Animax Now Hiring

Animax Entertainment is on the hunt for a bunch of folks including web engineers, mobile game art designers, graphic designers, general office support, and as usual, folks experienced in Flash character animation. If you or someone you know is interested - have them reply to the appropriate posting and dazzle us. Please be local to LA or in the midst of a move. We're growing like gang busters. Why do busters of gangs grow so fast anyways?

More Good Festing News

In addition to Kat's good news, the animated short film Marvelous, Keen Loony Bin by Lizzi Akana, another one of our hard-working Animax Animistresses, recently won awards in a number of festivals:

• The Chris Frayne Animation Award at The Ann Arbor Film Festival
• Best Student Film at The Flux ipod Film Festival
• A Special Jury Award at the Seattle International Film Festival

Festivus in July!

Kat Kosmala, one of the animators here at Animax (please note: female animators are not called animatresses), has just found out her animated short film Linear Progression is going to be screened in a bunch of upcoming film festivals:

• 7/7: Brainwash Movie Festival, Oakland, CA
• 7/1-10/15: KIDS FIRST! Film and Video Festival, Santa Fe, NM
• 8/11-13: HollyShorts Short Film Festival, Hollywood, CA
• 10/5-14: FAIF International Film Festival, Hollywood, CA

Please feel free to stuff the voting box.

Animax is Site of the (To)Day!

Off-Mikes just was recognized by Adobe as Site of the Day - this is cool since Animax Entertainment uses a ton of Adobe software in order to produce the Flash animation. The series of shorts also won an Emmy Award back in May - the first ever broadband Emmy. Also, while you're poking around ESPN.com check out the relaunch of their cool new Flash-based video player. It has a really elegant way of navigating around the various clips.

This is Hilarious

Brother Bear 2 is on its way to a DVD player near you on August 29, 2006. Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis reprise their roles and the McKenzie Brothers-esque moose. The truly amusing thing is that as part of the marketing program new versions of online materials are being released. We actually created the original online Moose Dancing game for Disney and now there is a Japanese version heating up the internets. Curious about the trailer? Dave and Rick are the main focus of it and of course it's funny. The moose sing in it which is nice but not a real surprise as Rick was nominated for a Grammy Award last year and Dave and Rick were also nominated for a Grammy for: The Great White North Album. You can catch the trailer to Brother Bear 2 on the Lady and the Tramp DVD or you can see it here:

Adobe Site of the Day

We just found out that tomorrow, June 20 2006, the Flash animated series Off-Mikes that Animax Entertainment produces for ESPN.com is going to be recognized as Adobe Site of the Day. Each episode of the series uses so many Adobe related products (and old-school Macromedia ones) that it makes perfect sense. The series won the first ever broadband Emmy and now it's the first time Animax has been honored with a Site of the Day showcase -- this is especially nice since Animax's success as a Flash animation studio is tagged to the success of Adobe & Macromedia.

We've had a streak of good fortune -- now if we could only win Lotto, life would be perfect.

Flash Video on Meteoric Rise

From PaidContent.org.....

» Flash's Meteroric Rise in The Last Year; Second Biggest Player Now [by Rafat]
Mercury News has a good and somewhat overlooked story about the meteoric rise of Flash as a Web video player in the last one year or so...with big sites like YouTube and other video sharing sites using Flash as a standard, and ABC.com using it to stream its shows online, it is now hoping to cash in on the explosion of online advertisers, who are using video, as well as Web entertainment sites that post TV shows embedded with commercials - and content on mobile devices. Flash has soared from zero to No. 2 in its market in just two years, according to Paul Palumbo at Accustream iMedia Research. Microsoft's Windows Media format is the leader, handling 60 percent of all streaming video in 2005; Flash has 19 percent of the market, jumping ahead of RealNetworks at about 10 percent and Apple's QuickTime, with about 8 percent. Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen said he'd like to see the company develop download and DRM software, as well, so it can provide the backbone for delivering movies online, though he said he does not want to walk into the DRM patent minefield. Story 2: Adobe's new strategy is a project code-named "Apollo," which will be something of a technological mash-up that will blend key strengths from Adobe and Macromedia of the PDF, Flash Player and HTML Internet language. It will allow developers to create programs for people to access and work on, such as a mortgage loan agreement or online travel service, online and off, with changes seamlessly syncing with the Internet version once they are connected again.


How it affects the distribution of online content will also be intresting to see develop....

