Animated Santa by Christmas 2010

The Christmas season is set to see Santa Claus arrive on cinema screens, straight out of Toonz Animation India’s Thiruvananthapuram facility. Toonz Entertainment Pte Ltd, the Singapore-based parent of Toonz Animation India, has entered into a deal with US-based animation majors Gang of 7 Animation and Hyde Park Entertainment to produce an animation feature film on Santa Claus.

P Jayakumar, CEO, Toonz Group, said that the animated feature film, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, will be a computer graphic imagery (CGI) animation project. “We plan to make the film entirely at Toonz Animation India’s Technopark facility at Thiruvananthapuram . The total cost of the project is estimated to be $12 billion, a majority of which will be borne by Toonz,” Jayakumar added.

The movie will be based on the classic book, The Wizard of Oz, by L Frank Baum. The story would chronicle the life of Santa as he embarks on a hero’s journey through an enchanted realm and into a confrontation with the heart of evil, ultimately revealing the origin of the world’s best-loved Christmas legend.

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Toon Boom Delivers Animate To The Digital Animation Generation

Already Adopted by Aaron Simpson, Founder of ColdHardFlash.com, Toon Boom Animate Combines the Best of our Digital Animation Toolsets, a Compellingly Friendly Workspace and a Flexible Workflow, Making it Toon Boom’s most Advanced Software Release to Date

Emmy award-winning Toon Boom Animation Inc. has released Toon Boom Animate, a new creative animation software packed with ground-breaking features and unprecedented productivity gains. With Toon Boom Animate, users have greater productivity, better quality and faster delivery of animation than ever before. Enjoy the flexibility of a fully-fledged in-depth animation solution and publish animation for all types of media, from online to HDTV.

Responding to digital animators’ specific needs, Toon Boom Animatedelivers the most advanced tools to create cut-out and digital animation. All this and more is embedded in a flexible environment: vector, bitmap, symbols, pegs, camera, morphing, inverse kinematics, advanced lip sync to name a few.

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No shortage of animated product at AFM

Toons are on the rise at each year's market

AFM is more animated than ever.

With nearly 90 toon titles offered at the market, from low-budget straight-to-DVD or TV to high-end $10 million-plus features, buyers have seen a constant rise in animated product, thanks in part to 2005's "Hoodwinked! The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood."

"The cost of production has come way down and, with a budget of $10 million, you can make a really great looking movie," said Edward Noeltner, president of Cinema Management Group, which brought "Hoodwinked" to the market four years ago.

At the time, "Hoodwinked" was among the few high-quality animated features at AFM, selling in 16 territories its first time out, Noeltner said. It was picked up by the Weinstein Co. and went on to scoop up $110 million at the boxoffice worldwide, with a virtually even split between domestic and foreign boxoffice sales.

Its main competition that year was "Valiant," repped by Odyssey Entertainment, which was picked up by Buena Vista Pictures and went on to gross $62 million at the worldwide boxoffice.

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Disney Animation Moves Toward U.K. on-Demand

Disney Animation News in UK

To make a sweeping statement that intimates the phenomenal success of digital television has become increasingly on the mark for television territories where video-on-demand has become less a luxury and more of a genuine, everyday preference for global audiences. Such is the case of course, not only in North America, where leading children's entertainment networks are constantly grabbing at opportunities to project content onto multiple viewing platforms; but such is also the case in international markets, where television networks and animation broadcasters are similarly exposing quality cartoon content to pay-as-you-go audiences.

BT Vision, a British broadband and digital television subscription service, has recently come to into a multi-year agreement with Disney Channel UK under which BT Vision subscribers will now have the option to pursuer a variety of Disney-produced or Disney-distributed content. Effective just recently, the agreement makes available a plethora of quality television animation and children's entertainment, making the on-demand market quite a bit livelier.

"BT Vision's offer opens up a whole new potential audience for Disney Channel and we're delighted to be working with them," Michael Cairns, the General Manager of Disney Channels UK and Ireland, commented.

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