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Film Roman announced on Friday, April 6, 2001, that their board of directors has rejected last minute changes to the previously announced Pentamedia stock purchase agreement, and extended the deal close date to April 13 pending continuing discussions between the two companies. Under the terms of the existing agreement, Pentamedia was set to acquire a fully-diluted 60% stake of Film Roman in the form of newly issued common stock for $15 million in cash.

Italys Mondo TV Group has acquired a 30.3% stake in German media company IGEL MEDIA AG. The agreement is contingent upon the approval of IGEL MEDIA AGs supervisory board. Under the terms of the deal, Mondo will receive 1,000,000 shares of IGEL. In addition to Mondo TVs acquisition, a commercial agreement has been signed between the two companies in which IGEL will take over Mondos European distribution of over 300 hours of animated productions including JESUS, THE KINGDOM WITHOUT FRONTIERS, THE SUPER HEROES and LUPO ALBERTO for all territories except Italy.

Salt Lake City, Utah's Acclaim Studios Salt Lake is looking for aCHARACTER ANIMATOR ... Kirkland, Washington's Big Fish Promotions islooking for a SR. SOFTWARE ENGINEER ... New York, New York's Blue'sClues is looking for a POST PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT COORDINATOR ...Toronto, Canada's Cuppa Coffee Animation is looking for a PRODUCER ...Century City, California's EMA Multimedia, Inc. is looking for a WEBDESIGNER ... Halifax, Canada's Fatkat Animation Studios is looking foran ANIMATION / INTERACTIVE (FLASH) SCRIPTWRITER ... San Rafael,

Class-Key Chew-Po Commercials, a division of Klasky Csupo, Inc., has signed 2D/3D animation director Frank Molieri to its directing roster. Frank joins the company after a stint at Warner Bros. Classic Animation, where he directed numerous spots incorporating the studio's family of characters. Molieri broke into animation on the Don Bluth animated feature ROCK A DOODLE. He later freelanced at various animation studios until he signed on at Warner. He has directed spots for Kraft, Pontiac, General Motors, Burger King, Radio Shack and MCI.

TV-Loonland's CONNIE THE COW (52 x 7, produced by Spains Neptuno) has been sold to Disney U.K. for a spring 2002 delivery. After creating quite a buzz at MIPCOM Junior 2000, Munich's TV-Loonland announced at MIP TV that it had sold the pre-school animated series relating the experiences of a curious calf named Connie to Disney's U.K. arm. TV-Loonland has also had Disney success with their live-action series IN A HEARTBEAT.

Spanish animation company BRB Internacional announced at MIP TV a new major financing deal, which will help them expand their operations. Banco Espírito Santo de Investimento (BESI), an Iberian bank, has acquired 25% of BRB International. BESI is a major player in Portugal and Brazil, and part of the NYSE listed Espirito Santo Group (NYSE:ESF). The move enables BRB Internacional to consolidate and increase its position in the international audio-visual market.

Richard Morris, vfx designer behind the "Jackals Forge" animators resource site (www.jackals-forge.com), has joined the BBC under a 10 month contract to design and supervise the graphics for a forthcoming science series entitled HOW TO BUILD A HUMAN. Prior to this move, Morris worked at London's Moving Picture Company (www.moving-picture.co.uk) and was designer and CG supervisor behind the recent LEAF award-winning series BODY STORY. His interest in biomedical subjects dates back to his work for Red Post Production on the BBC's THE HUMAN BODY.

Nickelodeon, one of the leading entertainment brands for kids worldwide, is expanding its reach into China as of May 1, 2001. After visiting Beijing for four days and meeting with China's president Jiang Zemin and other industry officials, Bill Roedy, president MTV Networks International, and Frank Brown, president MTV Networks Asia, made the announcement.

Santa Monica, California's SimEx Digital Studios has completed work on a new 30-second Kellogg's Frosted Flakes commercial. The artists at SimEx provided 2D animation, compositing and editing for the new Kellogg's spot, called "High Dive," starring Tony the Tiger. Director Jean Perramon's team created Tony in the famous "Tex Avery-style." The commercial revisits classic 1940s style animation while using snappy cuts to keep it fresh.

Fox Family Channel announced on March 28 the addition of three new animated series to their 2001-2002 daytime programming lineup.

On April 1, Testarossa ToolsInMotion, a developer of human motion editing applications for the 3D content creation market, announced the release of VROOM FOR MAYA, a motion-capture plug-in library for Alias|Wavefront's MAYA 3D animation software. The library includes plug-ins that let users readand write skeletal animation in the Acclaim ASF/AMC, Biovision BVH,and Motion Analysis HTR mocap file formats, as well as import themotion of a mocap skeleton into a MAYA skeleton regardless of thereference pose and skeletal structure. The library also provides

Beginning in April, GameSpy Industries, through their relationshipwith Disney Interactive, is launching the online multi-playercomponent of Disney Interactive's DISNEY'S ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE- SEARCH FOR THE JOURNAL, a specially created, free, 3D multi-playergame "prequel" to DISNEY'S ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE, which is slatedfor a June 15th theatrical release. GameSpy will host the onlinemulti-player gameplay for DISNEY'S ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE - SEARCHFOR THE JOURNAL prequel, as well as DISNEY'S ATLANTIS: THE LOST