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Digital Media FX News Archives

Monday - August 6, 2001
- Universal Begins Work on New Animated Film
- Release Charts: Animated, Anime, and FX DVDs
- Toon Boom Announces Electric Rain Support
- News Link of the Day - Batman Vengeance Shapes Up

Universal Begins Work on New Animated Film
(by digitalmediafx.com) Universal Studios has started pre-production work on a new animated movie based on the book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. The book delves into a boys imagination as he creates his own jungle world that he rules over monsters.

Recent departures from Disney are playing major roles in the movie, including Eric Goldberg and David Reynolds. Goldberg will direct the feature and Reynolds will write it. Disney is finding that drastically overhauling its animated division is now resulting in top talented animators working on new competing pictures that will continue to eat away at Disney's former image as the king of animation.

The movie is being produced as a CGI film for release in November 2004. In addition, Tom Hanks is seriously considering a role as a voice in the movie. The movie is being produced by Hanks' Playtone Productions.

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Release Charts: Animated, Anime, and FX DVDs
(by digitalmediafx.com) Here is a list of new animated, anime, and FX DVDs being released tomorrow. As you can see there is a nice variety (particularly when compared to last week):

Angel Links - Broken Angel - Volume 3 (anime)
Behind the Planet of the Apes (1998 - FX)
Dragon Ball Z - Lord Slug - Feature (Uncut - anime)
Felix The Cat - Collector's Edition (1958 - anime)
Mobile Suit Gundam - The Battle Begins (Vol. 1 - anime)
Mobile Suit Gundam - The Battle Begins (Vol. 1, Uncut - anime)
Disney's Recess - School's Out (2001 - animated)
Robotech - The Macross Saga - Legacy Collection 2 (animated)
Robotech - Homecoming - Vol. 3. (1985 - animated)
Robotech - Battlefront - Vol. 4. (1985 - animated)
The Underdog Chronicles (1964 - animated)

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Toon Boom Announces Electric Rain Support
(edited press release) Toon Boom Technologies announced its partnership with Electric Rain to extend its support for 3D animation, resulting in toonshader solutions for all of the major 3D software. Electric Rain is the industry leading developer and supplier of 3D to vector solutions with Swift 3D MAX, Swift 3D LW and Swift 3D XSI. These new plug-ins will feature a special edition that outputs in the USAnimation format, allowing USAnimation users to import 3D animation created with 3D Studio MAX, LightWave or XSI into the 2D world.

"Toon Boom is pleased to offer its customers the option to integrate 3D animation created with the leading 3D animation software. Since Electric Rain's expertise is based on vector technology, this partnership made both our respective products a natural fit for integration ", commented Ms. Joan Vogelesang, Chief Operating Officer at Toon Boom Technologies.

Toon Boom has also developed in-house ToonShader, a plug-in to import 3D animation created with Maya, making all options available for its customers to integrate 2D and 3D animation seamlessly.

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News Link of the Day - Batman Vengeance Shapes Up

According to Yahoo News:

"At its ongoing gamers week event, Ubi Soft unveiled the latest build of its upcoming PlayStation 2 game, Batman: Vengeance. The version shown has improved significantly since last we saw it, particularly in its visuals. The character models are now beautifully animated as even the most insignificant enemy thug now sports a variety of moves. Rather than using motion capture, Ubi Soft hand-animated all of the characters in the game--Batman has over 500 animations..."

Click here for the full story.

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