Leigh Godfrey's Recent Posts

Stockholm-based animation company Filmtecknarna has created four 2-minute long animated treatments of the Venice Biennale logo, projected onstage during the opening and closing events at the 58th International Venice Film Festival, August 29-September 8, 2001. Drawing on such diverse inspiration as the Italian comic La Lineau and shadows cast by people as they walk across the stage, the four spots experiment with organic shapes that shift and change to form the logo.

* Friday, October 04 - Wednesday, October 09, 2002. Szolnok, Hungary.

Entry Deadline: Friday, March 01, 2002

JAKKS Pacific Inc. has signed a master toy licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Licensing and Merchandising for the studio's 2002 animated epic ICE AGE. Capitalizing on the film's three main characters -- an acerbic woolly mammoth named Manfred (voiced by Ray Romano), an un-socialized giant sloth named Sid (voiced by John Leguizamo), and a scheming saber-toothed tiger named Diego (voiced by Denis Leary) -- JAKKS Pacific's Flying Colors division will create a full line of toys and merchandise for the digitally animated feature.

Creative Forces, an Internet-based motion picture production company, has just released PAPER CLIPS, its first computer-animated short. The film profiles the adventures of a brave little paper clip that soon discovers the importance of teamwork and sticking together in the real world. PAPER CLIPS is now available to download for $3.99 from www.creativeforces.com. The price includes 24 hours of access for repeated viewings. A 3-minute trailer of the making of the film is available on the site for free.

Creative companies Sunbow Entertainment and Rumpus have signed a co-production deal for KAPPA MIKEY, a fish-out-of-water story with an unusual twist. Targeted at 8 13 year old kids, the series mixes comedy and action in a satire of anime-style animation and American cluelessness about foreign culture. The show revolves around Mikey, an American superhero, who comes to Japan to fight evil with a team of Japanese anime stars. Mikey is not the most sensitive American ever to work overseas.

Industry professionals Maurice Kimball and Briar Lee Mitchell have co-founded Pasadena, California-based Digital Ink Illustration (Dii), a digital background paintings company. Services will include conceptual design and layout for animation or live-action, digital color comps/color keys and fully rendered digital files for animation and live-action backgrounds, overlays, underlays, flattened or layered files. Cedric Tomacruz has been named art director for the new firm.

The Big Apple Anime Fest happened this weekend (October 26-28, 2001) in New York. Screening at The Directors Guild of America Theater in midtown Manhattan. BAAF featured the largest collection of 35mm anime films ever offered at a film festival. The weekend kicked-off with the premier of METROPOLIS, introduced by screenwriter Katsuhiro Otomo and director Rintaro. Other featured films screened over the weekend were X: THE MOVIE, BLOOD: THE LAST VAMPIRE and SPRIGGAN.