July 24-31, 2000 News

Monday, July 24, 2000

Four Animators Gain Emmys in Juried (non-nominated) Category
Two animation art directors, an animation color stylist, and an animation production designer won Emmy awards in the category of "Individual Achievement in Animation," which is determined by a special panel versus nominations.

The four winners are:

• Bari Kumar for work on "Futurama"
• Nelson Lowry for work on "The PJs"
• Maciek Albrecht for work on "Goodnight Moon and Other Sleepy Time Tales"
• Don Shank for work on "The Powerpuff Girls"

Congratulation to these animation artists!

* * *

Tuesday Begins Live Show Floor Coverage of SIGGRAPH
Tomorrow afternoon, Tuesday, July 25, Animation Artist Magazine will post its first SIGGRAPH update live from the show floor at SIGRAPH 2000 being held in New Orleans. The special updates will occur 1-2 times a day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. You will be able to access the updates from the front page of Animation Artist Magazine.

Tuesday, July 25, 2000

Live Update From SIGGRAPH 2000

Wednesday, July 26, 2000

Live Update From SIGGRAPH 2000

Thursday, July 27, 2000

Live Update From SIGGRAPH 2000

Friday, July 28, 2000

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

Pokemon 2000 $19.6 Million ($7,113 per screen average - opening weekend)
3rd at the Box Office
Total to Date: $19.6 Million

Chicken Run $4.6 Million ($1,786 per screen average - 42% drop)
9th at the Box Office (down from #6 last weekend)
Total to Date: $86 Million

Dinosaur $176,839 ($514 per screen average - massive 62% decrease)
23rd at the Box Office (down from #15 last weekend)
Total to Date: $133.2 Million

Titan A.E. $131,231 ($464 per screen average - 24% drop)
31st at the Box Office (down from #26 last weekend)
Total to Date: $22.1 Million

Toy Story 2 No Longer in Theaters U.S.
Total: $245.8 Million

The Tigger Movie No Longer in Theaters U.S.
Total: $45.5 Million

* * *

Titan A.E. Director Talks to Ireland Newspaper
According to The Irish Times:

"Back in Dublin for the first time in several years to promote his new movie, Titan A.E., Gary Goldman claims he fondly remembers the nine years he spent in Ireland with co-director Don Bluth, although he admits that the animation company the pair founded here had its fair share of difficulties.

'We thought when we came here in the mid-1980s that it would be easy to raise money to make independent movies, because of the tax advantages. And we'd no sooner got here than they repealed that law, I think because there'd been a lot of abuse going on.'

In the 1980s, Sullivan Bluth (as it was called at first) was held out as the great white hope for a burgeoning Irish animation industry, which would train and employ hundreds of skilled young people in producing quality feature films..."

Click here for the full story

* * *

Henson Produces Digital Puppets
According to the Daily Radar:

"Blending puppetry and digital technology, Jim Henson Interactive has developed a new way of creating digital characters. Called Henson Digital Performance Studio, HDPS, the product will reportedly allow a greater range of direction and improvisation for digital presentation.

'We have combined the traditional skills of the Henson puppeteers with our proprietary system for realtime performance of computer-generated characters, thereby creating a whole new level of performance in the digital realm. This new art form allows for a more theatrical approach to direction and improvisation, and has a visibly different texture from conventional key-frame animation,' says David Barrington-Holt, creative supervisor for Jim Henson's Creature Shop in Los Angeles..."

Click here for the full story.

* * *

SIGGRAPH Wrap-Up Tomorrow
Tomorrow Animation Artist Magazine will publish a newsletter wrap up of SIGGRAPH 2000 along with more pictures to its SIGGRAPH 2000 update area. In order to receive the wrap-up, you must be subscribed to the Animation Artist Newsletter. Click here to join.

Saturday, July 29, 2000

Pokemon 2000 Suffers Huge Drop
Like last year's Pokemon: The First Movie, the sequel has suffered a massive drop off at the Box Office in its second weekend. Pokemon 2000 is on track to make just under $9 million this weekend, which would be a big 60% drop. This is despite heavy competition like Pokemon: The First Movie had last year when Toy Story 2 came out a week after its release.

Meanwhile, the animated and live action Thomas and the Magic Railroad is expected to bring in under $3 million this weekend. The poor showing isn't expected to place in the Top 10.

Sunday, July 30, 2000

Chicken Run Nears $100 Million
The DreamWorks distributed Chicken Run movie is nearing the $100 million mark and is edging closer to becoming the most successful non-Disney animated movie of all time. Estimates for the weekend place Chicken Run 10th at the Box Office with a total to date of $92.9 million. It could pass the $100 million mark within the next 10-12 days.

* * *

Pixar Stocks Up on SGI Systems
Pixar Animation Studios, has made a significant purchase of more than 250 new Silicon Graphics Octane2 visual workstations for production of its fourth animated feature film, Disney/Pixar's "Monsters, Inc.", targeted for a Holiday 2001 release. The Silicon Graphics Octane2 visual workstation, introduced by SGI last month, is a new desktop line with strong visualization power.

Pixar is providing these workstations to its entire digital content creation team, who will use the workstations for 3D modeling, painting and animation.

