Pokemon has caught new deals with several eastern European countries and renewals from around the rest of the continent. New locations of Pokemon infestation include Polsat in Poland, RTL-Klub in Hungary, Nova in Czech Republic, ETV in South Africa and Fox Kids Scandinavia Satelite service. The countries that renewed the second seasons 52-episodes were TV2 in Denmark, TV2 in Norway, TV4 in Sweden, Star Channel in Greece and RTL in Belgium.
VanHook Studios, a Hollywood-based effects and animation house, has ventured into cyberspace with a new episodic program for whatsonweb.com. VanHook has worked on the visual effects for such features as MY FAVORITE MARTIAN and 13TH WARRIOR and TV series ALLY MCBEAL, ZENA, HERCULES and MAX STEEL. The first series to hit whatsonweb.com will be the fantasy series KIRA: THE CURSED, staring adult film star Kylie Ireland. "Kylie is a great choice for us. Not only is she a wonderful actress, with great screen presence she also has an enormous and incredibly loyal fanbase.
Special effects facility Digital Domain has promoted Senior VP C. Bradley Call to head of business development and chief administrative officer and Yvette Macaluso to VP finance. As the company's new #2 man, Call will continue as general counsel, but will help expand Digital Domain's feature development arm. Call will now head the effects houses human resources and purchasing departments. With the company from its inception 7 years ago, Maculas has managed the finance and accounting departments.
IPnetwork.com is one of the 100 most influential companies on the
Internet who will join forces with the most influential people in
animation at the World Animation Celebration...
Former TriStar Pictures chairman Mike Medavoy has joined the board of directors of Film Roman. The current head of Phoenix Pictures, Medavoy becomes the sixth member of Film Roman's board. Film Roman president John Hyde said Medavoy's appointment would serve to "complement" the company's business plan rather than change it. Film Roman, which produces animation for TV (SIMPSONS, KING OF THE HILL), expanded its operations in 1998 to include limited development and production of feature-length films and recently increased its commercial output.
This month we take a look at Independent Animators and Recruiting &
Jobs...
Visual effects pioneer John Dykstra has swung onto the SPIDER-MAN project. The new project will reunite Dykstra with the effects team from Sony Imageworks, where he was recently special effects supervisor on STUART LITTLE. The Sam Raimi directed flick has also hired former PDI character animator Karen Goulekas. Dykstra told the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER that he doesn't know how many effects there will be yet, because the script (by Raimi and David Koepp) isn't done. "We're still sorting the character out.
The Animation Academy, an in-house trade school owned by Animatrix
Productions, is looking for a 2D ANIMATION INSTRUCTOR teaching basic
animation, storyboards, character creation and layout/design. . . San
Francisco and New York City-based One Infinity Inc., a streaming
media development company, is looking for a 2D BACKGROUND
ILLUSTRATOR, a 2D FLASH ANIMATOR and a 2D FLASH LIP-SYNCHER for an
animated Flash hip-hop music video. . . West Los Angeles,
Comedy Central and iN DEMAND have struck a deal that will provide 25 episodes of SOUTH PARK on a pay-per-view basis. IN DEMAND executive VP entertainment Mark Sonnenberg said that the pact illustrates that video-on-demand is vibrant. "It's not just movies," Sonnenberg said. "It's everything consumers want -- movies, library products, TV series, local programming." Both companies plan to work together in the future to bring other Comedy Central content to PPV, like uncut stand-up shows.
Anima Mundi Web is Brazil's international animation Web competition.
The event is open to all countries and work must be in Flash and gif
formats. The festival will pre-select 20 animations and an
international jury will vote for the winners. The international jury
will consist of the people that have registered on the Anima Mundi
Festival Web site. The deadline for entries is June 1, 2000. The
winners will be announced on the closing night of the Anima Mundi
Marvel Enterprises and Artisan Entertainment have entered into a joint venture that will send 15 Marvel superhero characters to Artisan for feature, TV, direct-to-video and Internet programming. Both companies will share in the money made from the properties and tied-in merchandising. Each company will own the programming library.
