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News: Vishnu Athreya Named Vice President, Program Scheduling at Cartoon Network and Boomerang

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VAthreya '14

For Release: June 23, 2014

 

Vishnu Athreya Named Vice President, Program Scheduling

at Cartoon Network and Boomerang

 

Vishnu Athreya has been named vice president, program scheduling for Cartoon Network and Boomerang, it was announced today by Rob Sorcher, chief content officer for Cartoon Network. In this position, Athreya will be responsible for overseeing the day-to-day scheduling and strategic positioning of programming content for Cartoon Network, Boomerang and branded non-linear program platforms. He will serve as departmental lead for long-range calendar planning along with developing creative strategies for on-air stunts and special events surrounding the networks’ growing library of original, acquired and classic animated programming. Athreya will be based in Atlanta and report directly to Sorcher, who is based at Cartoon Network Studios in Burbank, CA.

“Vishnu has artfully produced high-performance schedules in territories around the world, and now assumes the U.S. role with a deep knowledge of our product,” said Sorcher. “I’m pleased we were able to tap our own international talent pool, and as a result expect Vishnu to be a unifying link for Cartoon Network worldwide.”

Athreya joins the Cartoon Network U.S. team after his stint as executive director of programming, acquisitions and development for Turner Broadcasting’s kids channels in Asia Pacific: Cartoon Network, Toonami, POGO, Boomerang and Cartoonito. Based in Hong Kong, he was responsible for driving content programming strategy for Turner in South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. In a role that included program scheduling, operations and acquisitions, Athreya was responsible for developing and furthering Turner’s broader kids strategy with new channel launches—specifically Toonami, a boys action channel, and Cartoonito, for younger children—and building strategic network relationships with various content providers. Over the course of his tenure, he was instrumental in propelling Cartoon Network to a leadership position in South East Asia Pacific.

Earlier in his career, Athreya was vice president, music programming and brand for Radio One, the BBC station in Mumbai. He began his career in advertising as a media planner with MediaCom India, part of Grey Worldwide.

Athreya earned a post graduate diploma in communications from the Mudra Institute of Communications in Ahmedabad, India. He also holds a bachelor’s of science degree in chemistry from St. Stephens College in Delhi, India.

Cartoon Network (CartoonNetwork.com) is regularly the #1 U.S. television network in prime among boys 6-11 & 9-14. Currently seen in 97 million U.S. homes and 194 countries around the world, Cartoon Network is Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.’s ad-supported cable service now available in HD offering the best in original, acquired and classic entertainment for kids and families. In addition to Emmy-winning original programming and industry-leading digital apps and online games, Cartoon Network embraces key social issues affecting families with solution-oriented initiatives such as Stop Bullying: Speak Up and the Move It Movement.

Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner company, creates and programs branded news, entertainment, animation and young adult media environments on television and other platforms for consumers around the world.

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Follow us @CartoonNetPR

 

CONTACTS:

Atlanta                  James Anderson                                  (404) 885-4205                    james.anderson@turner.com

Joe Swaney                                           (404) 885-0657                    joe.swaney@turner.com

Los Angeles          Courtenay Palaski                               (310) 788-6903                    courtenay.palaski@turner.com

 

 

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News: All New Creative Cloud for 2014 is Here

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AllNewCC_6.18.14

Well it seems as though today is a tech news day!

Today Adobe updated it’s Cloud apps and is saying it’s the largest upgrade since CS6. Among the most interesting is the ability to now print to a 3d printer via Photoshop which I’m still not too clear on but as far as I can tell you can model 3d objects and then print them via a 3d printer which is cool if you’ve got the cash to shell out for said 3d printer. Photoshop also got a new Blur gallery which allows you to add blur along any path and Spin Blur to create circular or elliptical blurs. They’ve also installed a new Experimental features panel which allows you to test drive and help shape new Photoshop features before they’re officially released. Flash CC got one interesting feature and two features they took OUT of Flash CC (2013). Illustrator got a host of interesting features  most notably allowing you to see the path you’re drawing before you drop your next point. A rubberband-like line from your last anchor point to the tip of the pen appears as you draw. Visualize where the next curve will go as you plot your next point — and spend less time cleaning up paths.

