PEN to release 2D animated feature Lava Kusa

Seems it is an animated Ramayana season this Dussehra.

Close to the heels of release announcement of Maya's 3D animated flick Ramayana, Hyderabad based RVML animation is all set to release 2D animated feature Lava Kusa: The Warrior Twins on October 8th across 200 screens pan India.

The feature is presented by PEN, produced by RVML animation and released by Suniel Wadhwa from '52 weeks entertainment Inc' in India.

Lava Kusa: The Warrior Twins, is the tale of two endearing twins Lava and Kusa (Sons of lord Rama and Sita), growing up in the forest with their mother and sage Valmiki. As young men they pit their strength against Rama, the absentee father who has aggrieved their mother. This story from the Ramayan depicts the determination of the twins and the adventures they have as they journey towards their aim, getting their father to redress the wrongs he's done to their mother.

On being asked about choosing a generic topic (mythology) as the story has been told several times on different platforms, Rayudu V. Sashank, Creative Director and Producer of Lava Kusa. Says, "The story of Ramayana has surely been told several times in popular media, but not so in the case with the mythological characters of Lava and Kusa. This is the reason why children today do not know much about the warrior twins. Telling the story of Lava and Kusa through an animation film would best connect with children who are our target audience,"

Music of the flick plays a key role and is being released in three versions, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. The music is composed by acclaimed Music Director late L. Vaidyanathan of Malgudi Days and Pushpaka Vimanam fame. Renowned singers like K. J Yesudas, Vijay Yesudas, Shankar Mahadevan, Chitra and Sadhana Sargam have rendered songs in the movie.

On a concluding note, PEN's Dhaval Gada added, "The Warrior Twins will add an extra zing to the festive season this year, the first offering from Pen's stable of animation films. Children and families are sure to enjoy the film"

Source: http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/news/2010/10/05/14727/

IBM Builds Animation Cloud for Multimedia Development Corporation

IBM and the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) have just completed installation of the ‘MAC3 Rendering Farm”, a cloud rendering service that is part of the MSC Malaysia Animation and Crective Content Center. Hoping to turn Malaysia into a hub of visual effects artists and animators by providing centralized remotely-available rendering services, the cloud offers an impressive 8x performance boost over local workstations.

“It is a well-known fact that rendering is expensive and the MAC3 high performance rendering facility will help local creative content companies, especially the start-ups, to overcome the cost barrier,” said Deputy Prime Minister Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin. “With this facility in place, Malaysia’s creative content companies will have the technological edge in their rendering and production processes. At the same time, it will also help them lower their costs,” he said.

Source: http://www.vizworld.com

Roy E. Disney Dies at 79; Rejuvenated Animation

Roy E. Disney, who helped revitalize the famed animation division of the company founded by his uncle, Walt Disney, and who at times publicly feuded with top Disney executives, died on Wednesday in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 79.

His death, at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, was caused by stomach cancer, a spokeswoman for the Walt Disney Company said. Mr. Disney, who had homes in Newport Beach and the Toluca Lake district of Los Angeles, was the last member of the Disney family to work at the entertainment conglomerate built by his uncle and his father, Roy O. Disney.

As a boy the younger Roy would play in the halls of his uncle’s studio, where animators often used him as a test audience as they toiled on movies like “Pinocchio.” As an adult he helped bring the animation studio back from the brink, overseeing a creative renaissance that led to “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King.”

But the soft-spoken Mr. Disney was primarily known for a willingness to question the company’s top managers, aggressively and publicly, when he felt they were mishandling the family empire. Some people in the company referred to him as its real-life Jiminy Cricket: a living conscience who was at times intensely disliked by management for speaking out.

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Animation studio benefits from sales outsourcing

The Indian animation industry is set to boom in the next few years, causing one website to recommend firms to consider sales outsourcing there.

Proactive Investors UK wrote that the growing sophistication of televisions and film will open up the niche entertainment sector to double turnover by 2013, which will be helped by sales outsourcing.

It cited DQ Entertainment, which has used the Indian workforce in Hyderabad to help get its work noted by top global institutions such as the BBC, Discovery Kids and France 2.

"As a result of the transformation of the business model, DQ (currently capitalised at £39.6m) has been able to double its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation margin from 21 per cent to 43 per cent," the website said.

