AWN Headline News

Animation Headline News

Women in Animation Dinner Meeting

Spice up your resume with recruiter and career coach Pamela Thompson atthe Women in Animation Dinner Meeting on Tuesday, May 4 at 7 pm. The eventtakes place at Acapulco Restaurant, 3113 W. Olive, Burbank, California. $25member, $35 non-members. RSVP by May 1 at (310) 535-3838. Please bring aresume and pen.

Series Headline News

Careers in Animation lecture series

Andreas Wessel-Therborn, animator, will speak on The Animator on Animating as part of The Careers in Animation Third Annual Lecture Series. Mr. Wessel-Therborn has worked on THE THIEF AND THE COBBLER, SPACE JAM, BALTO, TARZAN, and FANTASIA 2000. The event takes place Tuesday, May 4, at 7 pm in the Glendale Community College Auditorium, 1500 North Verdugo Road, Glendale, California, USA. Admission is $5 in advance, or $7 at the door. Tickets are available from GCC Bookstore Business Office (818) 240-1000, ext. 5695; or ASIFA-Hollywood (818) 842-8330.

Headline News

Vinton animates 3 Musketeers

Will Vinton Studios has produced two 3 Musketeers candy bar spots forM&M/Mars Inc. The spots, "Trailer" and "Corruption," each with :15 and:30 versions, feature 3D stop-motion animation of the Three Musketeercharacters scaling castle walls and fighting off evil guards. The spotswere directed by Matthew Brunner, produced by Sara Mullock, and animatedby Mike Johnson, Tony Merrithew, and Jean Poulot for agency UniworldGroup Inc.

Headline News

Wendy Tilby at Cannes

Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis' new film, WHEN THE DAY BREAKS, willcompete with ten live-action films, and one animated film, BILLY'SBALLOON by Don Hertzfeldt (LILY + JIM), for the top prize in the ShortFilm competition at this year's 52nd Festival de Cannes in Cannes,France. The Festival takes place Wednesday, May 12th through Sunday, May23rd. Wendy Tilby is perhaps best known for STRINGS. For moreinformation visit the festival's official homepage atwww.festival-cannes.fr/cannes99.

Cartoon Headline News

Cartoon Network greenlights Longhair and Doubledome

Cartoon Network has greenlit Gavrilo Gnatovoch's LONGHAIR AND DOUBLEDOMEfor production as a seven minute series pilot. The short featuresLonghair, a fastidiously sophisticated and self-serving Cro-Magnon, andhis charmingly earnest yet irksome friend, Doubledome, as they endeavorto evolve alongside their oafish neighbors, the Neanderthals. An airdate has not been announced. Gavrilo Gnatovich runs his own studio KNOCKKNOCK CARTOONS in Cleveland, Ohio, which is a commercial animation house

Animated Headline News

Kushner-Locke plans Latin American Animation Channel

The Kushner-Locke Co. has announced that they have entered an agreementwith Toei Animation to license Toei's animated product. Toei has one ofthe largest animation libraries in the world. K-L plans to use the newlyacquired product to launch its own Spanish language animation channel inLatin America. The deal gives K-L 1400 half-hour episodes, in the firstthree years, of Toei animated product including the popular seriesSAILOR MOON and DRAGON BALL Z. Toei is one of the leading animation

Headline News

Milton the Monster released on video

Siren Entertainment, an Australian company, has released eight volumesof THE MILTON THE MONSTER SHOW, available in both VHS PAL and NTSCformats. In the fall of 1964, THE MUNSTERS and THE ADDAMS FAMILY,sitcoms about families of monsters, appeared on US TV. Attempting tocash in on their subsequent success, Hal Seeger Productions produced THEMILTON THE MONSTER SHOW for ABC's 1965-1966 season. Milton is a giantFrankenstein monster-type created by Professor Weirdo and Count Kook.His creators meant Milton to be scary, but he turns out to be a

Film Headline News

New update on QAS ASIFA workshop project

The Quickdraw Animation Society web site has been updated, with the presentation of "When the Water is Sick, The World is Sick," a 5:30' collective film by 10 young QAS animation students. It will be featured this summer in the Annecy International Film Festival in France, and hopefully other festivals as well! Read more about this project on the QAS web site at:

www.awn.com/qas

Star Headline News

Star Wars mania

On Monday in the USA, toymaker Hasbro introduced a series of actionfigures, play sets, vehicles, and other toys based on STAR WARS: EPISODE I- THE PHANTOM MENACE, the prequel to the STAR WARS trilogy. Most Toys R Usstores and some FAO Schwarz and K-B Toys stores opened at 12:01 a.m. on May3, and within hours their stock was sold out. "It was unbelievable.Insane," says AWN's Heather Kenyon, who visited four stores in the LosAngeles area. "People were leaving with shopping carts filled up. It was