 

From their blog:

Major updates across our desktop apps

  • Photoshop CC now has Blur Gallery motion effects for creating a sense of motion, and the recently introduced Perspective Warp for fluidly adjusting the perspective of a specific part of an image without affecting the surrounding area. Focus Mask (did you see the sneak?) makes portrait shots with shallow depth of field stand out, and new Content-Aware capabilities make one of the most popular features even better. We’ve also added more camera support to Lightroom (version 5.5) as well as a new Lightroom mobile app for iPhone. The Photoshop and Lightroom blogs have the full scoop.
  • The Adobe Illustrator blog has the rundown on what’s new in Illustrator CC, such as Live Shapes to quickly and non-destructively transform rectangles into complex forms and then return to the original rectangle with just a few clicks.
  • With InDesign CC layout artists can now move rows and columns around in tables by simply selecting, dragging and dropping, which will be a big time saver. The new EPUB Fixed Layout means you can create digital books effortlessly.
  • The team is rebuilding Adobe Muse CC as a native 64-bit application and it now includes HiDPI display support for sharper-looking images, objects, and text.
  • Originally previewed at the NAB show in April, new features in our video apps include Live Text Templates, Masking and Tracking plus new integrations that leverage the power of Adobe After Effects CC inside Adobe Premiere Pro CC. It’s better, faster, stronger. Read more on our Pro Video blog.
  • Dreamweaver CC lets you see your work come to life. You can now view your markup in an interactive tree using the new Element Quick View, to quickly navigate, and modify the HTML structure of pages. The Dreamweaver CC blog has all the details.

 

Since Flash, Illustrator and Photoshop are the biggest tools in the Animation world, we’;ll focus on them. You can see all the newest updates to Adobe Cloud here.

Flash Professional CC (2014)

Flash seems to have gotten the fewest updates which honestly just pisses me off. In fact with every other update, they mention “And SO much more!” Flash? We got eight updates and only two are useful, to a Flash animator. Most of what they did for Flash CC this round is bring Back things they got rid of since CS6. Here’s a rundown on the newest features in Flash CC (2014) There is one promising feature though called the Width Tool which lets you draw variable width strokes; a tool which was already in Illustrator and actually has some promise in that it allows you to now change widths on the Line tool, essentially allowing you to control thick and thin on the fly in a drawing. gonna test that out and see how that works. In the meantime you can see a demo of the new Flash Width tool here.

They did allow for SVG export again meaning you can finally export vector again with this version of Flash CC so at least there’s that.

SVG export

Export any frame in your Flash project as an SVG file that can be scaled up and used in posters and other promotional materials.See it in action

Variable-width strokes

Draw strokes with widths that can be adjusted at any point. Create and save profiles for any stroke, or use variable-width presets.See it in action

Tweening for variable-width strokes

Add a shape tween to a variable-width stroke to create an animation as the stroke changes.See it in action

New Motion Editor

Back by popular demand, the updated Motion Editor gives you precise control over motion tween properties like color effects and transformations.See it in action

WebGL for animation

Publish animations to the WebGL format so they can run in modern browsers without needing Flash Player — and they can take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration.See it in action

Object-level undo

It’s back. Object-level undo lets you undo an action on one object without having to undo actions on other objects you changed more recently.

Projector support

Publish videos as Flash projector (.exe) files so they’re viewable even on systems that don’t have Flash Player installed.See it in action

HTML5 extension support

Flash Professional now supports HTML5-based panels, so developers can extend the app’s capabilities with new features and content.

 

Photoshop CC (2014)

Smart Object improvements

Maintain the links to external files by automatically packaging them in a single directory. You can also convert your existing embedded Smart Objects to linked Smart Objects.See how it works

Improved Layer Comps

Save time now that you can change the visibility, position, or appearance of one layer in a Layer Comp and then sync that change to all the others. Plus, easily see the attributes of each Layer Comp, and toggle a Layer Comp within a Smart Object.See how it works

Blur Gallery motion effects

Use Path Blur to add blur along any path and Spin Blur to create circular or elliptical blurs. The Mercury Graphics Engine makes all Blur Gallery interactions fast and fluid.See how it works

Focus Mask

Let Photoshop help you start a mask by automatically selecting the in-focus areas of your image. Focus Mask works great with potraits and other images that have shallow depth of field, and the Mercury Graphics Engine delivers fast performance.

