Auckland – November 14, 2011 — Media Design School has notched up another win for CGI-live action short film First Contact, taking the trophy for Best Sci-Fi or Horror at the Mississippi International Film Festival in Jackson, Mississippi.

Media Design School 3D Programme Leader James Cunningham directed alien comedy First Contact, which took 14 advanced 3D production students 13 weeks and more than 7000 hours to complete. Established New Zealand screenwriter Nick Ward wrote the script for the film that features actors Paul Glover, Andrew Beattie and Simon McKinney.

“We are thrilled to receive this award as an acknowledgement of all the hard work the students put into this production” said Cunningham. “They were able to build a crazy world, capture the fantastic performances of the actors and translate that into alien animations. Thanks also to all our industry supporters, especially Simon Reira, Nick Ward and Dave Whitehead.”

First Contact includes more than 55 digital effects, with digital head replacement throughout the film. Using sophisticated object-tracking and keyframe animation technology, the actors’ heads were transformed into animated aliens in the post-production process. The digital heads were matched to the live-action footage which was then composited over digital environments.

Media Design School’s Advanced 3D animation students undertake a group production to hone their 3D animation and production skills in a studio-like environment. Short films created using the latest technologies and produced to world-class standards are submitted to film festivals and competitions around the world, giving students the opportunity to be recognised by the industry.
This year Media Design School student films have been selected to screen at 15 international film festivals on four continents. The films have picked up over 30 awards including seven at the recent Los Angeles Movie Awards.

Media Design School delivers specialised education for 21st century creative careers by providing high-level qualifications for computer 3D animators, visual effects and motion graphic specialists, game artists and programmers.

The Mississippi International Film Festival showcases independent short films and features from around the world. The Festival shows off captivating contemporary films the movie-loving public would otherwise have little or no access to and this year included special guest Danny Glover who won the Outstanding Achievement Award for his work in the movie Freedom Song.

Bent Image Lab, the animation studio behind many successful commercials, music videos, shorts, and visual effects projects is now co-producing long format content for television. Jingle All the Way, a stop motion animated show for Hallmark Channel is Bent’s first endeavor into long form animation. Airing November 25th as part of Hallmark Channel’s Countdown to Christmas, Jingle All the Way is based off of an original storybook from Hallmark. The show was directed by Bent partner Chel White, produced by Bent’s Executive Producer Tsui Ling Toomer and executively produced by Bent Partner Ray Di Carlo and Hallmark’s Jodi Schade, Diana Stuart, Chad Harris, and Shawn McClaren.

The story is about a sweet Husky pup who is in need of a home. At a Christmas tree farm, he meets a boy named Andrew who gives him the name of Jingle since he loves the sound of jingle bells. The two instantly connect, but Andrew is unable to keep Jingle and drives away with his family. Jingle embarks on a journey to find his friend and along the way meets up with a wise cardinal, a determined dog catcher and a jolly man in a red suit who help him on his journey.

Shooting began in May with post production concluding in September. “Bent invested their own personal care into it and that makes a big difference,” says Kevin Swanson, Senior Art Director for Hallmark Gift Books. “These folks really understand Jingle’s world and acted like this was not just another job.”

Bent’s first experience in co-producing long form programming coincides with the first time Hallmark has brought one of its original characters to life. Jingle, a Hallmark interactive plush doll, is sold with its own storybook in Hallmark stores. When the story is read aloud (either by a real person or via a narrator from the Jingle interactive app) the Jingle plush doll reacts, barking and singing as Jingle does in the story.  “The ability for a parent or loved one to sit down and read this book [to kids] and have the dog respond to their voice…that was a great idea,” says Chad Harris Hallmark’s Senior Vice President of Integrated Marketing and New Media and Jingle Executive Producer. “It’s a magical personal experience and we started thinking …wouldn’t it be amazing if we could bring this story to television?”

Bent, Hallmark and script writer Alan Neuwirth collaborated to flesh out the story and visually develop the book into a 22 minute special. “When we first started talking about the Jingle project I loved the idea of directing something that had a childhood sweetness to it,” says White. “I also saw the potential of a great story with endearing characters that viewers could truly care about.”

Produced in stop motion, the production also relied on Bent’s highly-skilled CGI/Visual FX department to complete the project. Bent’s CG Supervisor Fred Ruff explains, “Production shot all the buildings that the [puppets] interact with on stage and we added atmospheric nuance and the set extensions. Our post department can take a street that is only 12 feet long and make it look 40 to 50 feet long.” The production was able to utilize position point rendering passes to help with various compositing effects in Nuke. “What we are doing is actually using layers of data pixels instead of color pixels,” says Ruff. “So instead of rending RGB for Red, Green and Blue we are actually storing X, Y and Z locations per pixel…when we composite we work with that layer data in 3D space and this gives us a lot more control.” In a scene where Jingle sees the town of Pineville for the first time the crew needed a creative solution to turning the town’s lights on at different moments. “We worked with our composite team to figure out how each light location would be handled, and when in the sequence to bring each area of lighting on,” says Ruff. “We were able to do that really quickly in composite instead of trying to animate it in fully realized CG and re-render it every time. That’s been really helpful for us.” The crew used the node-based compositing program Nuke to defocus the shots adding more realism than the traditional Gaussian blur. “We used Nuke on this project because it was the best compositing tool for this job. It’s really made for doing this deep compositing work where your burying a lot of different data into the pipeline and using it to get some things out on the other end,” stated Ruff.

