Marvel’s Spider-Man

The big screen version isn’t the only new version of Spider-Man out this summer.

Marvel Animation is planning a new take on its fabled webslinger, called Marvel’s Spider-Man, which will replace Ultimate Spider-Man in the studio’s lineup.

Senior VP of Animation & Family Entertainment at Marvel Entertainment Cort Lane says this show — slated to premiere Aug. 19 on Disney XD — was a back to basics opportunity for the character.

“He’s a teenager who doesn’t know how to use his powers,” says Lane. “He knows how to use his smarts but he doesn’t always get the results he expects, and that really sort of plays up the duality of both Peter Parker and Spider-Man.”

The new series sees Peter Parker attending Horizon High, a school for gifted science students. There he meets a supporting cast that includes such familiar names as Harry Osborne, Gwen Stacy, Miles Morales, Anya

Stealth was the key word in 2005, with a number of projects that went on to huge commercial success flying under the radar when they debuted. Among them: Robot Chicken, American Dad!, Camp Lazlo, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Ben 10.

Taking more attention was a steady stream of features that varied in quality and commercial success, but nonetheless proved there was a strong global demand for animation. Among the features Animation Magazine deemed cover worthy in 2005: Blue Sky’s Robots; Katsuhiro Otomo’s follow-up to Akira, Steamboy; the first Madagascar; Hayao Miyazaki’s masterful Howl’s Moving Castle; Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride; a fantastic image for the release of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit; and Disney’s Chicken Little.

One of the more unusual features to appear in the magazine was a list of the Sexiest Toons of All Time, which appeared in the April 2005 issue and still makes us blush a little bit.

And VFX was represented with a cover story on the making of Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, which at the time was thought to be the last big-screen visit to that galaxy far, far away.

A cover story on indie feature Hoodwinked! kicked off 2006, a year of such varied material as a 2D animated Curious George feature; Michel Ocelot’s beautiful sequel Kirikou and the Wild Beasts; Blue Sky’s Ice Age 2; DreamWorks’ Over the Hedge; Pixar’s Cars; Sony Pictures Animation’s Open Season; DreamWorks-Aardman’s Flushed Away; and the surprise hit Happy Feet, which went on to Oscar glory.

Animation Magazine celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2007, and kicked off the year with an overstuffed celebratory issue. The features side of the business had another strong year, earning covers for Imagi’s take on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney’s Meet the Robinsons, DreamWorks’ Shrek the Third, Sony’s Surf’s Up, Pixar’s Ratatouille, DreamWorks’ Bee Movie and the long-awaited The Simpsons Movie.

On the TV side, 2007 saw the debut of the beloved Disney series Phineas and Ferb, while covers featured such hits as El Tigre and Nick’s first in-house CG toon, Tak and the Power of Juju.

Check out more of the archives at www.animationmagazine.net, and feel free to share your favorite memories of Animation Magazine by emailing us at edit@animationmagazine.net. [

great successes. The short was featured on CNN and co-produced by - pany Working Nation. Another top project was Champions of Eternity an original animated TV series about role-playing gamers.

The future of Animation Libation Studios is to continue to collaborate with artists and animators around the world. We now have our own animation channel (Animation Libation) on the Roku platform which features original animation. As our artistic community thrives with each passing year, our festival grows, and the studio’s and the The World Animation Celebration’s possibilities are endless.

Book, to his work in motion graphics and computer graphics. VR Village Program chair Denise Quesnel says, with the VR Village now in its third year, it feels like it’s officially a part of the conference. The program has grown so quickly — this year more than 160 submissions were received — that a theme was added for the first time: Multisensory Experiences and Diversity Across Experiences.