Improvements to Content-Aware technology

New technology in Content-Aware Fill, Move, and Patch smoothly blends areas containing gradients, like skies, so you can create seamless, realistic results like never before.See how it works

Smarter Smart Guides

Forget trying to align multiple shapes or objects at exact distances from one another on canvas. Now you can quickly see the distance in pixels between objects so you can lay out content with precision.See how it works

Desktop fonts from Typekit

Choose the fonts you need from the Typekit library, sync them to your desktop, and get immediate access to them in your Photoshop font menu. Photoshop will even automatically replace missing fonts in your documents.See how it works

Font Search

Search for fonts by name, and see instant previews of each font to zero in on the perfect one.See how it works

Expanded 3D printing capabilities

Now you can see exactly where and how Photoshop repaired your 3D meshes so it’s easy to refine your designs in third-party 3D modeling apps. Get more accurate renderings of your models prior to printing thanks to WYSIWYG previews. And get support for more 3D printers and service providers.See how it works

Adobe Generator enhancements

Simplify the process of naming Generator assets and get greater flexibility in organizing the output from Generator by setting document-wide defaults, and by specifying subfolders for exported assets. Generator also offers new APIs so developers can create even more powerful plug-ins.See how it works

Adobe Camera Raw 8 enhancements

Heal images, fix perspective distortions, and create vignettes with greater precision. Plus, access an interactive histogram, before/after previews, and more.See how it works

Improved Windows 8.1 stylus support

Get to work quickly and comfortably with your stylus on Windows 8.1 devices, and enjoy smoother brush strokes thanks to higher-frequency sampling.

Expanded Mercury Graphics Engine support

Upsample images up to 15 times faster (depending on file size and video card configuration) now that the Mercury Graphics Engine delivers an OpenCL performance boost. The engine powers new Blur Gallery motion effects and the Focus Mask feature, too.

Experimental features

A new preference setting allows you to test drive and help shape new Photoshop features before they’re officially released.

Intelligent upsampling, even faster

Enlarge a low-res image so it looks great in print, or start with a larger image and blow it up to poster or billboard size. Upsampling preserves detail and sharpness without introducing noise, and now you get even more immediate results thanks to an OpenCL boost from the Mercury Graphics Engine.See how it works

Workflow Enhancements

Work faster and smarter thanks to new feature enhancements throughout your workflows. Now you have access to an expanded Color Panel; you can access your most recently used brushes, sync your workspaces, keyboard shortcuts, and menu customizations with Sync Settings; and more.

 

Illustrator CC (2014)

Live Shapes: Rectangles and Rounded Rectangles

Rectangles now have quickly modifiable corners, including independent radius control. Corner attributes are retained if you scale and rotate your rectangle. Now Illustrator remembers your work — width, height, rotation, corner treatment — so you can return to your original shape.See how it works

Pen tool preview

See the path you’re drawing before you drop your next point. A rubberband-like line from your last anchor point to the tip of the pen appears as you draw. Visualize where the next curve will go as you plot your next point — and spend less time cleaning up paths.See how it works

Anchor point enhancements

Fine adjustment of curves is now easier. New anchor point controls allow unequal or different-direction handles to be dragged as you draw to control the smoothness of each segment. You can even change a corner point to smooth without ruining your shape.See how it works

Snap to pixel, point, and grid updates

When snapping is turned on, your anchor points align perfectly to your choice of pixel, grid, or point. But your anchor handles should not. They’re now disengaged from snapping so you can preserve the precision of your curves and achieve fine control while editing.See how it works

Close paths with better control

Close your paths with precision and predictability. As you complete a drawing, you now have more control connecting the end and start points. Reposition your closing point or choose to break the direction lines to adjust the closing curve exactly as you wish.See how it works

Windows GPU acceleration

New GPU acceleration for Windows lets you work faster on Windows 7 or 8 computers. This feature requires an Adobe-certified NVIDIA graphics card with at least 1GB of VRAM.

