May 15 - 21, 2000 News

Monday, May 15, 2000

Pokemon Falls From #1
With just a few months to go until another Pokemon theatrical movie, interest in the show is starting to waiver. According to Daily Variety, the "Pokemon" TV show, until recently, held the top kids spot for 54 consecutive weeks. The show was recently upset from the top spot by ABC's "The Weekenders." Daily Variety also reports that FOX recently beat "Pokemon" with an episode of the rival "Digimon: Digital Monsters."

Buzz Lightyear Game to Come from TV Series
Activision, Inc., in collaboration with Disney Interactive, Inc., will bring the adventures of the upcoming Disney/Pixar's Buzz Lightyear of Star Command television series to the Sega Dreamcast(TM), PlayStation game console and Nintendo Game Boy Color this fall. All versions of Disney/Pixar's Buzz Lightyear of Star Command are being developed for Activision by Traveller's Tales.

"Disney/Pixar's Buzz Lightyear of Star Command allows players to fully explore the humor, scenarios and characters found in the upcoming animated TV show," stated Mitch Lasky, executive vice president, Activision Studios. "Buzz Lightyear fans will deploy their high-tech Space Ranger abilities in a real-time, third-person, action packed adventure."

In Disney/Pixar's Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, gamers relive the fun and excitement of the television series as they take on the role of the gung-ho, galactic space hero Buzz Lightyear and explore real-time 3-D environments while interacting with a multitude of characters from the series. The game challenges players to navigate dynamic environments and plush levels as they venture across the galaxy and fight the Evil Emperor Zurg and his minions.

Tuesday, May 16, 2000

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

The Road to El Dorado
$1 Million ($978 per screen average - 11% increase)
18th at the Box Office (down from #14 last weekend)
Total to Date: $49 Million

Toy Story 2
$154,186 ($480 per screen average)
31st at the Box Office (down from #27 last weekend)
Total to Date: $244.8 Million

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Maya Coming to the Mac!
Alias\Wavefront, an SGI company, today announced their intent to bring its Maya 3D animation and visual effects software to the Apple Mac OS X platform.

Alias\Wavefront today previewed Maya for Max OS X at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. This announcement underscores both companies' focus on the creative community, and their commitment to deliver powerful solutions that innovate and inspire.

Maya delivers all the tools and features that professional digital content creators need to produce world-class animation and visual effects. Currently available on Windows NT and SGI IRIX workstations, the addition of Mac OS X validates the power of the new Apple operating system to support the most advanced 3D graphics application available today.

"Alias\Wavefront received overwhelming requests from the Macintosh community to make our software available for the Mac," said Richard Kerris, Director of Maya Technology at Alias\Wavefront. "We are very pleased to respond to this customer demand today by announcing the development of Maya for Mac OS X. With the G4, Apple is delivering a very impressive, powerful graphics platform, which provides an excellent fit for our world-leading Maya 3D technology. Together, Maya on Macintosh will give Mac artists and animators an unbeatable combination of creative freedom, performance and productivity."

"We couldn't be happier that Alias\Wavefront is bringing Maya to the Mac," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Maya for Mac OS X will be the premiere 3D application on the Mac."

David Dozoretz, JAK Films' PreVisualization/Effects Supervisor, Star Wars: Episode I and Episode II states, "Now that we have Maya, we will be able to drastically cut the time it takes to do pre-visualization shots. With only a half-hour of training on Maya, our lead artist needed only five minutes to redo a shot that had previously taken him half a day. This speaks volumes. And the introduction of Maya for Mac OS X has us even more excited, especially when combined with the rendering power of Silicon Graphics servers."

Mac OS X is a completely new implementation of the Macintosh operating system, featuring state of the art technology throughout, including an entirely new user interface called "Aqua." Mac OS X is designed to make computing even easier for consumers, while simultaneously extending the functionality for professional users.

Maya Complete for Mac OS X will be released in early 2001.

Wednesday, May 17, 2000

Animated Films Take on New Life for Grownups
According to the Kansas City Star:

"On some level, almost every movie Hollywood has put out in the past 15 years has been a cartoon.