"We've always looked to SGI to provide the most advanced visualization technology," said Greg Brandeau, vice president of Computer Operations for Pixar Animation Studios. "We chose Octane2 for its unmatched speed, power and features that enable us to produce a more visually-rich film. These important tools will help our animators manipulate complex models and images, as well as complete the film on time and within budget."

Sunday, July 31, 2000

Joseph Becomes DreamWorks First Animated Video
According to Variety:

"Just seven weeks after Disney introduces the made-for-video sequel to The Little Mermaid on Sept. 19, the voice of Ariel will be singing a different tune on DreamWorks' first video premiere.

Jodi Benson joins David Campbell and Maureen McGovern in singing five of the songs in DreamWorks' made-for-video musical animated film Joseph: King of Dreams. The 75-minute movie, three years in the works -- even before ``The Prince of Egypt'' -- was completed in April and is being released on Nov. 7.

Ben Affleck, Mark Hamill, Steven Weber and Judith Light are among the voice talent in the project, which the studio hopes will generate the kind of success that Disney and Universal have enjoyed with video premieres of sequels to The Lion King, Aladdin and The Land Before Time among others..."

Click here for the full story. (Link Has Expired)

To discuss this in the Voices in Animation forums, click here.

* * *

Caligari Announces trueSpace 5
Caligari Corporation has announced trueSpace 5, a new version of its 3D modeling and animation program. In trueSpace 5 Caligari adds a full complement of NURBS-based modeling tools, physically realistic rendering, and advanced surfacing features. In addition, new support for industry standard IGES, SAT and STL formats streamlines trueSpace 5 compatibility with traditional CAD/CAM applications, providing a real-time authoring tool for designers that delivers the high-end modeling, rendering and animation power they require, at a mid- range price below competing solutions.

"There are a lot of talented designers out there who are simply intimidated or unwilling to put up with awkward user interfaces in leading 3D authoring tools. trueSpace 5 is changing that, while still providing every ounce of needed design power," said Roman Ormandy, President and CEO of Caligari Corp. "And iSpace, our new web delivery platform, is an ideal way to bring trueSpace 5 models to the web."

New Features - User Interface trueSpace's widely recognized and often emulated 3D user interface allows for real-time direct manipulation in a hardware accelerated, integrated, 3D perspective work space where designers can interact intuitively with 3D objects and environments. The DX7/OpenGL-based rendering engine coupled with Intel SSE and AMD 3Dnow! CPU optimization provides real time feedback on all operations.

Other interface enhancements include:

• Context-based direct manipulation editing
• Magic Ring for interactive manipulation of primitive shapes
• Draw Panel for performing 2D operations directly in the 3D workspace
• Tri-View Panel extends the Draw Panel into the 3rd dimension for skinning and sweeps
• Fully integrated visual asset libraries with universal drag-and-drop
• Floating toolbars and individual tools to customize your workspace

NURBS based Modeling
trueSpace 5 expands the modeling toolset with a full implementation of NURBS-based modeling tools including all Sweeps, Rails, Lofts, Skinning, and Cross-sections. NURBS can be combined with stitching, blending, filleting and cut with trimming curves -- all in real-time, full 3D perspective. NURBS Geometry Paint provides users with a paint brush to modify NURBS surface geometry in real time.

Other new modeling features include:

• Real-time subdivision surfaces for easier texturing and animation
• traditional CAD-like layers, improved dimensioning, and advanced 2D drawing tools
• fully-parameterized 2D and 3D primitives with Magic Ring visual control
• enhanced snapping tools
• MetaMuscles

Advanced Surfacing
A completely redesigned Materials Editor and new IIR (incremental image rendering) technology allow designers to move the resizable material editor windows over any scene object and edit surface materials directly with near real-time feedback.

3D paint tools can now paint on textured surfaces with real-time feedback using arbitrary bitmap as a brush. With real-time UV mapping in trueSpace5, users can precisely position and apply any texture projection, using a 3D widget, and get immediate feedback in solid textured mode.

Physically Accurate Rendering New physically accurate lights and image-based rendering technology allow for an unparalleled level of realism. trueSpace 5 offers faster rendering with better image quality and lower memory use, and new non-linear tone mapping capabilities to generate even more realistic images. Ten new advanced shaders include mapped reflectance, shadow catchers, new fog, wood, leather, and curvature visualization shaders.

More Precise Animation Controls For detailed character animation, NURBS and subdivision surfaces can now be animated at the control vertex level, and trueSpace 5 continues to offers linear key-framed animation, and non-linear physics-based animation with properties such as wind, gravity, and collision detection. Now, with DX7 hardware geometry acceleration, trueSpace 5 lets users compute the radiosity solution interactively, while navigating in real-time through a scene.

System Requirements
trueSpace5 requires a Pentium II CPU (Pentium III recommended), Windows 95/98/2000/NT, 64MB RAM, and 50MB of free hard disk space. For optimum performance, 128MB RAM and a 3D accelerator are recommended.

Availability
trueSpace 5 for Windows will be available in the Fall directly from Caligari and from Caligari authorized resellers. For more information contact Caligari by telephone at 800-351-7620 or 650-390-9600.

Return to July 2000 News

Return to Today's News

Return to Animation Artist