AWN Headline News

Will Vinton Studios has completed two spots for the current Chili's Restaurant campaign. The first 15-second CG spot, entitled "Cave Paintings," set in a pre-historic cave, features cave paintings that come to life. "We wanted it to look real, like someone had taken a stick and sketched the drawings. It couldn't look too clean," said director Kirk Kelley. "The spot is digital, but its inspiration is grounded in real handmade craft," said David Altschul, president of Will Vinton's advertising division.

Blur Studio has finished the character design and 3D animation for a new TV campaign promoting NBCi.com. The project, which brings to life the peacock and the "i" from the NBCi.com logo, was conceived by Riverstreet Productions. In the first spot, the peacock comes to a crossroad in the information super highway. The "i" whips out his laptop and soon enough the peacock and him are cruising down the road in a red convertible headed for the NBCi Website. The second spot has the "i" removing its dot and balancing on it like a trained seal.

CartoonNetwork.com has announced that the second quarter 2001 was its busiest quarter ever. Time spent on the site increased by almost ten minutes, peaking at a record 44 minutes 42 seconds in June. Cartoon Network attributed this rise to Cartoon Orbit, the Website's online trading community for kids; its Web Premiere Toons; and Toonami: Reactor, a 12-week broadband test, which featured on-demand anime content. The Website set a monthly record in June, attracting 3,102,000 unique users, a 100% increase from the previous year.

Skunk has signed Flash director Michael Overbeck to their roster. The London-based company will represent the director internationally for commercials and music videos. Overbeck has won numerous international awards, including the 2000 Audience choice award at RESFEST. Overbeck recently worked on a pilot entitled UTICA CARTOON for the Cartoon Network, which aired Friday, July 13. "It's a great pleasure to be working with such a young and unique talent. Mike takes the application of the extremely popular Flash to another level," said Hyun-Ho Khang of Skunk.

DIC Entertainment and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) have announced the debut of their newest children's animated series, LIBERTY'S KIDS. Premiering on Memorial Day 2002 on PBS, the series follows two young teenagers working in Benjamin Franklin's print shop as they tell the stories of the American Revolution. Walter Cronkite, one of the most respected American journalists of all time, will be voicing the Benjamin Franklin character. Dr. Jack Rakove, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, and Dr.

LEVEL13.NET and DIRECTV are inviting all aspiring animators to participate in their first co-sponsored Animated Film Festival. The deadline for submissions is September 28. Winners in three categories will be selected by a panel of judges in the field of entertainment, animation and broadcasting and will be announced in December. The winners will receive a US$2,500 cash prize. The three categories are 2D animation, 3D animation and experimental animation.

Mondo Media announced that four of its popular Web shows, including the award-winning ELMO AARDVARK OUTER SPACE DETECTIVE!, will now air on Microsoft Corp.s WindowsMedia.com. The Flash-created series will be available using the Windows Media player. The Mondo Mini series to air on WindowsMedia.com will include ELMO, THUGS ON FILM, HAPPY TREE FRIENDS and THIS MODERN WORLD.

Cartoon Network has contracted J.J. Sedelmaier Productions for three more installments of CAPTAIN LINGER. The series was created by writer Stuart Hill and animation director J.J. Sedelmaier and follows Captain Linger, a superhero who lingers around after saving the day. "Everybody who has seen the Captain loves him," said Sedelmaier. "Ad agency people especially respond immediately because any airtime not filled makes them react. Almost immediately, however, they are charmed by this totally irresponsible use of on-air time. The problem is that, so far, these are short, interstitial pieces.

Caligari Corporation, a provider of 3D authoring technologies, has announced that its 3D modeling and animation package trueSpace 5.1 now supports Macromedia Flash. This is in addition to Caligari's existing support for Macromedia Shockwave3D, Director8.5 and Viewpoint Experience Technology. Web developers can now convert their trueSpace5.1 objects (including NURBS) and scenes to Flash format, including all trueSpace geometry, materials, lights, views and even advanced animation techniques such as script animations, bones and key-frame animations.