Film Headline News

KIRIKOU at the DGA

Michel Ocelot's new feature film, KIRIKOU AND THE SORCERESS, will bescreened as part of the DGA (Directors Guild of America) film festival,City of Lights: A Week of French Films. The screening will take placeSaturday, May 1 at 1 pm in Los Angeles, California. For ticket information,call (310) 289 2000. There are currently no plans to release the film inthe USA, so this may be your only chance to see what appears to be, basedon the pressbook images, a very beautiful film. The story is based on

Series Headline News

New animated series on Fox Family Channel

Fox Family Channel's 1999-2000 6 pm-8 pm lineup includes two new animated series. Saban Entertainment's PIGS NEXT DOOR, a new animated series in the tradition of ALL IN THE FAMILY, chronicles the life of a family of pigs who move from the farm to the suburbs and are forced to deal with prejudiced humans. Rodney Dangerfield provides the voice for the title character of RODNEY, a series in development for the 1999-2000 season that depicts Rodney's misadventures as a struggling comic and the everyday ups and downs of dysfunctional family life.

Studios Headline News

ImagineAsia hires James Myhre and Ivan Roth

ImagineAsia Studios, the Manila, Philippines-based 3D animation studio, announced the hiring of two U.S.-based executives in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Chairman Jeffrey Harrison appointed JAMES MYHRE to the post of Director of Development & Marketing, and IVAN ROTH as the studio's new Creative Director. Myhre will oversee operations in ImagineAsia's corporate headquarters in San Francisco. Roth will divide his time between Los Angeles and the studio's main facility in Metro Manila.

Headline News

UNICEF PSA at Annecy

Frank Gladstone, Head of Artist Development at DreamWorks, and Clifford Cohen, founder and president of AnimAction, have joined forces as members of UNICEF's International Animation Consortium for Child's Rights to create an animated PSA that addresses the Right to a Name and a Nationality. The PSA will be screened on June 4 at the Annecy Film Festival in Annecy, France. Also at the Festival, Mr. Cohen will speak about "How Animation Can Change People's Thinking."

Headline News

A BUG'S LIFE on video

Released last week in the USA, Pixar's A BUG'S LIFE was the week's bestselling video and DVD title, selling enough copies to already put it at No.4 on the list of the year's best selling videos, and No. 10 on the list ofthe year's best selling DVD's. (There are no plans to release the Pixarfilm on laser disc.) It is already ahead of ANTZ and just behind THERUGRATS MOVIE, but farther behind MULAN. Other best selling VHS titles forthe week include THE RUGRATS MOVIE, which finished third; SCOOBY-DOO'S

Disney Headline News

Katzenberg vs Disney; another round

In opening statements in the second phase of a $250 million breach-of-contract lawsuit, Jeffrey Katzenberg's lawyer Bert Fields presented a series of memos to bolster his argument that Disney concocted a contract argument over an incentive bonus to deprive Katzenberg of the money he was owed for making the Disney company a success while he was the chief of Disney's film entertainment division. During Katzenberg's first few years at Disney, operating income went from $2.3 million in 1984 to $186.3 million in 1988.

Disney Headline News

Disney reports second quarter earnings

Walt Disney Co.'s earnings plunged almost 41% in its second quarter. Although Disney said it expects improvement in the second half of the year, it still plans to review its operations in a bid to make them more efficient and increase cash flow. The Burbank, California-based media and entertainment giant turned in net income of $226 million, or 11 cents a diluted share, for the quarter ending March 31, compared with $384 million, or 18 cents a diluted share, in the same period a year ago.

Series Headline News

Cartoons on the Bay announces awards

The recently concluded Cartoons on the Bay festival in Poistano, Italy has announced its awards. The Golden Pulcinella for best character went to the Little Entertainment Co.'s BILLY, an animated British TV series for pre-schoolers about an infant daydreamer. The Golden Pulcinella for best program went to Folimage's CHARLIE'S CHRISTMAS, a French TV film about an abandoned child's friendship with a postman.

Wild Headline News

WILD THORNBERRYS coming to the big screen

Nickelodeon has announced that, following in the wake of the success of THERUGRATS MOVIE, another Klasky Csupo produced TV series, THE WILD THORNBERRYS, will get its own shot at the big screen. The film will have abudget of at least $25 million and release is expected in 2002. THE WILD THORNBERRYS is currently the most popularanimated TV series on Nickelodeon.

Software Headline News

SGI to map the galaxy

SGI's Silicon Graphics(R) Onyx2(TM) visual workstation will be used toproduce and project the world's first scientifically accurate 3D atlas ofthe Milky Way Galaxy at the new Hayden Planetarium as part of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History's Rose Center for Earth and Space in New YorkCity, which opens in 2000. As the centerpiece of the Hayden's 68-foot"virtual dome" Space Theater, Silicon Graphics Onyx2 will manipulatemassive scientific datasets containing billions of stars -- 100,000 times

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