India recently topped a Global Services and Tholons poll to find the best destination for sales outsourcing firms looking to boost their productivity by using a foreign workforce.

Artic;le Source: http://www.pareto.co.uk

Japanese Animation Film Events in London

Anime in London

Anime fans in London, England are in for a treat later this month, as The Barbican Centre, occasional home to animation series/film screenings over the months, prepares local showings of long-awaited anime features. Meanwhile, Sci-Fi London's Oktoberfest Anime All-Nighter is gearing up for quite a selection later this month as well. For UK-based otaku, little could be sweeter than the chance to see films from directors such as Mamoru Oshii, Hayao Miyazaki, and Masahiro Andou all in about one month's time.

A component of anime scholar and author Helen McCarthy's continuing profile of Japanese animation, both creatively and critically, Barbican's showing of Andou's The Sword of the Stranger (2007), a vibrant, violent, samurai tale, is highly anticipated. Part historical-fantasy and partly vicious-drama as well, The Sword of the Stranger is sprinkled with traditionally fluid, ultra-violent fight sequences finding a nameless samurai with a troubled past. Guilty past and all, the nameless one takes on the task of protecting a mysterious young boy who is pursued by the royal army.

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Animation, Gaming Jobs Set to Double by 2012: Nasscom

KOLKATA: The animation industry is likely to have the going good in respect of jobs. Nasscom’s projections suggest that employment in this sector will double from 14,700 now to 29,500 by 2012. Similarly, the gaming industry too will create a huge number of jobs in the next three years, with the projections being 10,700 jobs by 2012 from a meagre 2,300 people now.

Responding to a ET questionnaire over phone from Delhi, Sangeeta Gupta, vice-president of Nasscom said: “The animation and gaming industry in India has immense scope to grow. Given the financial meltdown, many western countries are actively looking at destinations like India to develop animation content within moderate budgets. The increased interest of Bollywood and the regional cinema industry for animation, has boosted growth also. The Indian animation industry has moved from a pure offshore model to co-production model. While the domestic sector contributed with manpower and infrastructure, international producers helped with marketing and distribution.”

Ms Gupta said that according to Nasscom therefore, animation and gaming companies will witness a significant growth by 2012. “At present, there are some 250 animation companies in the country. By 2012, we expect the number of such companies to swell to around 400. The number of gaming companies will also double from around 50 now to 100 by 2012.”

The Nasscom vice-president estimated that the turnover in the animation sector could cross $1 billion by 2012 from $492 million in 2008. Similarly, turnover in the gaming industry stood at $167 million in 2008, but is likely to go up to $830 million by 2012.

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Academy to Examine Editing for Animation

he Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Perspectives on Editing seminar series turns its focus to animation for a one-night event set for Sept. 29.

Hosting the event will be Donn Cambern and Mark Goldblatt, both governors for the academy’s film editors branch. Other editors speaking will be Kent Beyda, whose credits include Alien Nation and Scooby-Doo; John Carnochan of Ice Age and The Simpsons Movie; Nancy Frazen, editor of Runaway Brain and Surf’s Up; Lois Freeman Fox, who worked on Fantasia 2000 and Osmosis Jones, and Kevin Nolting, who edited this summer’s Pixar-Disney film Up.

The session will include the screening of film clips and discussions between the guests and the audience.

The event will be held from 7-10 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater, 1313 Vine St., in Hollywood.

Tickets cost $10 for the general public and $7.50 for academy members and students with a valid ID. More information on buying tickets can be found online at www.oscars.org.

Source: http://www.animationmagazine.net/

Stop Motion Bailed out Computer Animation?

Major Difference between Stop Motion & Computer Animation:-

1. Computer animation (or CGI animation) is the art of creating moving images with the use of computers. It is a subfield of computer graphics and animation.
2. Stop motion (also known as stop-action or frame-by-frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.
3. Using Computer animation the rendering can take a lot of time on an ordinary home computer.
4. Stop Motion will move frame step by step so it smooth process.
5. Traditional Computer Animation is very hands-on process; 2D animation is accomplished by hand-drawing hundreds upon thousands of individual frames only to transfer them to clear plastic cells, hand-paint them, and then film them in sequence over a painted background image. This requires a team of artists, cleanup artists, painters, directors, background artists, and film/camera crews, along with the storyboard artists.
6. Stop Motion Animations, the cost and effort involved in the processes, and the quality of the final output is very good comparing to traditional computer animation.
   

