TheWorld Animation Celebration will present a trade show, an internationalbusiness conferenece, world and American film premieres, seminars,

EuropaCinema & TV, held in Viareggio, Italy, announced their two animationshort winners. FOREVER AND EVER, by Michaela Pavlatova and Pavel Koutecky(Czech Republic) and SUBURBANITES by Stefan Vermeulen (Belgium) took homethe prize. The international jury of Enzo D'Alo, Georges Wolinski, MarjutRimminen, Rastko Ciric and Sergio Staino said FOREVER AND EVER is "a filmthat gives us an unconventional interpretation of love, dramatic and at thesame time ironically surrealistic. A film that also reveals a remarkable

Wild Brain, Inc., a leading U.S. animation studio, has brought to theever-expanding club its new child, wildbrain.com. The new Web channel willbroadcast animation from around the globe and will be the feature providerof animation on Yahoo! Broadcast. In the deal, Yahoo! will provide Websolutions for Wild Brain's video animation programming, which is availableon wildbrain.com as well as Yahoo! Broadcast. wildbrain.com will debut withGLUE, an Internet exclusive toon featuring the adventures of a town full of

Cult comic and TV franchise THE TICK is getting a new lease on life.Producers Barry Sonnenfeld and Barry Josephson (FANTASY ISLAND, MAXIMUMBOB), via their deal at Columbia TriStar Television, will bring alive-action, primetime half-hour version of the clueless hero's show to FoxBroadcasting. The series is scheduled for fall 2000.

Read more about THE TICK from creator Ben Edlund in the Animation WorldMagazine article "Tick Fever Endures" by Deborah Reber.

The Florida-based AARGH! ANIMATION, Inc. has hired JASON TEATE as colordesigner and associate producer. Jason completed color design for AARGH!'srecent series of national spots for Cold-Eeze cold medicine, which are nowairing.

Director/designer Jerry van de Beek and co-designer Betsy de Fries ofLITTLE FLUFFY CLOUDS, the San Francisco digital animation and designstudio, finished an all CGI commercial for Lugz athletic shoes entitled"Annakii." The 30-second spot features a video game like scenario, repletewith a hip-hop soundtrack, where the hero moves through a futuristic NewYork City.

After 6 years, the organizers of the Oslo Animation Festival have movedoperations to Fredrikstad, Norway. Complete with a new name, the Nordic andBaltic Animation Festival invites both animators and spectators on May 3-5,2000 to take part in an event dedicated to promoting the screening andbetter understanding of animation. This year's festival presents: Nordicand Baltic films in competition, Nordic and Baltic Panorama, Internationalhighlights, a Focus on British animation, Animation as Music, a Celebration

* Sunday, December 19 - Monday, December 20, 1999. Turin, Italy.

ASIFA Italia, with the help of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, theRegione Piemonte and the Comune di Torino, together with the support ofYoung Artists Circle and the British Council and Pro-Helvetia, isorganizing a meeting with a series of films on the subject of "Art &Animation". The meeting aims to heighten awareness of animation as an artform with a particular stress on independent short films of research,

Is Pikachu anti-Semitic? The answer is no, even after questions to thecontrary circled when parents complained of a swastika-like symbolappearing on the Japanese language cards for Pokemon's Golbat and Ditto.These two cards, not yet released in the U.S. card collection, include aJapanese symbol called a "manji," which is a mirror image of a swastika.The symbol, however, is a centuries-old, Japanese symbol for good fortune.Not wanting to create any bad financial karma, Nintendo has announced thatit will discontinue the questionable cards.