August 7-13, 2000 News

Monday, August 7, 2000

Ottawa International Animation Festival Around the Corner
According to the Ottawa Citizen:

"One minute, you'll see a Japanese anime, and the next, a German Fellini-esque neo-noir Western. That's how Chris Robinson describes the artistic range of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, a five-day showcase of everything from the old-fashioned technique of so-called scratch animation to the high-tech future of Internet distribution.

The festival, one of the city's best-kept secrets, is the largest in North America and the second-biggest in the world after Annecy, France. It runs from Sept. 19 to 24...The animation festival, now in its 26th year, is still unknown to many Ottawans, but its international reputation is such that representatives from major studios, such as Nelvana, Cinar, Warner Brothers, MTV, Nickelodeon and DreamWorks, attend to keep an eye on up and coming talent or simply to support the festival..."

Click here for the full story.

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Anne of Green Gables to be Animated
Filmmaker Kevin Sullivan is bringing the Anne of Green Gable books to life through an animated TV series. The series, which is 26 episodes, will air on PBS. The animated series has already been in production for awhile and now there is talk of a possible animated feature film after production has concluded on the TV series. The animated TV series will be aimed more at children than adults.

Tuesday, August 8, 2000

Buzz Lightyear Movie Hits Store Shelves
Today Disney released the new Pixar straight to video movie, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins on both VHS and DVD . The movie deals with Buzz Lightyear the space hero (versus the toy) as he battles the evil Emperor Zurg. There's also plenty of those little green men that made sure, but memorable, appearances in Toy Story and Toy Story 2 . The video is a lead in to the upcoming animated Buzz Lightyear TV series. Presales of the Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins movie have been very hot. The video has been the #1 best selling VHS tape on Amazon for several days. The DVD version has several additional bonus like games and the movie being presented in widescreen.

Next Tuesday, the Buzz will continue with new Toy Story 2 CD-ROMs for kids. Buzz and the gang from Toy Story 2 help kids go back to school with two new interactive learning adventures, "Disney/Pixar's Buzz Lightyear 1st Grade" and "Disney/Pixar's Buzz Lightyear 2nd Grade" CD-ROMs. The titles land in retail stores nationwide Aug. 15, 2000.

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Box Office Results
Here are the Box Office results for last weekend's animated films:

Pokemon 2000 $2.1 Million ($898 per screen average - massive 66% drop)
11th at the Box Office (down from #6 last weekend)
Total to Date: $38.2 Million

Chicken Run $1.9 Million ($1,150 per screen average - 45% drop)
13th at the Box Office (down from #10 last weekend)
Total to Date: $97.1 Million

Titan A.E. $81,202 ($322 per screen average - 37% drop)
33rd at the Box Office (down from #31 last weekend)
Total to Date: $22.5 Million

Dinosaur $69,126 ($464 per screen average - 44% decrease)
45th at the Box Office (down from #33 last weekend)
Total to Date: $133.6 Million

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Chicken Run Winners to Be Announced on Monday
The winners of the Animation Artist Chicken Run contest will be announced on Monday, August 14, 2000. In addition, the entries of the first, second, and third place winners will be published.

Wednesday, August 9, 2000

Animo Inkworks Blends 2D and 3D for Rugrats Movie
Ask a group of American fifth-graders what their favorite television show is and you're likely to hear them shout out "Rugrats!" Over the last decade Rugrats has entertained scores of children across the nation, through both the wildly popular program airing on Nickelodeon and a major feature film (the second highest grossing non-Disney animated film of all time). This November Klasky Csupo, Nickelodeon Movies and Paramount Pictures are bringing the precocious characters to the big screen again but with an amusement park in Paris as the backdrop.

The upcoming feature film Rugrats in Paris blends 2D and 3D elements seamlessly together. To accomplish this task, Klasky Csupso turned to Animo's Inkworks program. Inkworks is a plug-in from Cambridge Animation Systems that allows Alias|Wavefront's Maya and Kinetix's 3D Studio MAX users to assign cartoon materials to 3D scenes and models.

"From the beginning we at Klasky Csupo wanted to develop 3D characters for Rugrats in Paris because 3D provides unlimited choices for rendering," says Jerry Mills, director of digital technology at Klasky Csupo. "But we also did not want the 3D to stand out glaringly on the screen. Animo Inkworks was and still is the only cartoon renderer available that has allowed us to output scenes from our 3D software with cartoon shading and blending."

For Rugrats in Paris, all 3D work was done in Maya, including the creation of two main characters, Robo-Snail and Reptar. The backgrounds and scenery are a combination of the 2D and 3D animation. The biggest challenge, according to Mills, was the design of the characters and making the movement between the 2D and 3D fluid and realistic.

