Zoic Studios is proud to have earned three VES awards at last night's event, held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The annual event recognizes outstanding visual effects in more than twenty categories of film, animation, television, commercials and video games.

February 26, 2010 Cornucopia3D, a division of e-on software and one of the leading CG artist communities on the web, today announced the immediate availability of its new portfolio feature.

Using Artist Portfolios, Cornucopia3D users can now easily expose their work through their own artist web page.

Nice Spots -the Internet-hosted collaboration, archival, approval, distribution, asset-management and presentation tool that offers a secure online environment to work with any type of media from any platform - just completed an exciting collaborative project with renowned artist Dryden Goodwin. Art on the Underground, done on commission from the London Underground, centers around 60 portraits that Goodwin sketched of workers on the subway system's Jubilee line and includes print, video and online components. The video portion features Goodwin sketching each portrait in time-lapsed super-speed beneath voiceover excerpts of the artist conversing with his subjects as he drew them. Nice Spots played an integral role in the project, supporting Goodwin's use of video by building a website to showcase the expansive collection of 60 videos (one for each portrait).

DUCK has signed Paris, France-based directing collective UFO, a group of highly skilled creative directors, animators, illustrators, CG designers, and motion design pros who thrive in an atmosphere of unbridled creativity at the convergence of art direction, design and VFX. The eclectic group brings with it a multitude of international clients and gives DUCK a permanent and well-respected presence in continental Europe that is capable of blending traditional and new media from concept to final cut.

GDC is the official trade event "by developers for developers" of computer, console, mobile, arcade, online games, and location based entertainment.

Founded in 2000, Xsens has evolved into a leading supplier of 3D motion tracking products. Various awards and listings underline the success of the company and the importance of our products for the marketplace. More important though, hundreds of customers worldwide successfully utilize our technology and count on the performance and quality that Xsens stands for. We are grateful to our customers and wish to celebrate our anniversary with them!

The Amsterdam based ‘Blender Institute’ announced today the premiere of the short 3D animation movie 'Big Buck Bunny'. After a production period of over six months, the short film will premiere with a grand party on Thursday 10th of April, in the hip new Amsterdam cinema ‘Studio K’.
“The primary intent of the movie was to stimulate the development of open source 3D software” said producer and Institute director Ton Roosendaal, “But the result equals on artistic level as well as on technical ingenuity the quality of what you would expect from large animation studios”.
The movie differentiates itself mostly by its totally open character. Not only open source tools such as the 3D suite ‘Blender’ were used to create the movie, but also the movie itself - including all materials as used in the animation studio - will be freely accessible for everybody to reuse, to learn from it or just to enjoy it.
The promotion of Open Content creation and distribution is one of the main goals of the Creative Commons, the organization that created the 'Creative Commons' licenses, which have been widely adopted by artists, musicians, and other creative individuals who wish to freely share their creative endeavors.

Elephants Dream is the story of two strange characters exploring a capricious and seemingly infinite machine. The elder, Proog, acts as a tour-guide and protector, happily showing off the sights and dangers of the machine to his initially curious but increasingly skeptical protege Emo. As their journey unfolds we discover signs that the machine is not all Proog thinks it is, and his guiding takes on a more desperate aspect.
Elephants Dream is a story about communication and fiction, made purposefully open-ended as the world’s first 3D animated “Open movie”. The film itself is released under the Creative Commons license, along with the entirety of the production files used to make it (roughly 7 Gigabytes of data). The software used to make the movie is the free/open source animation suite Blender along with other open source software, thus allowing the movie to be remade, remixed and re-purposed with only a computer and the data on the DVD or download.,

 Luxology®, an independent technology company developing next-generation 3D content creation software, is today introducing a new Studio Lighting & Illumination Kit (SLIK) created by Yazan Malkosh, an extensive collection of presets, scenes, items, materials and video tutorials to help customers light computer-generated (CG) creations. Designed specifically for users of modo®, Luxology's modern 3D modeling, painting and rendering application, SLIK provides realistic lighting of scenes that mimics those found in the real world of photography.

Artbeats, a 20-year veteran in the stock footage industry, announced today that they are offering a FREE, downloadable HD clip every day at artbeats.com. In this "no strings attached" program, visitors to the Artbeats home page can access a different free clip every day simply by registering or logging-in to their online account. The clips, valued at up to $299 USD each, are pre-selected directly from the Artbeats and Artbeats FootageHub libraries and are available as a free download for 24 hours. Those who take full advantage of the Daily Free Clip program can quickly enhance and build their stock footage cache with over $8,000 USD in royalty-free HD content each month.

Industrial designers are achieving photorealistic imaging results from designs modeled in Solidworks 2010 and visualized in Solidworks PhotoView 360 and Luxology®'s modo® software. PhotoView 360, which is bundled with the SolidWorks Premium and Professional 2010 editions, offers ease of use for rapid design visualization while modo offers maximum control over design visualization parameters with advanced features like animation.