In addition to the official competition, the Ottawa International
Animation Festival (September 19-24, 2000) will present a number of
retrospectives, tributes, special screenings and feature films. The
tentative program is as follows: thematic programs on computer
animation and jazz in animation; studio spotlight on Pacific Data
Images and Bermuda Shorts; tributes to Yvonne Andersen (who will
serve as the Honorary President for Ottawa 00), Spike and Mike's
Time Warner chairman, Gerald Levin, announced that the company has reached a "agreement in principle" with Disney about the carrying of Disney cable stations on Time Warner operating systems. The recent dispute over the price Time Warner would pay for the cable networks led to Time Warner aggressively pulling ABC from its cable system. This action quickly drew heat from regulators and the public, who had service interrupted during sweeps week specials of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONARE?
The 8th Holland Animation Film Festival will be held November 15-19,
2000 in Utrecht, Netherlands. Besides the international competition
for applied animation and student films from the Netherlands, Belgium
and Luxembourg, this year the festival will present an international
competition for independent animation. The competition is divided
into two separate categories: one for narrative films and one for
non-narrative films. In both categories a Grand Prix will be awarded.
World class life drawing master Glenn Vilppu is presenting the
following classes...
TAIS member Cathy Schmidt will be giving a demonstration of Flash
Animation on Thursday, May 25, 2000 at 7:30 p.m. at the InterAccess
Electronic Media Arts Centre, in Toronto, Canada. Admission is free
for TAIS members, everyone else CA$10.00. Seating is limited and
participants must register by sending an e-mail to Cathy at
nomads@accessv.com. TAIS also presents "Timing For Animation" with
Greg Duffell. The event will take place on June 7, 2000 at 8:00 p.m
Visual Magic Magazine, AWN's 3D animation and digital effects online
magazine, has posted a new article...
This week's updates to the Calendar of Events includes over thirty
new events..!
May means "Recruiting & Jobs" at Animation World Magazine. Check out
these special feature articles:
- Tom Sito, M.P.S.C. 839 President, Answers The Tough Questions
With all the hubbub recently in Los Angeles about artists being out
of work, runaway productions and the well attended PBS affiliate
station picket, Heather Kenyon sat down with Tom Sito to talk...
- Picketing In Front of PBS! Just Blame It On Canada?
Plympton's new series of comics extracted from the comic book,
"Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton," is for ADULTS ONLY...
Test your skills and challenge your brain with AWN's
Quiz. This week, we're asking questions about stop-motion and puppet
animators. Which English puppet animator was replaced by computer
animation folks on Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!?" Which Czech animator
began drawing films but ended up working with puppets? Which video
did Disney recall because a cameraman had inserted a few frames of a
This volume provides a survey of films made at Joonisfilm Studio
since Estonia's independence. Included: "Viola" (Grand Prize, 2000
Nordic and Baltic Animation Festival), "On the Possibility of Love"
(Grand Prize, Brisbane Animation Festival), "Bermuda" (Director's
Prize, Ottawa International Student Animation Festival), "Birthday,"
"Departure," "Gravitation," "Jaagup and Death," and two Estonian
films made at Finland's Turku Arts Academy: "Cappuccino" and
Creative Planet, AWN's parent company, has launched the beta version
of the new CreativePlanet.com, a cutting-edge portal for
entertainment industry professionals...
The troubled Digital Entertainment Network (DEN) has closed up shop. Nearly one week after its relaunch, DEN execs laid off 150 employees stating that the low money flow could no longer support the company in its present form. The employees were informed of the news at 5:30 pm on Wednesday, May 17, 2000. The final straw that broke the camels back was this weeks decline from a key investor to supply additional funding. The Netcaster has been plagued with problems from the start.
Autonomous Effects recently released a new version of their SceneGenie plug-in suite for match-moving and combining live-action footage with CGI. The new version is available now, and boasts features like 3D tracking, an easy to use interface, faster tracking tools, optimizations and much more. Priced at US$995, SceneGenie 1.2 is available as a plug-in for 3D Studio MAX 2.5, 3.0 and 3.1.