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Animation Has Potential in Vidarbha: Kulkarni

NAGPUR: Ashish Kulkarni is not new to the orange city. He was born and brought up here, and even held many posts in city-based and multi-national companies. However, on Sunday, he was here as the chief executive officer of Big Animation, and was conducting a seminar on animation as part of International Film Festival in Nagpur (IFFN).

Speaking on animation and development of the industry in Nagpur and Vidarbha, Kulkarni told TOI, "There is already a strong network of 500 to 700 dedicated multimedia and animation artists in the region with a huge participation from Amravati. The industry has just made itself known in Nagpur for three to four years now, and we need a critical mass of at least 3,000 such artists to set the ball rolling here."

He said that the industry would not take much time to take off in the city. "Nagpur is going through the 'grooming' process. I make sure that I visit here regularly. The moment we feel that the time is ripe to harvest Vidarbha for its talent, we will move in at the earliest. That was why when we decided to sponsor the short film contest of IFFN. I also suggested that we hold a seminar so that the people in Nagpur get to see the work we do behind the scenes, and learn to appreciate it," he said.

And what exactly is it that he expects people to learn about animation? "There are three aspects to making an animation film or becoming an animator. For one, the person has to have an artistic foundation wherein he or she must be able to have an innate sense of art. The second is the story-telling foundation where the person must have the ability to tell a story so as to engage the audience. The third is the film-making ability, which is to translate the story on film," Kulkarni added.

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Pixar directors win big in Venice

Directors of Pixar Animation Studios in the US have been awarded the Venice Film Festival's lifetime achievement award, making them the first team to bag the honour.

Pixar has made 10 films, four of which have won best animation Oscars [ Images ], with chief creative officer John Lasseter, 52, and other directors helming hits like Finding Nemo and Toy Story.

Star Wars [ Images ] creator George Lucas presented the Venice Golden Lion lifetime achievement award to Lasseter and his team.

Pixar began life as the computer graphics division of his company Lucasfilm, and it later became Pixar after Lucas sold it to Apple founder Steve Jobs for 10million dollars in 1986.

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Upgrade Animation Courses Often: Expert

PUNE: As the contribution of the city's animation artists to world cinema increases, training institutes in the city are upgrading their academic programmes to keep students abreast of the latest developments in the field.

"The nature of the animation industry is such that it needs to be upgraded often," said Gaurav Singh, head of a city-based training centre.

According to chairman of the gaming and animation committee of the Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA), Anand Khandekar, it is not just the film industry, but also popularity of mobile gaming which has triggered the concern for better training in the area.

"To keep up with the demands for better-trained individuals, many institutes have introduced new softwares that have been used by a number of Oscar-winning films. One such software is called Houdini, which helps in making animated characters emotionally believable. Audiences like to see animated characters acting', than just watching robotic features," said Khandekar.

Meanwhile, training centres in the city have included the software as part of their curriculum. "A lot of projects that the studios in the city receive are outsourced from the US and UK. These countries have faith in the high-quality content that Indian studios are able to deliver. But to live up to their expectations, we have to train our students in the latest on the technology front," said Singh.

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Animated Endorsers Turn Stars on Brand Screen

NEW DELHI: Animation and advertising, separated at birth, seem to be pairing up to create an all-consuming on-screen culture. The animated model is fast replacing celebrities on the endorsement circuit. These blown-up “characters” are now selling everything, from cell phones and fizzy drinks to cough lozenges and air-fresheners.

Companies like Vodafone, Virgin Mobile, Reliance Communication, Coca-Cola and Reckitt Benckiser are using animation-based advertising to come through the clutter of celebrity overkill, make cost-effective ads and, in some cases, rejuvenate brands.

Coca-Cola is set to kick off a campaign for its lemon drink Limca starring animated characters, despite having popular model Sushma Reddy as the brand’s face. Vodafone’s series of ads using the eggshell ZooZoos pushed the who’s who of Bollywood A-listers, including Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan and Vidya Balan, promoting rival Bharti Airtel out of the spotlight.

ZooZoo became an overnight sensation during the Indian Premier League this summer. All 27 ZooZoo commercials were aired back-to-back on 15 channels recently. “The aim was to push the boundaries and create benchmarks of disruptive communication,” said Ajit Varghese, MD of Maxus, Vodafone’s media buying agency.