But while it can be argued that live-action movies worked hard during the mid-1980s to late-1990s to dumb themselves down, the real cartoons -- feature-length animation -- have become richer, deeper and, well, more mature.

Last year's bumper crop of animated features, from Disney's Toy Story 2 and Tarzan to the Japanese import Princess Mononoke and from The Iron Giant to South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, made it clear to moviegoers, critics and audiences alike that big-screen cartoons were no longer just a babysitting accessory. They now have all the diversity of style, narrative and audience-targeting of live-action movies.

This year's crop looks just as varied and potentially lucrative..."

Click here for the full story.

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Ready for a Simpsons Wrestling Game?
Fox Interactive today announced its plans to publish "The Simpsons Wrestling" for PlayStation, a game based on the popular, long-running animated television satire.

Scheduled for a Winter 2000 release, The Simpsons Wrestling is an interactive all-out humorous 3D wrestling/fighting game, complete with all of Springfield's colorful characters including Bart, Homer, Marge, Lisa, Maggie plus Burns, Smithers, Apu, Mo and Flanders. The game can be played in two modes, tournament style single-player and grudge match with two players. If players are lucky enough to get to the bonus match, they can also unlock secret characters and venues.

"The Simpsons is America's most popular prime-time family," stated Karly Young, director of worldwide brand marketing, Fox Interactive. "With such an overwhelming response to our previous Simpsons titles, we want to give fans another dose of Bart and Homer -- this time for PlayStation gamers."

Simpsons Smack Down!

Mimicking other popular wrestling titles, "Simpsons Wrestling" is the first humorous title of its genre. This 3D wrestling/fighting game will feature the characters and locations of FOX's popular television satire "The Simpsons." Players will take on the identity of their favorite Simpsons character and battle their way to the ultimate title -- Champion of Springfield. "The Simpsons Wrestling" emphasizes wacky physical and verbal comedy where players can control the characters' actual voices with 240 verbal taunts to choose from.

Simpsons Wrestling features 22 characters from the television show, 13 of which are playable. Each character executes his or her own exclusive moves and gestures and power moves such as Homer's Strangulator, Bart's Wedgie, Lisa's Pop Quiz and Barney's Duff Cloud Burp. Players must learn to exploit the numerous "Power-ups" including the chocolate donut that increases speed, bowling pins that can be used as clubs and bubble gum that slows players down.

The game also contains richly detailed 3D locations from Springfield including the schoolyard, Power Plant, Simpson House, Krusty Lu Studios, Moe's Tavern, Barney's Bowl-O-Rama, Kwik-E-Mart, Town Hall, Mr. Burns' Mansion, Alien Spaceship and Itchy and Scratchy Land.

Thursday, May 18, 2000

Film Roman Expands Commercial Activities
Film Roman Inc. announced this week that it has activated a major expansion of its commercial production activities.

Kathee Schneider has been named vice president of Creative Affairs and the division's executive producer, with three-time Emmy-winning animator, Eric Radomski, as its executive creative director.

This new team will bring a sharper cutting edge to its commercial arm, according to Schneider, while still maintaining Film Roman's artistic achievements in producing high-quality material.

Film Roman has been successful with its production of animated television commercials in the past. The company has worked with, among others, The Richards Group, Young & Rubicam, Leo Burnett, J. Walter Thompson and 20th Century Fox, for whom they produce the hit animated series, "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill."

Film Roman recently produced a music video for the Barenaked Ladies, which features live action combined with "King of the Hill" animated characters.

The new commercial division has produced a five-minute branding reel, which is a mixture of live action and traditional animation, for "Ask Jeeves," one of the Internet's 15 most visited Web sites. "Ask Jeeves" acts as a personal guide through the Internet and provides a realtime access to information, products and services. Its technology also provides a Webessential infrastructure to companies.

The division also has concluded a deal with Hakuhodo Advertising in Tokyo, the eighth-largest ad agency in the world, for whom they have produced animated commercials utilizing the "Simpsons" characters for Santory's product, C.C. Lemon.