"We wanted to have the strength and agility of 3D along with the softer textures of 2D, but we needed the elements to look like they belonged in the same world and same time," he says. "Within the individual scenes, Inkworks permitted us to toon-shade lines on the 3D models and also create objects for the 2D animators to reference once we sent them the output. Through this collaborative process, we've been able to make the 2D and 3D aspects of Rugrats in Paris come together in a way that is distinctively Klasky Csupo animation."

As reflected in The Simpsons, Duckman, Stressed Eric, The Wild Thornberrys, Rugrats and a host of other television series, Klasky Csupo's animation style is both loose and graphic and has fun with colors and shapes. "Klasky Csupo's unique style of animation is designed to support our imaginative characters and fresh storylines," says Mills.

Klasky Csupo and Nickelodeon hope Rugrats in Paris will be as big a hit as 1998's The Rugrats Movie , the first non-Disney animated film to break the $100-million domestic box-office mark. The television series by the same name, written and produced by Klasky Csupo and Paul Germain, premiered in late summer 1991. With more than 124 episodes produced and now in syndication, Rugrats is one of the most popular series on cable television and has been instrumental to the success of the Nickelodeon network.

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Sammy Gets Slammed
NBC's new animated "Sammy" series, which premiered last night, was slammed by critics and may easily go the way of other animated TV disasters like NBC's "God, the Devil, and Bob"

In its one star rating of the show, USA Today said, "There are multiple problems with 'Sammy,' but the fatal one may be that Spade has failed to supply any reason why we should care about these characters. Having made his mark on Saturday Night Live skewering celebrities, he falls victim here to one of the worst celebrity traps of all: the misplaced belief that everything about your life is interesting simply because you live a small part of it on TV...As lackluster visually as it is on every other level, 'Sammy' makes almost no use of the power of animation."

The ratings for the premiere episode were very poor for NBC. "Sammy" brought in only a 3.2/5 to land it in fourth place, during that time slot, out of the four major networks.

What did you think of "Sammy"? Click here to voice your opinion and to read other opinions.

Thursday, August 10, 2000

Maya Coming to the Mac
According to CNN:

"It helped sink the Titanic, it's chronicling the further adventures of Anakin Skywalker, and by early next year it should run on a Mac. It's Maya, one of the preeminent professional applications for modeling, animating, and rendering 3-D images, as well as a key player in the digital effects revolution that has engulfed Hollywood.

Until now, Maya ran only on Windows NT and SGI IRIX systems. But Alias Wavefront plans to produce an OS X version of its special effects program used in such movies as Titanic, Men in Black, and the upcoming Star Wars Episode II.

Maya Complete, the first Mac incarnation slated for release in 2001, will match the features in the NT and SGI versions, says director of technology Richard Kerris. Don't expect to load Maya onto your iMac, though. Not only do the program's demands require nothing less than a Power Mac G4, but Maya falls in that select group of software that costs more than the machine running it...

Click here for the full story.

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Mr. Pringles Becomes Animated for Commercials
Pringles Potato Crisps launches its first new multi-media campaign in five years. Representing a dramatic new direction for the brand that leverages highly popular music, the campaign, themed "Singing Can," brings the familiar Mr. Pringles icon to life. A fully animated Mr. Pringles is a first, after his having graced billions of Pringles cans since Procter & Gamble launched the salty snack in 1971.

In three 30-second spots created by Grey Worldwide, New York, the Pringles character is featured as the lead singer of popular songs that provide the soundtrack to good times.

"He's your companion wherever there's fun and good times," said Jim Johnson, Grey Worldwide's creative director for the new campaign. "He's a strange little character with a weird hairdo, but that doesn't stop him from having fun", said Mr. Johnson.

The first spot, which breaks August 7, shows Mr. Pringles at a hip New York City loft party, singing the smash hit "Jump Around" by House of Pain. The second spot, which breaks approximately one month later, opens with Mr. Pringles singing rhythm and blues at a pool party. A third spot will debut in September.

Directed by Dave Meyers, one of the top music video directors behind Kid Rock, Enrique Iglesias and Britney Spears, all of the spots capture the right atmosphere through live action. Curious Pictures executed the animation of the Mr. Pringles character.

Music has been one of Pringles' strongest campaign equities for almost 30 years," said Maureen Hood, Pringles' Marketing Director. "This new campaign takes our music platform, which our young adult consumers associate with friends and good times, to the next level."

Pringles "Singing Can" campaign is the TV component of a fully integrated marketing plan that is centered around music and the notion of Pringles as your companion in good times. The TV spots will appear on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox, as well as other networks and cable. The campaign will also be supported by print ads beginning with the September issues of national magazines (such as Rolling Stone and Vogue) and a PR campaign executed by Porter Novelli, Chicago.