Virgin Mobile chose animation characters Pebbleheads to popularise its brand late last year. Reckitt Benckiser is using Mrs Raccoon for Air Wick air-fresheners and Mr T for Strepsils throat lozenges. Pebbleheads commercials made their debut with a 50-paisa offer late last year. “The Pebble World breaks the shackles which normal creatives could get confined to. It also helps us spin youth-relevant stories,” says Virgin Mobile chief marketing officer Prasad Narasimhan.

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Too Much 3d for Me

The third installment of the computer-animated Ice Age films, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, has been released to excited fans. The film is being presented in three-dimensional formats across the country like so many of its animated contemporaries (Monsters vs. Aliens, Up). Audiences seem to gravitate toward these films. It is not necessarily the format, the animation and kid-friendly material all coagulate to form a gel of a film perfect for soaking up consumer funds. Still, the computer-animated three-dimensional film trend is exhausting.

Computer animation has entered a stage that is enough of a film deterrent in and of itself. If a viewer wants to watch a fully-dimensional film then they should watch an actual film with human actors. Animation was created and meant for a two-dimensional format. Classics like Cinderella, Pinocchio, and the animated films like them are works of art. It is both refreshing and humbling to think each second of those films consisted of multiple drawings, which were made by artists. Computer-animation is made by engineers, while it is not about attacking the person who creates the respective computer-based film, it does seem much of the craftsmanship is dead. It is too bad that artistic integrity has been replaced by monetary interests.

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Animation: It’s Time to Toon In

Cartoon creators and companies are getting animated about the future of the industry. Raziqueh Hussain discovers what colourful capers lie around the corner Cartoons are fast becoming a serious business in the region. New animation companies and talented creatives are gaining international attention for their inspirational characters and shows that focus on life and culture in the Middle East.

Shaabiyat Al Cartoon is a perfect example of this success. Aired on Sama Dubai, Shaabiyat Al Cartoon is a social comedy dealing with the problems of the Gulf community through the lives of people from different cultures living in Dubai. Anyone who has been through the trials and tribulations of daily life in the Emirates will laugh along with the characters Hanafy, Osman, Bu Sulaiman, Daheem, Koty and Umm Sayed.

Companies in the Middle East now see animation as big business, even though the region is a relative newcomer when it comes to producing its own content, lagging behind markets of India and South Korea.

Animated series Freej, meaning neighbourhood, is widely seen as the first indigenous computer animated cartoon about four elderly grandmothers and their dealing with life in the fast-paced, ever-changing, modern-day Dubai.

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Japan’s Master Animator to Be Honored in U.S. Visit

LOS ANGELES — When the schedule of events for the 40th Comic-Con International fan convention is announced on Thursday, it is expected to include something quite rare, even for a gathering that has pretty much seen it all: an appearance by Hayao Miyazaki.

Mr. Miyazaki, regarded by many as the world’s greatest maker of animated films, does not seem to crave publicity. He was a no-show at the Oscars in 2003, when his “Spirited Away” won for best animated feature.

And he has not been quick to visit this country. “I think he has an image of the United States as a culture that isn’t that helpful to the world,” offered Duncan Williams, chairman of the Center for Japanese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Yet the very private Mr. Miyazaki, in an extraordinary step, has agreed to address a room full of 6,500 admirers at the San Diego comics, fantasy and film convention on July 24. That is a prelude to his planned appearance the next day in Berkeley, where Mr. Williams’s center will present Mr. Miyazaki with its Japan Prize, awarded annually to a person who has brought the world closer to Japan.

July 28, should find Mr. Miyazaki in Beverly Hills, Calif., to be honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The night before, he will be in Hollywood for the United States premiere of his “Ponyo,” about a 5-year-old boy and a goldfish princess in a world gone awry.

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Animation BPO Gaining Momentum

Animation and gaming are seen as the next wave in Indias successful outsourcing story. However, there is a major change, this is a sector which has moved up from outsourcing to co production, a move up the value chain from low end, less creative work to higher creativity and advanced technologies, says Krayon Pictures director Namrata Sharma. She said that for India to catch the animation bus, it needed to quickly provide the required manpower since Nasscom had projected that both animation and gaming were multi billion dollar opportunities for India. The usual block, however, is the lack of trained manpower.