Typekit missing fonts workflow

When you open a document, missing fonts are now automatically replaced. Illustrator CC searches the Typekit desktop font library and if the missing font is available it will sync through Creative Cloud with just a click.See how it works

All in all there’s a ton of new features to wade through. I just wish they’d continue to take Flash seriously. Clearly they’re gonna kill it.

 

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News: Adobe’s Ink And Slide Tools For The iPad

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3_adobe-ink-slide-apps

We reported on this last June when it was called Project Mighty and Napoleon and now it looks like the tools are ready to be released as Tech Crunch has a demo with it.

From the site:

Today Adobe unveiled the Ink and Slide, its first foray into the realm of hardware gadgets. The company describes the pair of gadgets as a “Creative Cloud Pen and Digital Ruler.” Basically, it’s a smart stylus that syncs with your iPad over Bluetooth and offers some nifty features when used together with Adobe Line, a new app available today for the iPad.

The Slide tool looks pointless to me but the Ink stylus is promising. It remains to be seen if it will support palm rejection, in other words not register that your palm is hitting the screen as you rest it to draw. Currently doing so invokes the zoom function ass well as registers the pen tool which creates all sorts of havoc when you’re trying to sketch. If it doesn’t support palm rejection it’s useless as far as I’m concerned and clearly shows that despite developers attempting to cater to artists, they’re not at all clear on how we work. No one wants to hover their hand above the screen for a long period of time and you’ll never be able to use the iPad for a serious work tool until they implement this feature.

You can read the full article on Tech Crunch as well as see a video demo here.

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News: Dreamworks TV goes live!

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Dreamworks-tv

Big news in animation today as DreamWorks TV has just launched it’s channel on Youtube. I see this as a big thing for a number of reasons. One, in that studios are beginning to bypass networks with their fickle preferences and long development schedules, and two they’re now developing their own programing which translates to more work for animators and artists in our business simply because some one has to MAKE that content. There are a number of animated pieces up there now including four new animated short series.

Jimmy Blue Shorts; created by Zachary Aufdemberg.

Talking Gorillas; about a trio of gorillas that wreak havoc on their wildlife preserve

Incidentally we interviewed the creator Ron Yavnielli recently here on Animation Insider.

The Report Card; News for Kids created by Jimbo Mattinson.

The Public Pool; created by David Fremont.

We also interviewed David Fremont back in 2011.

Finally there are a large number of clips from How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Puss In Boots and many other DreamWorks IP’s and I imaigne there will be more from their newer films as time goes on.

All in all, I think this will be a spot for the animation community to watch. Check it out!

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News: Pencil stylus set to level up with pressure sensitivity on iOS 8

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Pencil

As you may be aware Apple’s upcoming iOS8 will finally bring pressure sensitivity to the platform which is fantastic news for us artists! Engadget.com is reporting that Fifty Three’s Pencil new stylus will actually be able to give you lines as thin as a mechanical pencil! The article goes on to say you’ll be able to shade with the side of the stylus which is something I have yet to see digitally anywhere. Now if they have palm rejection, I’ll be in heaven!

Read the full article here.

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The Best (and worst) game companies to work for in 2013

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Best and worst game employers 2013

This should be interesting!

Game Skinny.com is reporting about who in the gaming industry is the best and worst to work for based on employees in 2013.

As it turns out Valve and Riot are among the best to work for which is valuable information for our readers to say the least!

From the site:

We all have our impressions of how good a video-game company is, but, for most of us, those impressions are formed mostly from personal experience as consumers and from a kind of Internet groupthink. (“Valve is good. EA is bad. Everyone knows that.”)

Here’s insight from the people in the trenches, who have an insiders’ view of exactly what goes on behind closed doors and can offer some brutally honest assessments of what it’s like to work for the giants of video gaming.

*UPDATE: Added the CORRECT link to the article.

You can read the full article here.