Bent’s extensive experience in stop motion animation, innovative CG abilities and comprehensive ‘under one roof’ approach to production allowed them to finish in roughly 25 weeks.

“Today stop motion has the benefit of using both older analog and modern digital technology,” says White. “The goal is to keep the wonderful hand-made quality but augment it in ways that accentuate the beauty.”

Jingle All the Way airs Friday, November 25 (7 p.m. ET/PT, 6C) only on Hallmark Channel. Find more times and details at http://hallmarkchannel.com/.

GBTV, Glenn Beck’s live streaming video network and Icebox, the innovative animation production company, announced today that they will jointly develop an animated comedy series to air on GBTV.

GBTV and Icebox are currently discussing various ideas for an animated comedy series and will select one to jointly develop. The show will be developed by GBTV and Icebox, originally founded in 1999 by a group of primetime TV writers including Jon Collier (The Simpsons, King of the Hill) and Howard Gordon (24, Homeland) .

Icebox has a tremendous track record in animation originating over twenty original animated properties from the writers of hit shows including The Simpsons, South Park and King of the Hill. Icebox projects have appeared on multiple platforms including online, TV and in theaters.

Joel Cheatwood, President of Programming at GBTV said: “The team at Icebox has developed and produced shows for some of the most renowned and acclaimed networks on television and we are excited that GBTV will be home to one of their next projects. We look forward to working with Howard, Tal and Jon on bringing an entertaining animated show to GBTV.”

Tal Vigderson, Managing Director of Icebox said : “Icebox is known for edgy, irreverent programming. Many of our writers welcome the opportunity to create shows the whole family can watch. This venture lets us take a little break from shocking and offending our audience.”

San Francisco, CA, November 14, 2011 – Mondo Media, the leading multi-platform distributor of online animated hits like “Happy Tree Friends” and “Dick Figures,” is looking for writers and animators to submit pitches for online series targeted to teens and young adult audiences for their YouTube animation channel, “Mondo Mini Shows.”

Mondo Media recently passed the 1 billion-view mark on YouTube and in the process built the Mondo Mini Shows channel into the definitive home for animation on the Internet. As part of the recently announced YouTube channel expansion, Mondo is dramatically ramping up its plans to finance and launch multiple new series throughout 2012.

“For decades, TV and film careers were the only viable avenues for comedy writers and developers,” says Aaron Simpson, Mondo Media’s VP of Development. “But with YouTube’s rapid rise, the digital comedy space has emerged as a real business, and Mondo is a proven innovator and leader when it comes to animated comedy. We can team up writers with animators, and vice versa – but first we’re reaching out to the creative community for pitches. Imagine what a college student in Miami, Madrid or Melbourne thinks is funny, and when your ready, visit our website and submit your pitch,” Simpson added.

“Dick Figures” producer Brendan Burch, CEO of Six Point Harness says, “Mondo has taken our animated series “Dick Figures,” and built it into the number-one animated show on YouTube in less than a year. Anyone can make a show and throw it up on YouTube, but partnering with Mondo has significantly accelerated the success of Dick Figures.”

Writers and animators interested in pitching their ideas should visit Mondo Media’s “Mondo Mini Shows” YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/mondomedia.

New York, New York – November 14, 2011 – GKIDS, a distributor of award winning animation for both adults and family audiences, is bringing a complete retrospective of films from Japan’s renowned Studio Ghibli to the IFC Center in New York from Friday, December 16 to Thursday, January 12.  The run will include US premiere theatrical engagements for several titles.

All fifteen Studio Ghibli feature films produced between 1984 and 2008 will be presented, including Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award® winning Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Kiki’s Delivery Service.  Films will be shown in both the subtitled and English dubbed versions.  (see below for complete list)

GKIDS recently entered into agreement with Studio Ghibli to handle North American theatrical distribution for their library of animated features.  As the first engagements announced under the agreement, New York Film Festival presented a 25 year anniversary screening of Castle in the Sky and 10 year anniversary screenings of Spirited Away.  LA County Museum of Art and Film Independent will be presenting these same anniversary titles in a special preview screening on November 26.

Following the IFC Center engagement, the retrospective will tour to major US and Canadian markets, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, Toronto, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, and other cities, throughout the first half of 2012.  GKIDS is also planning limited releases of select Studio Ghibli titles, many of which have never been released theatrically in the US, beginning late 2012.

