Two premier events for the 3D, animation and effects market in the UK have combined their resources to create a single event. Digital Arts Festival, owned by Future Publishing, and Digital Media World, owned by Advanstar Communications, have combined into Digital Arts World, a single exhibition showcasing the best of both events. The new event will be held in the Grand Hall, Olympia, from October 9-11, 2002.
The Intel Corporation has established the CAD (Computer Aided Design) 3D Working Group to define, develop and deploy a common format to represent 3D images on the Web. The working group is part of the Web3D Consortium, a forum for the creation of open standards for Web 3D specifications, and includes members from various segments of the 3D graphics industry, including CAD software vendors, CAD users and digital content creators.
Barcelona-based Grupo Neptuno has completed a major deal with Basque television producer Euskal Irrati Telebista (ETB) for the distribution of its catalogue worldwide, excluding Latin America and Spanish-speaking stations in the United States. ETB's complete line up of more than 1,000 hours of documentaries, entertainment, animation, feature films and live-action series will join Grupo Neptuno's existing catalog, which includes the preschool series CONNIE THE COW, distributed by AAC Kids and TV-Loonland, and the Flash animated series 2020, a co-production with Megatrix.
Ken Olshansky has joined Scholastic Entertainment as the senior vice president of television programming. Formerly, Olshansky was senior vice president of creative affairs for TV-Loonland/Sunbow Entertainment, where he developed and produced GENERATION O for Kids WB!, THE CRAMP TWINS for Cartoon Network and DONNER for ABC Family. In his new position, Olshansky will oversee the development and production of various Scholastic Entertainment television projects, including international co-productions and the Soup2Nuts production group in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Kids' WB! is introducing a Flash animated series to U.S. broadcast television with the premiere of ¡MUCHA LUCHA! on August 17, 2002. The series explores the Latino cultural phenomenon known as "Lucha Libre" and follows Rikochet, Buena Girl and The Flea as they study and live the "Code of Masked Wrestling." ¡MUCHA LUCHA! was created by Eddie Mort and Lili Chin and produced by Warner Bros. Animation under the creative supervision of Alfred Gimeno, Joel Kuwahara and Michael Ryan. The series features the voices of Carlos Alzaraqui, Candi Milo and Kimberly Brooks. "Kids' WB!
Portland,Oregon-based Happy Hour Entertainment has signed animation and comedydirector Mike Wellins for commercial representation. Wellins,formerly a commercial and entertainment director at Vinton Studios,brings many years of award-winning filmmaking experience to HappyHour Entertainment. While at Vinton Studios, Mike directed the AnnieAward-winning spot "Genie" for Mirinda Soda, and his commercial forthe Sony Playstation game LEGEND OF DRAGOON was voted Best Animated
Cartoon Network hasrevived yet another Warner Bros. series with the premiere of THEOBLONGS on Sunday, August 4, 2002 at 10:30 pm during Adult Swim,Cartoon Network's twice-weekly block of animation aimed at adults.The Oblongs is a series about a typical close-knit family that justhappens to have various physical abnormalities due to living in closeproximity to a toxic swamp. The series is based on characters thatappear in Angus Oblong's book, CREEPY SUSIE AND THIRTEEN OTHER TRAGIC
Take-Two Interactive Software,Inc. has formed Gotham Games, a new entertainment software publishinglabel, launched to specifically focus on publishing contentaccessible to consumers of all ages. All of Take-Two's softwareproducts for the PlayStation game console will be published under theGotham brand, along with a selection of upcoming titles to bepublished across multiple platforms. The company has named Take-TwoVP of publishing and business development Jamie Leece to head Gotham
Caligari Corporation's trueSpace6, thelatest version of its award-winning 3D modeling and animationprogram, is now available. Caligari has added more than two dozen newfeatures to trueSpace6, allowing for more powerful modeling anddesign, as well as increased functionality for game developers,professional engineers and designers. New trueSpace6 features includefull color-coded layers to make creating complex models easier; a newScene Editor that combines six trueSpace editors (objects,
Animation and interactive entertainment company Unbound Studiosrecently took home the gold. The Gold Broadcast Design Award forEducational Websites, that is. Unbound won for Sesame Street's MUSICZONE Website, which combines animation, interactivity and structuredlearning of music for a pre-school audience. Using the charm andhumor of the Muppets, Unbound designed and worked closely witheducators to fashion an engaging site that combined Macromedia'sFlash and Director programs with Beatnik audio to create operas and
Ed Catmull, president and co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, announced at a SIGGRAPH press conference that Pixar will integrate NXN alienbrain VFX into its production process to provide media asset management for its upcoming CG film projects. NXN alienbrain VFX is the first of its kind digital asset and production management system designed specifically for high-end computer graphics projects.