"Consumers have been asking us for some time to bring Mr. Pringles to life and give him an active role in our marketing communication. We are excited to do just that in our new integrated campaign, which will have Mr. Pringles showing up in fun and unexpected places. Our new television spots are just the start," said Ms. Hood.

Friday, August 11, 2000

More Voices Finalized for Monsters, Inc.
The voice cast for Pixar's Monsters, Inc. is nearly complete. Both John Goodman and Billy Crystal have joined James Coburn, Steve Buscemi, and Jennifer Tilly as main voices in the film. Both Goodman and Crystal will voice two of the monsters (one with one eye and the other with blue fur and horns) that a girl discovers when she enters their world.

Monsters, Inc. will be released in November 2001.

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A Bug's Life Travels to Pay-Per-View Land
You may have already seen it in theaters, on video, and on DVD, but now Disney is releasing Pixar's A Bug's Life to pay-per-view beginning October 1, 2000. This marks the first time one of the Pixar animated feature films has been shown via pay-per-view.

"This is a great blockbuster film which will be a wonderful addition for family home entertainment as we enter into the holidays," said Janice Marinelli, President of Buena Vista Television. "Also, this is certainly a natural extension of our pay-per-view business, coming on the heels of the success we experienced with The Sixth Sense, which was record breaking in pay-per-view."

The only difference is that A Bug's Life has already been out on video and DVD for quite a while...

Saturday, August 12, 2000

Animator Chuck Jones Honored in Video
Fans of the beloved Looney Tunes characters have quite a bit to be thankful for on Nov. 21 as "Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens, A Life in Animation" becomes available from Warner Home Video (WHV).

Set to hit stores prior to its Nov. 22 "Great Performances" airing on PBS, this celebration of legendary animator Chuck Jones showcases such Warner Bros. classic animated characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote and includes appearances by a host of Hollywood heavyweights. "Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens" will be available for $19.98.

The most famous animated characters -- and the stars who love them -- unite to pay tribute to Chuck Jones, the living legend of animation. Whoopi Goldberg, Matt Groening, Ron Howard, John Lasseter, Leonard Maltin, Steven Spielberg and Robin Williams join a stellar celebrity line-up in this entertaining retrospective spotlighting the extraordinarily engaging personality and creative mind of a true animation pioneer.

Featuring never-before-seen artwork and original pencil sketches from Jones' personal archive, "Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens" includes clips from such classic works as "Rabbit of Seville," "What's Opera, Doc?", "One Froggy Evening," "Duck Amuck," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!", and Academy Award winner "The Dot and the Line." Insights and anecdotes from this legendary animator, his colleagues and some of today's foremost animators provide an entertaining look at Jones' work and make clear that these timeless characters will keep audiences laughing for years to come.

"WHV is thrilled to release this celebration of legendary animator Chuck Jones prior to its Thanksgiving airing on PBS," said Ewa Martinoff, WHV vice president, Family Entertainment Marketing. "Timeless Looney Tunes characters coupled with an exciting line-up of celebrities are sure to make this entertaining tribute a must-have for families everywhere."

Produced and directed by Emmy Award and Peabody Award winner Margaret Selby, this 85-minute retrospective is a co-production of CAMI Spectrum, Thirteen/WNET New York and RM Associates in association with Fireworks Entertainment.

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Titan A.E. and Heavy Metal 2000 Headed to DVD
This Year Two animated films that failed to meet expectations are headed to DVD this year. Fox has announced that Titan A.E. will be released to DVD on November 7, 2000. It will be available at most places for $20 or less and will not contain any special features like most DVDs do. Click here to preorder it.

In a separate announcement, Columbia TriStar Home Video announced that Heavy Metal 2000 will be released to DVD and VHS (priced for rental outlets) on October 17, 2000. The DVD will contain many bonus features including a voice talent featurette, isolated musical score, animation tests, animation comparisons, and photo gallery. In addition, Columbia TriStar Home Video will be releasing a dual DVD set of Heavy Metal and Heavy Metal 2000 with many bonus additions.

Sunday, August 13, 2000

Chicken Run Makes Its Mark
Chicken Run will make its mark on the animation industry today or tomorrow as it passes the $100 million mark to become only the third non-Disney animated film ever to become a blockbuster. Within the next few weeks it is expected to pass The Prince of Egypt as the #1 grossing non-Disney animated film of all time. The Prince of Egypt made $101.2 million at the U.S. Box Office. The second highest grossing non-Disney animated film is The Rugrats, which made $100.5 million at the U.S. Box Office.

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