"Film Roman actively recruits students and graduates from art and film schools, which gives us access to a new generation of artists and animators skilled in the latest technology," says Radomski. "Film Roman now offers clients varied styles rendered in traditional animation, combinations of 2-D and 3-D and mixed media."

"Bullet Time" Visualist Joins Institute
Dr. Paul E. Debevec, the 31-year-old computer visualist whose groundbreaking CG techniques were used to create the "Bullet-Time" effects for The Matrix and whose stunning computer-animated films have won awards worldwide, has joined the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) as executive producer, graphics research. The former UC/Berkeley researcher will lead ICT's first graphics effort, overseeing a nascent team of researchers, programmers and digital artists.

While devoting the majority of his energies to the ICT, Debevec, his team and his groundbreaking graphics techniques will also be made available for Hollywood film and television projects, helping to evolve the industry as a whole.

"We are delighted to have Paul Debevec join the ICT," stated executive director Richard Lindheim. "This represents the first step in the establishment of the ICT as the foremost virtual reality research center in the world, where the very best people from computer science and entertainment work together to create the next step beyond the Internet."

"We think Paul is an extraordinary talent and look forward to his participating not only with the ICT, but also with the School of Cinema-TV," offered Elizabeth Daley, dean of University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television.

Commenting on the new post, Debevec offered, "The broad future applications of ICT-developed projects was no doubt an incentive, as was the opportunity to work side-by-side with some of Hollywood's most celebrated writers, directors and cinematographers. My mission to help lay the groundwork for the creation of virtual actors and sets, along with overseeing production on projects, closely mirrors my previous work at Berkeley."

Chosen this year by International Design Magazine as one of the 40 most outstanding designers under age 30, Debevec was previously among Wired Magazine's "25 Players Who Are Reinventing Entertainment." His 1999 short film "Fiat Lux," which premiered at SIGGRAPH, went on to earn myriad international festival awards and was included among clips from Star Wars, Tron, Jurassic Park and Toy Story in the 1999 feature documentary "The Story of Computer Graphics." The CG-animated film -- based on the interior of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, with synthetic objects added seamlessly -- was hailed as "an orgy of technical expertise" by The New York Times. International Design Magazine praised its "stunning verisimilitude and luminosity," while Animation World Magazine declared, "The realism of the piece is astounding."

"Rendering With Natural Light" (1998), which moves through a group of ornamental spheres against the backdrop of a forest, also premiered at SIGGRAPH. Its lighting techniques, and later those of "Fiat Lux," were incorporated into NewTek's LightWave 3D 6.0 modeling and rendering system. The techniques Debevec developed at UC/Berkeley to create his award-winning 1997 film "The Campanile Movie" were used by Manex Entertainment to create the "Bullet-Time" effects for the Keanu Reeves feature The Matrix, which won the 1999 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Most recently serving as a postdoctoral researcher in computer graphics research and content creation at UC/Berkeley, Debevec moved into the post after research work as a graduate student. During the summers of 1992 and '93, he developed desktop publishing and presentation graphics software as an engineer for Microsoft.

Friday, May 19, 2000

Disney's Dinosaur Opens!
Over 10 years and $200 million since it started, Disney's Dinosaur opened today on thousands of screens in theaters throughout the U.S. Critic reviews of the film have been mixed, with most giving high marks to the visual production and low marks to the story. Many also question the decision to make the dinosaurs talk. Click here for a look at what critics are saying and for Animation Artist Magazine's review of Dinosaur. After you've seen Dinosaur, click here to submit your review.

Tooning Up His Career
The Philadelphia Daily News has published an article about a person who went from a journalist, to a waiter, to a Disney animator. The article begins:

"While debate rages on what killed the dinosaur, we know where a piece of Dinosaur was born - on a cocktail napkin in a restaurant in Lambertville, N.J.

That's where a failed newspaperman and bored waiter named Gregory William Griffith was doodling as he waited for a drink.

'I was generally just lost,' said Griffith, a Doylestown native and Central Bucks East grad who studied journalism at college but didn't like the newspaper and magazine jobs he tried.

He ended up waiting tables at the Black Bass Inn. He was drawing and waiting for a drink when the bartender complimented his work. Griffith shrugged it off.

