AWN Headline News

San Francisco-based The Attik has produced and designed 5 seconds of live-action and graphics for the theatrical trailer end card for "Idle Hands," an upcoming Columbia Pictures film. The segment involves a live-action human hand clutching and clawing at the screen. The Attik team blended the live-action with an illustrated graphic of a hand, animated using a technique similar to stop-motion, to give the piece an organic feel while maintaining a scratchy, hand-crafted texture. Simon Dixon was the Creative Director/Director and Monica Perez was Senior Art Director.

Mondo Media, a leading developer of digital content, has received a $2 million investment from venture capital firm, Sofinnova. The investment will fund the development of a line of Mondo Mini Shows - a series of animated and personalized, interactive, web-based cartoons. The shows will mirror the syndication model of newspaper comics where popular properties attract broad audiences on a repeat basis. "The syndication model is novel for the web, a proven success in other media," explains Randy Komisar, Mondo Media's Virtual CEO.

Fox will debut the new mid-season animated sitcom, "The P.J.s," on Sunday, January 10 at 8:30 p.m. following a divisional conference football playoff game. The show will start the following Tuesday in its regular 8:30 p.m. slot following "King of the Hill." The "foamation" series was produced at Will Vinton Studios and is executive produced by comedian/actor Eddie Murphy.

Film Roman Inc, the producer of The Simpsons and King of the Hill, has struck a deal with Launch Media Inc. under which Film Roman will provide content for the Launch CD-ROM - a monthly interactive guide to music and movies that is sold in retail stores and available by subscription. The Launch CD-ROM currently reaches an estimated 1 million users monthly with approximately 300,000 subscribers.

Silicon Graphics Inc, a company that built its reputation on UNIX-based systems used to create visual effects for countless films, has unveiled new workstations based on Intel processors and the Windows NT operating system. Dictated by a changing marketplace, the new systems will appeal to a wide group of users who need the computing power but not the prohibitive prices. However, SGI believes that these systems will not replace the high-end UNIX workstations but will rather complement them.

This past Thursday, Peter Schneider was named to the new position of president of The Walt Disney Studios; the annoucement coming just one day after Disney CEO Michael Eisner said the company needed to perform better with Disney-branded live-action movies.

On Friday, January 8, the Walt Disney Company recalled 3.4 million copies

of "The Rescuers" video release due to two objectionable non-consecutive

frames in the 110,000-frame movie. The frames in question feature a

live-action naked torso of a female in a background image inserted as a gag

by a cameraman when the movie was originally filmed in the 1970s. The 1992

home video release of the animated film didn't use the original print and

therefore didn't have the objectionable images. Under ordinary viewing

* Sunday, January 3 - Saturday, January 9, 1999. Sydney, Australia.

Flickerfest, 8th International Short Film Festival will consist of a main competitive program, a short documentary competition and additional programs and forums aside from the competition. For more information, visit www.flickerfest.com.au or call 61 (0)2 9211 7133.

The Attik, a worldwide design agency, has opened offices in Sydney, Australia to create a stronger global presence. In the past two years, the company has also launched U.S. offices in New York and San Francisco. The new office in Sydney will be headed up by Simon Needham who will relocate to Australia with a number of other colleagues from the London, U.K. home office. This is a natural progression for us. We are a global design company.

The animation art gallery, American Royal Arts (ARA), has been selected as the exclusive distributor of limited edition cels and fine art giclees for DreamWorks SKGs The Prince of Egypt. The pieces range anywhere in price from $345 to $1575 and feature classic moments from the film.

The top animated film of this week was DreamWorks' "Prince of Egypt," holding steady in fourth place with $11.2M for a 17-day total of $66.4M. Disney/Pixar's "A Bug's Life" continued to appeal to families with children on Christmas vacation climbing up two notches to fifth place for a weekend tally of $8.8M and a grand total of $136.4M. Disney's special-effects packed remake of the RKO ape flick, "Mighty Joe Young," continued its stay in sixth place taking in $8.1M for a two week cume of $28.1M.