“We’re starting to agree that this is a technology and also a medium,” says Quesnel. “VR can be many things to many different people but it’s also being created by a lot of different people all over the world from different backgrounds and is showing itself as a not just a tool but a medium that can tell stories that can connect people and that can provide you with an embodied multisensory experience that you can’t get with other digital mediums. So we really want to get to the root of what that meant to a lot of these contributors and see what they would come up with.” Computer Animation Festival

The big news at the CAF is the addition of VR projects, 10 of which will be shown in the VR Theater.

“We wanted to open the festival to the new creators that are experimenting with VR, offering them a new space where they can safely show their creations and also get feedback from the audience,” says SIGGRAPH 2017 Computer Animation Festival Director Pol Jeremias.

There will be morning and evening programs, each presenting five VR projects, in the VR Theater. The Electronic Theater will show 25 pieces ranging from advertising, vi- sualization, and simulation to visual effects, game cinematics and reels from studios such as Industrial Light & Magic, Pixar, Weta Digital, MPC and Epic Games.

The festival also has added Q&A sessions set for Aug. 2 with the accepted films’ directors. One panel will feature directors of films seen in the Electronic Theater; the other the VR Theater offerings.

And the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences — which recognizes the festival as a qualifying one for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar — will host for the first time a panel. Titled “The Academy’s Scientific and Technical Awards: The Technology, the Awardees, and the Process,” the session will cover some of the award-winning technologies, the history of the work leading to the awards, as well as details of the Scientific and Technical Award process.

Already announced are the winners of the 2017 Computer Animation Festival Awards :

Best in Show: Song of a Toad, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, Kariem Saleh (Germany).

Jury’s Choice: John Lewis Buster the Boxer, Moving Picture Company, Dougal Wilson (United Kingdom).

Best Student Project: Garden Party, MOPA, Théophile Dufresne, Florian Babikian, Gabriel Grapperon, Lucas Navarro, Vincent Bayoux, Victor Caire (France). [

Rainmaker turns to Epic’s Unreal Engine to create a hybrid pipeline for ReBoot: The Guardian Code, the long-awaited reimagining of the popular and groundbreaking 1990s series. By Tom McLean. is its

If it’s summer and you’re surrounded by 120,000 of your fellow fans, it must be time for Comic-Con International: San Diego. The 48th edition of the king of all comic conventions is set this year with preview night July 19, and the con itself running July 20-23 at the San Diego Convention Center and environs.

Here’s a rundown of events we think will give even the most hard-core toon fans the ultimate Comic-Con experience.

On the Floor Sure to please fans of its many shows, Nickelodeon’s booth offers an immersive experience focused on its characters. The SpongeBob Pineapple Experience is a 23-foot pineapple that lets attendees immerse themselves inside the world of SpongeBob SquarePants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or The Loud House for an interactive game and video capture experience. There’s also a customized T-shirt station and a Hey Arnold! photo opp featuring Helga’s Shrine.

Panel Highlights Yes, many animated programs and movies will be at the show to promote themselves to die-hard fans and potential viewers, but there’s another level of panels that focus on animation as an industry and as an art form that will definitely up your toon IQ.

July 20 The Future Is Female: Women in Animation, 10 a.m., Room 7AB

Comic Book and Animation Ambassadors to the Rescue, 1 p.m., Room 9

Funimation Industry Panel, 6 p.m., Room 9

Inside the Voice Actors Studio, p.m., Room 11

Cartoon Creatives: Woman Power in Animation, 10 a.m., Room 23ABC

The Genius of Animation: Cartoon Legends and Game Changers Speak, 2 p.m., Room 23ABC

ASIFA-Hollywood: The State of the Animation Industry, 5 p.m., Room 28DE Creating Animation Content for Univision Targeting Millennial Families, 10 a.m., Room 6A Cartoon Voices I, 1 p.m., Room 6BCF Turns 4:30 p.m., Room 24ABC July 23 Cartoon Voices II, 11:30 a.m., Room 6A Hanna-Barbera 60th Anniversary, 2 p.m., Room 7AB The Business of Cartoon Voices, p.m. Room 25ABC

Around the Show As Comic-Con has grown, events have spun out of the convention center into the surrounding area. A couple of the biggest ones this year are animation-related:

Adult Swim is returning to take over the outdoor space between the convention center and the Bayfront Hilton Hotel, with Adult Swim on the Green.