GOLDMEMBER, the third installment in the AUSTIN POWERS franchise, handily topped the box office this weekend with a whopping $71.4M debut. This gives the spy spoof $75M total (including Thursday's sneak preview gross) making it the highest July debut ever. The weekend's other new film, Disney's THE COUNTRY BEARS, based on the Disneyland theme park attraction, made a lackluster sixth place debut with $5.2M. This may not bode well for Disney's upcoming features based on theme rides The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean.
In the new commercial forCingular, a throng of fully animated, amazingly real taxis move to ajazzy, horn-honking track with plenty of New York City attitude, withhelp from digital production house Charlex. The spot, titled "TaxiDance," was conceived by agency BBDO New York/Atlanta for CingularWireless New York. According to Charlex executive creative directorAlex Weil, "Taxi Dance" is Charlex's most technically involved 3D jobto date. "The Busby Berkeley-like choreography of taxicabs raises the
Program distribution anddevelopment company CABLEready has inked a deal with Tokyo's SSAProductions for key international TV rights to SLAMMIN' SAMMY, ananimated one-hour biography of Sammy Sosa, the Dominican-born MajorLeague Baseball star. The deal includes all of South and CentralAmerica, the Caribbean (except the Dominican Republic), Asia'sPacific Rim, Europe, Canada and Africa. SLAMMIN' SAMMY -- THE SAMMYSOSA STORY traces Sosa's life from the hardships of his youth as a
Animac 2003 Calls For Entries.
Lleida, Spain.
Thursday, February 20 - Sunday, February 23, 2003.
Entry Deadline: Thursday, October 31, 2002.
Animac is a non-competitive film festival intended to show the bestanimated cinema productions of all time, highlighting those whichhave best enriched and promoted animation cinema's expressive skills.Animac seeks to be a tool to promote the most innovative andpassionate animated film and present the most famous animators and
SplutterFish, LLC, a 3D software solutions provider, announced at SIGGRAPH 2002 the launch of its Brazil Rendering System v1.0, a fully-integrated rendering suite for Discreet's 3ds max and Autodesk VIZ.
At SIGGRAPH 2002, Discreet announced and demonstrated for the first time its character studio 4, the latest extension to Discreet's 3ds max animation software. character studio 4 includes significant enhancements designed to provide animators an easy-to-use system. Additions such as a non-linear animation mixer, an animation analyzer and fixer and Quaternion Function Curves were implemented to help expand users' character animation techniques and capabilities.
Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Local 839 IATSE has posted the July issue of their newsletter, THE PEG-BOARD, on their Website. In this month's issue, the cartoonists' union announces its new contract with Fred Films, details the wage minimums that take effect on August 4, and discusses constitutional changes to be voted upon at the membership meeting on July 30.
This week, hot forum discussions include animation and nudity, what are the "must-sees" at Comic-Con (besides AWN of course!) and how to create an online portfolio. In The Animator's Desktop, Tony White has posted lesson #10 in his "Making Things Move Well" series and more...
This week's updates to the Calendar of Events include: 1st Annual Renderosity Conference: Thursday, August 29 - Monday, September 02, 2002, Atlanta, Georgia USA . . . San Juan Animation Festival: Thursday, September 12 - Monday, September 16, 2002, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
This week, we're asking questions about animation techniques...
NorthAmerican anime distributor A.D. Vision, Inc. (ADV), has partneredwith CoMix Wave, Inc., a Japanese anime and manga management andproduction company, to promote and popularize CoMix Wave's creativetalent and holdings. CoMix Wave manages more than 50 of Japan's topmanga artists and illustrators, and works to discover and promote newtalent within the industry. The company also manages production --both in Japan and overseas -- of a variety of anime projects,
LEGO Media Internationalhas tapped Vanessa Chapman to take over as head of its television andfilm arm following the promotion of Conny Kalcher to a newly createdsenior position within the LEGO Company's core business. Chapmantakes up the role of global controller of programming and strategy inAugust 2002, when Kalcher becomes vice president, global brandmarketing for Stories, one of the LEGO Company's new brand portals.The Stories division encompasses LEGO-themed product lines aimed at
Gene Moss, co-writerof the classic '60s cartoon ROGER RAMJET, has died at age 75. REUTERSreports that Moss died of cancer on July 15, 2002 at the EisenhowerMedical Center in Rancho Mirage, California. After a career injournalism and as an advertising copywriter, Moss and his partner JimThurman teamed to co-write all 156 episodes of ROGER RAMJET, theshort-lived 1965 series that featured Gary Owens as the voice of thetitular hero who, with the American Eagle Squadron, battled Noodles
At New York's MacWorld Expo,Alias|Wavefront announced Maya 4.5, the seventh major release of itspopular Maya 3D animation software. With this new release, Maya forMac OS X will be synchronized with Maya on other supported hardwareplatforms. Current Maya for Mac OS X users will benefit from asubstantial number of feature additions and enhancements includingnew modeling tools, integrated 3D Paint, multi-processor support forrendering and numerous UI and workflow enhancements. "Maya 4.5 for