Barbara Kruger's "Silent Writings" Fine Art Installation Appears in Louis Vuitton Cultural Center with Key Support from Brand New School Director Ludovic Schorno

The artists and producers from bicoastal U.S. directing collective Brand New School are very proud to detail the recent collaboration of director Ludovic Schorno with celebrated American artist Barbara Kruger (www.barbarakruger.com). The resulting fine art installation formed a key element in the Louis Vuitton Cultural Space in Paris, where Kruger's bold statements and evocative imagery were part of a group show entitled "Ecriture Silencieuses," or "Silent Writings." The show debuted in March and ran through late August.

The Most Inspiring City begins with a globetrotting, sailboat-bound couple staring in stunned awe as they approach the city's soaring minarets in the hazy sea spray of dawn.

Transports of delight with Roel Wouters at BUG and Minivegas Dutch Embassy creative double bill

Make the most of two creative events in one evening, this Thursday 21st January. Take in a dedicated exhibition of Dutch creative talent with recent Nexus signing, Minivegas and then head off to a Roel Wouters special at BUG. Nexus Productions are laying on a special ‘Double Dutch’ shuttle bus to whisk BUG ticketholders off to the venue.

modo's 3D Modeling and Rendering Software Tools Help Design Team Create and Visualize Full-size House Made of LEGO Bricks

In an acknowledgement of his uniquely dazzling artistic skills, luxury specialty chain Saks Fifth Avenue selected DUCK cofounder Roger Chouinard to illustrate the latest edition of its iconic Christmas Book. His illustrations will be transformed into the chain's legendary animated Christmastime window displays at its New York City flagship location.
"The Saks Fifth Avenue window displays are a really big deal, and it is a testament to Roger's skill and vision that such an important cultural icon

The animated feature film Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is based on the classic children's book about the town of ChewandSwallow, where mysterious storms begin raining down hot dogs, pancakes, bananas, spaghetti, burgers, and more, to everyone's delight. But when the storms get out of control, the town needs a hero. And they don't mean a sandwich.

NY-based visual solutions studio Click 3X has hired online experience veterans Ann Quinn and Lara DeSignor to help increase the firm's capabilities with digital and interactive marketing campaigns. The duo will focus on building Click's infrastructure and ability in offering syndication, seeding, social media and viral channels to clients. The new team, which will be a fusion of digital marketing and state-of- the-art broadcast, design and digital production services will take advantage of Quinn and DeSignor's vast experience to deliver multi-platform digital content campaigns cross platform.

In many ways, the advertising post production world is changing rapidly: Agencies are increasingly using in-house editorial facilities; VFX houses are starting to direct; editorial houses are creating finishing rooms and post shops are downsizing and relying more on freelancers. In an effort to adapt to the times, two like-minded, award-winning editorial vets, Adam Jenkins (formerly of Union Editorial) and Jeff Stevens (formerly of Final Cut) have teamed up to launch FEEDTHEWALRUS (www.feedthewalrus.com), a subtle twist on the existing post production model. Together, the duo have 20+ years experience cutting commercials, web content, music videos and feature films.

Leading digital production company, Nexus, have signed the brilliant Japanese directing duo, Who-Fu, for worldwide representation.

Masayoshi and Magico Nakamura both grew up in Japan but met in New York in 2008, where they formed their partnership (‘Who-Fu’ actually means ‘Man and Wife’ in Japanese). With a shared background in graphic design (Masayoshi graduated from the New York School of Visual Arts and Magico from the Tama Art University)

Blind announces the hiring of California-based Claire & Company to cover the West Coast and Texas. Company head Claire Worch, whose long industry tenure is built upon strong relationships with agencies, deep knowledge of the bidding process, and incredible intuition, will secure new projects for Blind.

Carolyn Hill Represents will handle sales for the East Coast, and The TV Candy Store the Midwest; Jelly will continue to represent Blind in the UK.

Blind, a multi-disciplinary design, motion graphics, animation, visual effects, live-action, editorial, print and broadcast design studio with offices in Santa Monica and NYC, taps into diverse intellectual and creative resources to come up with compelling results. Since 1995, Blind has been pushing beyond the expected, offering clients a new way to see with award-winning design. A few things remain constant amidst this design/production powerhouse's constant drive to reinvent itself: the abilities to engender surprise and produce projects from conception to reality.

Blind's creative team has built an uncommon level of respect in the advertising and entertainment communities via cutting-edge campaigns for brands such as Xbox, Showtime, Bright House Networks, DirecTV, OppenheimerFunds, McDonald's, Scion, and recording artists including Gnarls Barkley, The Raveonettes and Justin Timberlake to name a few.http://www.blind.com

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Manic announces the signing of veteran VFX artist Steve Zourntos, a diverse talent whose portfolio includes work on high-profile commercial campaigns, major motion pictures, and prime-time TV shows. His commercial clients include Olay, Geico, Heineken, Motorola, Budweiser, Miller, and Samsung, among many others. Zourntos completed the main titles and effects work for the feature film Snow Angels for Warner Independent Pictures. His TV work includes opening title sequences for Medium, Kid Nation, and Police Women of Broward County.