Category: Education and Training

NFB will be hosting its second annual Animation Hothouse, designed to help nurture the talents of emerging animators. Six promising filmmakers from across Canada will be given 12 weeks to create extremely short animation, from concept to release, with the full support and assistance of NFB creative experts at the NFBs English Animation Studio. This years Hothousers are Marielle Guyot and Thea Pratt, Montreal; Kevin Langdale, Vancouver; Amy Lockhart, Vancouver; Megann Reid, Calgary; and Howie Shia, Toronto. The project began on Nov. 3, 2003 in Montreal.

Cartoon Network and The Prince of Wales Arts & Kids Foundation announced the launch of cARToon netWORK ARTWORK, a partnership designed to get children involved with the arts, and discover connections between all art forms. Workshops will be designed and led by artists from different fields including Richard E. Grant, Siobhan Davis, Quentin Blake and Benjamin Zephaniah.

The Gnomon Workshop has released four new training DVDs by concept designer Feng Zhu. Focused on the traditional and digital techniques of the concept design industry, these four titles contain more than eight hours of instruction. Feng's clients include Lucasfilm, Disney, Blur Studio, Electronic Arts, GT Interactive, Origin Systems, Microsoft, Film Roman, Universal, Warner Bros. and Sierra. Feng has been teaching production design at Gnomon for two years.

Magnet Media Inc., as part of its award-winning Digital Media Training Series, has shipped self-paced training DVDs for Apples Final Cut Pro 4 and Adobes After Effects 6.

Discreet has announced one of its largest desktop software sales to date with long-time partner The Art Institutes. The schools will distribute more than 4,000 licenses of 3ds max, character studio, combustion 3D and cleaner software to its 29 locations in the United States and Canada. Last autumn the Arts Institute purchased more than 2,000 licenses.

Milan International Film Festival (MIFF) has announced that it is providing two students the opportunity to study at Los Angeles Film School (LAFS). Since 2001, MIFF and LAFS have collaborated to award deserving students the tuition necessary to attend the course of their choice. This year, in addition to the one full-year scholarship given in previous years, another scholarship for the six-week digital imaging courses will be offered. The scholarship is open to all high school graduates. The deadline to apply is November 15, 2003. Scholarship winners will be notified by December 15, 2003.