And those who do go to training schools offering such courses are not studio ready, industry veterans claim Industry is now trying to bridge the gap through an industry training institute co operation. MCCIAs Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture, animation and gaming committee, comprising a three member group of industry professionals, has devised a curriculum for a six month foundation course, which will provide the industry with studio ready professionals.

Additionally, the committee has proposed the formation of a loose alliance of all training institutes so that some facilities might be shared. This association will ensure that basic standards are maintained in the quality of training imparted at these institutes.

MCCIA committee co ordinator Cmde Anand Khandekar said the sector was more than just software. Being a multi disciplinary area, its manpower must be skilled at acting and the other performing arts. Lalit Kala Kendra of the University of Pune has, therefore, devised a course for applied theatre, where theatre can be used as a therapy by the industry.

Source: http://www.offshoringtimes.com/

Anil Ambani Opens Animation School

The Anil Ambani group has forayed into animation education by launching the Big Animation Infotainment and Media School or Big Aims, a training institute in Pune.

"Big Aims is unique and a first-of-its kind," said Ashish Kulkarni, chief executive of Big Animation, the group company that launched the project and made the animated TV series "Little Krishna".

"It will be a big leap for freshers, amateurs and aspirants to migrate to a much higher level of training practised by major Hollywood studios like Dreamworks," Kulkarni told IANS over phone from Mumbai.

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Animation firm grows one frame at a time

Allan Magled has a simple formula for business success. Love what you do. Learn as you grow. And never take on more than you can handle.

He is president and one of three partners of Toronto-based Soho VFX, a special effects studio that has been expanding with each project that comes its way. Now in its seventh year of operations, Soho VFX's portfolio of projects includes such blockbusters as Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

The team of 70 full-time employees (numbers can reach 120 when projects are in full swing) animate characters, lighting, scenery and textures for the film industry from a 7,500-square-foot studio.

That is a far cry from the early days, when four people worked in a room the size of a freight elevator on television and short feature projects. "It was a great way to start," Mr. Magled says. "If the projects had been any larger, it would have been hard on us because we had to everything ourselves. Our computers were the cheapest you could get and we didn't have a render farm."

The team built up its repertoire by honing its software capabilities, he says. "Our software just kept getting better. We got very good at doing fur characters and creatures."

Over time, the studio built the infrastructure to take on bigger and better projects. "It's hard when you're new because the first question studios ask is if you have the infrastructure," Mr. Magled says. "You have to prove yourself each time."

Its big technology leap came in 2004. By then Soho VFX had landed jobs big enough to justify the investment. "Fantastic Four was the best thing that happened since it took us to where we are today."

"It takes a lot of processors to do this kind of work," says Kevin Smith, enterprise solutions brand manager for Dell Canada in Toronto. "The performance needs are similar to what university researchers use for advanced computational analysis."

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DreamWorks Animation shares soar on earnings

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Shares of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc soared more than 25% Wednesday, a day after the Hollywood studio reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings and a contract extension for CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Several analysts also upgraded their ratings on the stock, saying concerns about future DVD sales and other challenges have been priced more than enough.

DWA shares closed up 25.2% at $23.87 on the Nasdaq, easily outpacing a broadly higher market.

Goldman Sachs analyst Ingrid Chung upgraded DWA shares to "buy" Wednesday, arguing that recent negative catalysts and earnings estimate cuts are now behind the company. She raised her price target to $27 from $23. Lazard also upgraded the stock to "buy."

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3D animation really rocks

YOUNGSTERS were given the chance to create a 3D animation using cutting-edge computer technology.

The 14 budding film-makers from Swindon, aged between 13 and 18, came up with their three-minute film at a studio in the Wyvern Theatre.

Entitled Prehistoric Pet Shop it focuses on a caveman who thinks he has bought a parrot egg from his local pet shop. But after it hatches he realises he’s been given a tyrannosaurus rex egg. The dinosaur then chases him out of his house.

The funny animation was made possible thanks to a £4,000 grant from First Light Movies in conjunction with the British Film Council.

The youngsters were helped along the way, using the same computer software the Madagascar animation films were based on, by twin brothers James and Mark Carroll.

The Park South brothers set up evil.twin.artworks and have successfully run their own animation studio for the last decade. They use traditional animation for television, interactive online games, music videos, corporate videos, architectural visualisation and special FX.

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