Eric Beckman, GKIDS president, said, “I am both excited and deeply honored to be working with Studio Ghibli to bring this amazing slate of films to theaters across North America. I am in continual awe of the brilliance of the animation, the depth and humanity of the storytelling, and of the filmmakers’ understanding that even the youngest audiences are capable of appreciating all the subtlety and nuance that cinema has to offer.  As Miyazaki has said ‘Children understand the complexity and uncertainty of things almost with their skin. They cannot be underestimated.’ ”

STUDIO GHIBLI FILMS – IFC CENTER – DEC 16 TO JAN 12

Title		Director (Producer)		Versions	Year	RT
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind		Hayao Miyazaki (Isao Takahata)		Subtitled and dubbed (Uma Thurman, Shia LeBouf, Edward James Olmos, Mark Hamill)	1984	116 min
Castle in the Sky		Hayao Miyazaki (Isao Takahata)		Subtitled only	1986	126 min
My Neighbor Totoro		Hayao Miyazaki (Toru Hara)		Subtitled and dubbed (Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Tim Daly, Frank Welker)	1988	86 min
Kiki’s Delivery Service		Hayao Miyazaki (Hayao Miyazaki)		Subtitled and dubbed (Kirsten Dunst, Phil Hartman, Janeane Garofalo, Debbie Reynolds)	1989	102 min
Only Yesterday		Isao Takahata (Toshio Suzuki)		Subtitled only	1991	118 min
The Ocean Waves		Tomomi Mochizuki (Nozomu Takahashi)		Subtitled only, digital only	1993	72 min
Porco Rosso		Hayao Miyazaki (Toshio Suzuki)		Subtitled and dubbed (Michael Keaton, Cary Elwes, Brad Garrett, David Ogden Stiers)	1992	94 min
Pom Poko		Isao Takahata (Toshio Suzuki)		Subtitled and dubbed (J.K. Simmons, Brian Posehn, Tress MacNeille, John DiMaggio)	1994	119 min
Whisper of the Heart		Yoshifumi Kondo (Toshio Suzuki)		Subtitled and dubbed (Ashley Tisdale, Cary Elwes, Harold Gould, Brittany Snow)	1995	111 min
Princess Mononoke		Hayao Miyazaki (Toshio Suzuki)		Subtitled and dubbed (Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Gillian Anderson, Minnie Driver, Billy Bob Thornton, Jada Pinkett Smith, John DiMaggio)	1997	134 min
My Neighbors the Yamadas		Isao Takahata (Toshio Suzuki)		Subtitled and dubbed (James Belushi, Molly Shannon, Tress MacNeille)	1999	111 min
Spirited Away		Hayao Miyazaki (Toshio Suzuki)		Subtitled and dubbed (Daveigh Chase, Jason Marsden, Michael Chiklis, Susan Egan)	2001	125 min
The Cat Returns		Hiroyuki Morita (Toshio Suzuki)		Subtitled and dubbed (Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes, Peter Boyle, Elliott Gould, Tim Curry, Andy Richter, Kristen Bell, Avril Lavigne)	2002	75 min
Howl’s Moving Castle		Hayao Miyazaki (Toshio Suzuki)		Dubbed (Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall, Billy Crystal)	2004	119 min
Ponyo		Hiroyuki Morita (Toshio Suzuki)		Dubbed (Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Tina Fey)	2008	101 min

BURBANK, Calif., Nov 14, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The Walt Disney Studios proudly announced today that directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard, the talented team behind Disney Animation Studio’s global blockbuster Tangled, will premiere a delightful new animated short film spotlighting the royal wedding of Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) and Flynn Rider — a.k.a Eugene — (Zachary Levi) in front of each screening of Beauty and the Beast in 3D, which opens on January 13, 2012.

By popular demand, Greno and Howard are bringing back some of Disney’s most beloved characters when Tangled Ever After picks up where Tangled left off. The Kingdom is in a festive mood as everyone gathers for the royal wedding of Rapunzel and Flynn. However, when Pascal and Maximus, as flower chameleon and ring bearer, respectively, lose the gold bands, a frenzied search and recovery mission gets underway. As the desperate duo tries to find the rings before anyone discovers that they’re missing, they leave behind a trail of comical chaos that includes flying lanterns, a flock of doves, a wine barrel barricade and a very sticky finale. Will Maximus and Pascal save the day and make it to the church in time? And will they ever get Flynn’s nose right?

Tangled Ever After is the perfect accompaniment to Beauty and the Beast, which is returning to the big screen in Disney Digital 3D(TM) and introducing a whole new generation to the Disney classic with stunning new 3D imagery. Beauty and the Beast was nominated for six Academy Awards(R), winning Oscars(R) for Best Song, by the renowned Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, and Best Original Score (Menken).