"Cyanide and Happiness" Creates Animation Record

The Special Campaign which was started to produce an Animated series based on the online comic Cyanide and Happiness was just concluded its campaign. And the grand total of 770,309 from 14242 backers was recorded. The amount of money raised was a record collection. The previous record was made by "The goon Animatic" which was made by Blur Studios which raised 442,000 last November.

The four Creators of Cyanide -Kris Wilson, Rob DenBleyker, Matt Melvin, Dave McElfatrick had estimated the fundraising goal to be 250,000, but, they have collected 300% more than they expected.With this money they have raised, their team will produce eleven 10-12 minutes episodes and weekly short pieces for the whole year.

Priyanka Chopra to be heard in Disney's Planes

After making a name and huge success as actor in the Indian Film Industry, Priyanka chopra has also captured the attention of Music World with her latest Music Album. She had many transformations in her career, the model turned actor turned singer has been signed by in by Disney and Utv for their next Hollywood film Planes.

The Movie is directed by Klay Hall, the director of Simpsons. The movie will feature Priyanka lending her voice to a lovable aircraft named Ishani, and the oppsite cast Dane Cook will lend his voice to Dusty Crophopper.

The Makers of the Planes were searching for an Indian Voice which can make justice to the Asian Character  of Ishani, and the search is over.

The Film was scheduled to release later this year, Priyanka Chopra will be dubbing for the original English version, while the decision is still pending for Hindi version.

Disney has no plans to make traditional 2-D animated films

Disney has said that it has no present plans to make any more hand drawn traditional animated movies.

Disney also said that, none of its associated companies are presently working in any such kind 2-D traditional project.

At company's Annual share holder's meeting, Disney's chief Executive Bob Lger said that "To my knowledge we're not developing a 2-D or hand-drawn feature animated film right now. There is a fair amount of activity going on in hand-drawn animation but it's largely for television at this point. We're not necessarily ruling out the possibility of a feature but, there isn't any in development at the company at the moment."

Recent Disney's animated movies had a great success all over the Globe. Bolt grossed $310m and Tangled grossed $590m.

But, The Princess and the Frog, which was said to be Disney's come back to traditional animation method of film making had managed to get $267m, and Winnie the Pooh grossed just $33m.

Luxology Announces the release of MODO 701

Computer graphics and visual effects software developer Luxology has announced the forthcoming release of MODO 701.

This new release will definitely enhance the modelling, sculpting, animation, effects and rendering workflows and in a increased quality content and output.

Over the last year company has gathers a number of feedback from the customers and users and made significant changes and modifications to the core functionality for user satisfaction.

Highlights of Modo 701:

• Procedural particle engine with an easy to use pre-set workflow
• Audio playback and a sound channel modifier, bringing animations to life
• Schematic improvements, reducing scene graph complexity
• Dedicated dynamics simulation layer, significantly improving performance
• Simplified complexity of materials and layered shaders
• Large scene performance improvements by as much as 175x
• Preview render synchronis ation improvements, over 50x faster in large scenes
• New Python interpreter, making python execution many times faster
• Unlimited network rendering  

Luxology co-founder Brad Peebler said that We have made such big improvements to the existing architecture of the software in MODO 701 that 601 users will notice a huge leap forward, We have also added some really cool functionality like the new particle system. This release will truly deliver on the philosophy that perfection comes through refinement. As always, we have pushed the limits and cannot  wait to find out what you all think.”

Hagop (Kane) Kaneboughazian, Senior Animation Director at Viscira, said that “MODO 701 has the fastest, most highly interactive and powerful render engine available today. To me it's almost real - time, which is kind of freaky. A lot of improvements have gone into this release that will be really useful for 3D content creators. The foundation of MODO 701's particle system is going to open the door for insane capabilities and features to the MODO community.”

Source: Luxology.

Mickey Mouse Re-Returns To 2-D Animation

The all time children's favorite and iconic Disney Character Mickey Mouse is making his return to 2-D animation.

The Disney channel has ordered a new series of comedy shorts titles "Mickey Mouse". The main aim of the series is to combine 'classic comedy' with 'contemporary flair', the series of 19 animated clips will be out on June 28 on Disney channel, Disney.com and other platforms.

Paul Rudish is the executive producer of the shorts and directs with fellow directors Aaron Springer and Clay Morrow, and art director Joseph Holt.

The hit CG-Animated series "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" was aimed at kids aged 2-5, The Disney plans to have all their new series of shorts entirely in traditional 2D animation and wants to target kids aged 6-14 including their families.

 Marsh said that “By bringing Mickey’s comedic adventures to life with vitality, humour, inventiveness and charm, the entire Disney Television Animation team of artists, animators and directors have worked to capture the essence of what Walt Disney himself created 85 years ago,”

In each short Mickey will face a silly situation and continues with a combination of physical and visual gags. other famous Disney characters like Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Goofy and Pluto will also appear.

Disney said that the direction and pacing of the new cartoon shorts are designed to be fresh and contemporary but also pay homage to the art direction and storytelling of Walt Disney and his team of animators in the 1920s and 30s.