AWN Headline News

Oxygen Media, Geraldine Laybourne's media company founded to providecontent for women, will undertake cable television's first originalanimated prime-time series specifically targeting women. Machi Tantillowill be Executive Producer. "Our goal is to create the first animatedtelevision series for women, exploring issues from a female point of view.We also wanted to build an outlet specifically for female animators, whosedistinctive voices will help us develop a unique Oxygen animation style and

Protozoa, a leading real-time 3D character animation studio, is producingBBC Choice's new breakthrough kids series, THE DOG & DINOSAUR SHOW. Inproduction now, Protozoa, which did the real-time motion-capture animationfor live TV show guest appearances by M&M's Crispy character (Will VintonStudios created and animates the CGI character in the live-actioncommercial campaign), will produce 26 segments of the show using itsproprietary performance animation software, ALIVE. Asked why he chose

The Academy of Art College in San Francisco will open their annual SpringShow, featuring the best work from the academic year, with a specialpreview party for professionals to look at the work and meet the graduatespersonally. The show will begin on Wednesday, May 26 with professionalhours from 3-7 pm. The public will be invited at 6 pm and the show willstay up until June 11 at 180 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco, USA.This is a good way to recruit new talent. For more details call Susan

* Tuesday, June 8 - Thursday, June 10. New York, New York, USA.

The global deal marketplace for the $132 billion business of licensingtakes center stage in New York City, June 8-10, 1999, with LICENSING '99INTERNATIONAL, the largest worldwide licensing event and the single mostconsolidated presentation of properties in one place. Licensing '98International drew a record 15,000 attendees from more than 60 countries.The show featured nearly 400 exhibitors representing more than 3,700

Film Roman Inc. has entered into an agreement with Howard Stern Productionsand writer/producer Tracy Torme to create the animated sci-fi/comedy seriesDOOMSDAY. While the concept was created by Torme, Howard Stern will play anintegral role in the development of the script and in the production of theseries, as well as provide the voice for one of the characters. Stern willinvite a number of his celebrity friends to appear as special guest voicesonthe show. DOOMSDAY tells the story of the Bradley family who travel in a

The Harvey Entertainment Company has named MEYER GOTTLIEB to its Board ofDirectors. Gottlieb co-founded Samuel Goldwyn Films in 1998 and remains itsPresident and Chief Operating Officer. Gottlieb became the Chief OperatingOfficer of The Samuel Goldwyn Company in 1979 and its President in 1987,having assisted Mr. Goldwyn in the founding of the company. Prior to 1976,Gottlieb was a senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP with extensiveexperience in the entertainment industry.

Loop Filmworks has completed "The Honeymoon Suite," a stop-motion animatedspot for HBO. Directed by David Chartier, the spot features aBrooklyn-accented bellhop who guides a newlywed couple through theirhoneymoon suite. The couple are uninterested in what the bellhop says untilhe mentions that the room comes with HBO.

Helen Aberson Mayer, co-author with Harold Perl of "Dumbo, the FlyingElephant," the children's book that inspired the 1941 Walt Disney animatedfeature, DUMBO, died April 3, 1999 in her Manhattan home. She was 92. Bornin Syracuse, New York in 1907, Mayer, who was known as Helen Aberson whenshe wrote "Dumbo," moved from Syracuse, to Los Angeles, California in 1939at the request of the Walt Disney Company.

In her story, Dumbo the baby elephant is teased for his oversized ears, but

* Friday, June 4 - Sunday, June 6. Los Angeles, California, USA.

VES '99: A Festival of Visual Effects will include seminars by Robert Abel,Dennis Muren, Jim Henson's Creature Shop, ILM's Rob Coleman, NASA's JetPropulsion Laboratory, John Knoll, Ray Harryhausen, and Scott Squires, andSETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute). For moreinformation contact the Visual Effects Society at tel. (818) 789-7083; fax(818) 789-7085; e-mail: visual.effects.society@worldnet.att.net(link sends e-mail); or visitwww.visual-effects-society.org.

Four effects driven action films finished in the top ten this week, led byLucasfilm's STAR WARS EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM MENACE which grossed $32.2million to bring its total to $255 million. Universal's THE MUMMY, withdigital effects by ILM, finished fourth, grossing $7.5 million for a totalof $127.6 million; THE MATRIX, directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski,finished sixth, grossing $2.4 million for a total of $158.2 million; THETHIRTEENTH FLOOR, with digital effects by Centropolis Effects, finished

Two weeks after winning for best short film at the Cannes Film Festival,Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis' short film, WHEN THE DAY BREAKS (TheNational Film Board of Canada), has won the Grand Prix for best animatedshort film at Annecy '99, which concluded on Saturday, June 5. The film isabout a pig whose world shifts after a car accident kills a stranger (achicken) on her block. The complete list of award winners is as follows:The special Jury Prize went to AU BOUT DU MONDE/AT THE END OF THE EARTH by

Nickelodeon and Humongous Entertainment have released BLUE'S 123 TIMEACTIVITIES, a new CD-ROM game based on Nickelodeon's popular preschooltelevision show, BLUE'S CLUES. BLUE'S 123 TIME ACTIVITIES allowspreschoolers to practice pre-math and problem-solving skills with Blue andher friends. Individually paced, multi-level learning activities help kidsdevelop logical thinking and deductive reasoning skills, practice simplemath, and explore numerical estimation and prediction. In the game,