The free event is open from 1-6 p.m. July 20-23 and will feature all-new games and updated experiences, including the return of the Meatwad Dome 4D Experience with motion seats. The network also will be broadcasting live its streaming shows such as FishCenter, Williams Street Swap Shop and Development Meeting from the park.

Each night, the event is transformed into Adult Swim’s Nighttime on the Green, which runs from 8-10 p.m., with lineups opening at 7 p.m. Each night will feature different programming: Thursday is Toonami night, Friday will show specials and original pilots.

You must be 18 or older to attend, and you can speed up your entrance by signing up at AdultSwimPresents.com.

The stop-motion studio behind the Oscar-nominated hits Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings will bring its pop-up exhibit The LAIKA Experience to San Diego’s Gaslamp District, from July 14-23.

The free exhibit at 520 Fifth Ave. features props, puppets, monsters, and sets from LAIKA’s award-winning films as well as fan art, a photo/GIF booth with LAIKA characters, daily drawings for a pair of Nike’s LAIKA-themed shoes, social media activations, LAIKA merchandise, giveaways, and more.

On July 21, LAIKA president and CEO Travis Knight will be on hand for a Facebook Live tour of the exhibit, starting at 2 p.m., followed by an autograph session. [

Now in its 19th year, Brand Licensing Europe’s 2017 edition — set for Oct. 10-12 in London — reflects the continent’s world-leading growth in this area.

Organizers expect this year’s event to top in nearly every respect the milestones set last year, when more than 280 brand owners from 76 countries brought more than 2,500 properties to the event, which drew more than 7,500 visitors.

New to this year’s event is Gaming Activation, a space on the show floor dedicated to the growing video-game sector. Other highlights include the Retail Mentoring Program; the always-popular License This! competition; seminars, workshops and panel discussions; and a live catwalk and product showcase.

We caught up with Sonia Morjaria-Shann, marketing manager of Brand Licensing Europe, for the details of this year’s event.

Animation Magazine: How does the licensing industry in Europe compare to the industry in America?

Sonia Morjaria-Shann: LIMA’s 2016 Global Licensing Study revealed that the worldwide licensing business generated retail sales valued at more than $251.7 billion in 2015, a 4.2 percent increase on the previous year. This is a huge and growing business sector.

The U.K. is the second-largest licensing market in the world, generating $60.1 billion in retail sales in 2015. Other significant growing markets in Europe include Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.

It’s great to see that the European market as a whole is outpacing the global market currently with significant growth across the board, particularly in Western European markets.

Animag: What new events or programs have been added this year?

Morjaria- Shann: Gaming activation zone, which will serve as an interactive space for demos and competitions and highlight the potential of gaming at retail, from concept to store.

BLE will also feature an expanded Brands & Lifestyle Theater Program to include more sessions during each and every day as well as interactive performances and demonstrations each morning. There will also be a newly revamped Product Showcase.

Animag: Who are the new exhibitors with animation properties?

Morjaria- Shann: Emoji, Crazy Bell Agency, Ink Group, Tractor Ted, Magic Light Pictures plus many of our loyal and trusted exhibitors across animation, TV and broadcast from across Europe.

Animag: How many attendees are expected this year and how does it compare to recent years?

Morjaria-Shann: Last year, the show welcomed 7,578 visitors, and this year we’re expecting at least 8,000, which is an increase of 5 percent. We’re expecting to see an increase in retail visitors by 10 percent.

Animag: What are the must-see events this year?

Morjaria-Shann: BLE of course! BLE also houses many events beyond just the exhibition itself, from the LIMA BLE Garden Party to the many events run by the industry charity, The Light Fund. [