Pooh on Art

Gallery 1988, in conjunction with The Hollywood Schoolhouse, is proud topresent a new art show, “The Storybook Series: Winnie the Pooh.” The show,which opens June 20th, has a rather unique and inspiring theme. Preschoolers from The Hollywood Schoolhouse were read stories from the Winnie the Pooh storybook and were asked to draw their favorite scenes from the tales. The drawings were then handed off to some of the most promising up-and-coming artists (like Amanda Visell who is currently working on a project for Animax), who were asked to render the child’s drawing in their own style and vision. The newly created piece by the professional artist will be hung along side the child’s original concept and sold as a set.

Why does Animax care? Well, we worked on the Pooh site for Disney and we like Amanda's art and we like red schoolhouses and we like smiling at crayon drawings. Those reasons are good enough for us.

112 and Counting

Won't you be our friend?

We Heart AWN (& Greg Singer)

Took them a little while, but AWN covered Animax Entertainment's recent Emmy win. Thanks to Greg Singer of Health LAMP (someone we're working with now to develop an animated DVD about breast cancer awareness) for getting the news to the right source.

Asthma Project Gets an A+

It's always nice to get feedback from clients. It's especially nice when it's positive. And it's "especially-er" nice when that positive feedback is coming from kids. Animax animated and produced a DVD for The University of Texas to help kids with asthma better understand the disease and how to manage it...

"We finished camp yesterday and I thought it would be nice to give you some feedback on the implementation of the DVD in practice. We had 5 groups of campers by age - 7 to 12 years. 50% of the campers were repeaters and had heard the lessons before. All of the children focused on the DVD with 100% attention. Every member of our staff made the same observation and we were quite impressed with the power of the DVD in maintaining the children's attention. Some of the kids thought parts were funny and asked for the lesson to be played again. We used to get questions such as,"How soon are we going swimming?" We did not hear this at all with the DVD. We are delighted with the children's response! I was also pleased that each group had a standardized lesson...thanks again for all of your help!"
Anne Meng, UTMB

Animax in the Journal

On the heels of our Emmy win, Animax Entertainment was profiled in this week's LA Business Journal. While we appreciate the media coverage, the article is very controversial -- we've already written the Journal to ask for a retraction. They didn't say nearly enough times that Animax is the greatest animation studio on the planet. They also neglected to mention that we rock. Please join our letter writing campaign and let the LA Business Journal editors know how you feel about us.

Terrible News!!!!!

Net Neutrality no more. Waaah. Well not yet for sure but the House passed it. The junky thing is that in a concession to the telephone and cable companies, the legislation does nothing to prevent the phone and cable providers from charging Internet content providers a premium for carrying services like video offerings that could rival those of the telecom companies. At least there was some reasoned thought: "The imposition of additional fees for Internet content providers would unduly burden Web-based small businesses and start-ups," said Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader. "They would also hamper communications by noncommercial users, those using religious speech, promoting civic involvement and exercising First Amendment freedoms."

How do you think Bush weighed in? The White House issued a statement on Thursday supporting the House legislation, saying it would "promote competition in both video and voice markets." Typical.

Flash Geeks Will Love This

Tired of the inadequacies of the Flash interface and how it impacts your ability to animate? Yeah, you could try any one of the umpteen plug-ins, or you can just watch this fun video.

Commie Aaron Likes Flowers

The defacto Flash animation community became an actual community site today. Aaron Simpson's Cold Hard Flash, re-launched today - Dave Wolfe, an animator here at Animax is one of the moderators (watch what you say about Black Sabbath or he may bar you from the community.)

The CHF site was also newly re-designed with a communism-inspired look and feel. Inexplicably there are many yellow flowers throughout the site. While the old Ruskie hammer and sickle might have been yellow, they were definitely not flowers. Flowers are not appropriate pinko accessories. Please join Animax in lobbying Aaron to maintain communist integrity by de-flowering his site.

LA BJ

An LA BJ doesn't cost much and you can get one on just about any street corner. Some are better than others but there's a really good one coming up.

In a couple weeks Animax Entertainment is going to be in the LA BJ - The Los Angeles Business Journal, that is. What did you think we were talking about?

Scroll Down

The animated interactive story we produced for McGruff the Crime Dog was featured in the Ad Council's PSA Bulletin and also showcased to the Ad Council's Board of Directors. Nice.