Kinda Overnight Delivery - FredEx

Animax Entertainment is participating in a neat kind of animation experiment called FredEx with Channel Frederator. Akin to an animated Exquisite Corpse, we will be creating a segment of animation that will then be edited together with other animated segments created by other animators and animation studios to create a (hopefully, or not so hopefully) coherent film. We got involved in this whole collaborative experiment because one of our Flash animated shorts, The Animated Adventures of Bob and Doug McKenzie, was featured in the Frederator podcast earlier this year.

Disney's Wild About Safety

Disney's Wild About Safety site re-launched today highlighting for kids and parents everything you need to know about how to have a safe time at the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. The new website features brand new character animation of Timon and Pumba, the funny meerkat and warthog from The Lion King. The characters were animated using Adobe Flash and the site itself includes an online game called Type-A-Beest, a personalized storybook, printables, screensavers and lots of information about staying safe.

technorati tags:disney, animax, safety, kids, lion, king, adobe, flash

Digital Content Lab

On Wednesday Animax will be at the AFI Digital Content Lab.   In past years we've been mentors on a number of projects including ones for Scripps TV, ITVS and Zodiac Gaming.  This year we're just attending the festival and baking in the August sun during the lunch break.

technorati tags:AFI, digital, content, scripps, itvs, zodiac, animax

Disney Healthy Foods

Disney Brands Healthy Foods with 'Buzz Lightyear,' Others @ Media Buyer Planner

Disney just announced that they are launching a line of foods for kids called Magic Selections. In conjunction with Kroger, Disney will introduce more than 100 healthy food items in 12 categories including water, low-sugar juices, milk, fruit, vegetables, pasta, soup, bread, yogurt, meat, cheese and "portion control snacks."

Pretty interesting news.  Especially for Animax...

technorati tags:Disney, Kroger, Animax, food, healthy, kids

Grab a Sundae

How's about an ice cold sundae? Animax Entertainment has been doing a lot of work with Grab.com lately. In addition to recently building a game for them, we just got done creating a bunch of illustrations that are used in their Mart environment. The Mart allows users to create virtual spaces and customize them with different objects - think of a low-fi Sims or World of Warcraft.

Feel the Need for Speed

Grab.com, a Fox company, just launched a new online game called Speed 2 that Animax Entertainment designed and programmed. It's a fast-paced card game that some folks may know as Spit.

The game itself was architected with XML feeds so that various visual, audio and gaming elements could be swapped out without having to rebuild the game for future versions. The version that is live now is a Summer Vacation themed one - just in time for the national heatwave.

Animax on the Edge

Animax Entertainment was featured in the July 2006 issue of the Adobe Edge newsletter that talks all about flash animation and all about Animax being super-fantastic.

Tim in the PGA

Tim Jones, the Emmy winning Head of Production at Animax Entertainment, just became a member of the Producer's Guild of America and in particular has joined the New Media Council. The New Media Council has really beefed up its ranks in the past few years with people coming from Animation, Visual Effects, Mobile, Broadband and other emerging media sectors.

A Man and his Toy

Dave Thomas, one of the founders of Animax, has tricked out a truly stunningly beautiful '58 Cadillac that you can't stop admiring. It's been lovingly restored to perfection wiht all the details detailed and then some. Don't take our word for it. See for yourself. Dave and his car have also been winning awards at lots of car shows:

• 1st Place - Cadillac LaSalle Club Grand National, June 2006
• 
• 2nd Place - Woodley Park All GM Show, July 2006
  

If you live in Los Angeles you might get to see him touring around town in it.

The Update

We've been super busy on a number projects most of which are super secret. Wish we could talk more about them but here is the lowdown in the most generalist terms possible:

• a blog that will be really funny
• another blog that will be even funny-er, honest
  
• a website for the Ad Council
• a game for Sesame Workshop
• a few sites and animation for Disney
• and we've been in long-term production on a series for AOL

When we come up for air, we'll try to give more info.