'No, that's REALLY good,' she said, and returned the next day with information on the California Institute of the Arts (founded by Walt Disney). Griffith didn't think much of journalism but loved to draw, so he put together a portfolio and, to his astonishment, was accepted.

'I started off studying traditional animation and drawing, and about a semester into things, I wandered down into the computer lab in the basement. I saw some people piecing together some 3-D animation. I sat down and started playing with the system, and sort of never re-emerged,' he said.

Griffith was only a second-year student when Disney recruiters, seeing some of his computer work at a convention, hired him full time..."

Click here for the full story.

Saturday, May 20, 2000

Disney's Dinosaur has HUGE Opening
Disney's Dinosaur had a huge opening yesterday, bringing in $11.25 million! The movie is playing on 3,257 screens and could end up with one of the biggest three-day openings in Disney's history. Click here for a look at what critics are saying and for Animation Artist Magazine's review of Dinosaur. After you've seen Dinosaur, click here to submit your review.

Animation Newsletter Tonight
Animation Artist Magazine will send out a new newsletter to subscribers tonight. Make sure that you are among the thousands that receive the newsletter by signing up here. Recently, the Animation Artist newsletter was named one of the Top 20 ezines by Topica, which hosts thousands of ezines.

Disney Wins Three Daytime Emmy Awards
The Disney Channel was honored with every Emmy Award it was nominated for at the non-televised portion of the 27th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards on Saturday, May 13th.

Mitchell Kriegman, director of the Disney Channel's original pre-school series from The Jim Henson Company, Bear in the Big Blue House, was honored with the Emmy for "Outstanding Directing in a Children's Series." Bear in the Big Blue House was also honored with the Emmy for "Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing" (Peter Hefter, Production Mixer; John Alberts, Re-Recording Mixer).

The Disney Channel's original animated pre-school series Rolie Polie Olie was honored again this year with the Emmy for "Outstanding Special Class Animated Program."

Created by Award-winning author/illustrator William Joyce and produced by Nelvana Limited in association with Disney Channel, Rolie Polie Olie follows the touching, tumultuous and sometimes hilarious world of Olie, a simple robotic everyboy who lives in a magical all-robot mechanical world. Rolie Polie Olie also marks the first time in U.S. television history that 3-D technology has been used to create an animated series specifically for little kids. Currently being produced by a global team in France, Vietnam, Canada and the United States, each half-hour episode consists of three seven minute "Olie" adventures.

Sunday, May 21, 2000

Weekend Estimates: Dinosaur Makes $38.6 Million
Weekend estimates show Dinosaur slaughtering its competitors by making $38.6 million at the Box Office. Dinosaur now has the biggest opening so far this year. Final numbers for the weekend are expected Monday afternoon. On Friday, Dinosaur made $11.25 million followed by $13.69 on Saturday. Read what Animation Artist readers are saying about Dinosaur at www.dinosaurmovie.com. If the numbers hold it will be the second best opening ever for a Disney film and third best ever for a Disney distributed film (The Lion King and Toy Story 2 had better openings).

From Pipes to Pixels
According to Pioneer Planet:

"The movie business is crammed with models and athletes who made it big, but Lino Lakes' Tony Smeed may be the first plumbing assistant to take Hollywood by storm.

Smeed, a 1989 graduate of Centennial High School in Circle Pines, is one of the animators of Dinosaur. He's fortunate to have hooked up with a blockbuster his first time out, but what's really amazing about his story is how quickly it happened. Smeed sent a demonstration reel that contained some of his own computer-animated characters to a few companies, including Disney, despite the fact that he had little formal training and no job experience.

Within months, he was working on Dinosaur.

'Sometimes, I look back and think, Wow, I've done quite a bit in the four years since I sent that tape,' says Smeed, 29, whose steadiest work before Hollywood was in his dad's plumbing business.

'There I was in Minnesota, not doing much, and two weeks later I'm in California, it's sunny, it's hot, and I'm working for Disney on a dinosaur movie. It was the biggest change ever...'"

Click here for the full story .

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