Hasta La Motion!

DQ Entertainment, the Global entertainment production and distribution company recently announced that Lanfuest Quest the 26 x half-hour animated TV series, which is an adaptation of the bestselling comic and manga franchise Lanfeust of Troy, co-produced by DQE with GaumontAlphanim, France has signed various distribution deals for the series.

The series has been acquired by Disney Channel for its Free-to-air channels. Disney XD will air the series in Turkey, Spain, Benelux, German-speaking Europe, Italy and Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa (CEEMA) regions that includes about 50 countries. DQE holds the rights for the territories of Turkey, Middle East and all of Asia under the terms of the coproduction with GaumontAlphanim.

Acquiring a dose of Boys Action Adventure, the series has also been picked up by TVE (Spain), ABC3 (Australia) and Disney XD (Netherlands) and for Pay-TV networks, Biggs Channel (Portugal).

Lanfeust Quest follows the adventures of 14-year-old Lanfeust as he becomes the only hero in charge of protecting Planet Troy. Lanfeust Quest was commissioned by French broadcaster M6 in September 2013 and made its channel debut on 25 September. Following the commission, Lagardere’s Canal J also picked up the series.

Directed by Antoine Charreyron (The Prodigies, Galactik Football) and Tarik Hamdine, Lanfeust Quest follows the adventures of 14-year-old Lanfeust as he becomes the only hero in charge of protecting Planet Troy.

There has been active interest for the series from broadcasters and leading licensing and home video companies from other regions as well.

Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), the technology arm of Prime Focus, the world leader in media and entertainment industry services, has announced the appointment of Yuval Tori as executive VP for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Based in London, Yuval will be responsible for business operations in the region including business development, sales and client relationships.

EMEA is one of the most promising markets for PFT with client relationships like Viacom, The Associated Press and SONY MSM, among others. PFT’s CLEAR, the world’s first hybrid cloud-enabled Media ERP platform has huge potential in Europe; incidentally CLEAR was awarded ‘Best of IBC’ by the editors of TVB Europe and IBC Daily magazine back in 2010.

“We at PFT strongly believe in our Glocal approach – we think global and act local. Yuval brings with him strong technology leadership and local market insights which is critical both for our customers and our business. I believe his experience and leadership will ensure that we continue to grow our presence in the EMEA markets and successfully meet the needs of our customers”, said Prime Focus Technologies founder and CEO Ramki Sankaranarayanan in a statement.

“I have seen PFT grow from strength to strength. Its strategic agenda of expanding outside of India is clear from its recent Dax acquisition. I feel that is just the beginning. I can confidently say that the EMEA market with its very diverse media universe and established content organizations offers unique opportunities for PFT. I am looking forward to meet the colleagues from the industry at IBC this year as a part of PFT,” said the newly appointed EVP, Yuval Tori.

Yuval comes to PFT with more than 15 years of rich experience in media and entertainment industry. Before joining PFT, Yuval was Vice President, Sales at Pilat Media, where he focused on growing the company’s business in the EMEA markets. Prior to that, he spent seven years with Amdocs and Comverse where he successfully led sales, business development initiatives and managed alliances.

Yuval is also a former lawyer with specialisation in company law and torts. He holds MBA, LLB and BA in Economics degrees.

With the growing demand in the gaming industry, Dream Games, an Indian mobile gaming company announced Rama Force; the next generation of Indian mythology based fantasy real time strategy game for iPhone, iPad, Android phones and Android Tabs. The game will be released at a later date this month.

Rama Force attempts to take Indian mythology to people in form of a mobile game with the intention to connect everyone to the Indian value system.

“Indian Mythology is a collection of the most exciting stories about courage, family values and victory of good over the evil along with virtue and righteousness. In current times it is becoming increasingly difficult to share with people (grownups, teens, kids) the value these epics taught. The thought ‘how can we connect people at large with Indian mythology’ motivated us to come up with this unique concept of high quality Indian Mythological games, with out of the box game mechanics, which makes understanding mythology a great experience,” expounds Dream Games Head – Marketing, Umang Mathur.

This is the first time ever an Indian gaming company is launching Global content with Local flavours for the mobile gamers. This will also be the first time ever in gaming fraternity that Indian Mythology as a strategy game will be brought to the world of mobile gaming. In Rama Force players farm, and build a fantasy kingdom, assemble armies and wage war against the evil forces of Ravana.

Rama Force is a 2.5 D isometric game, which uses 2D sprites. It is a goal based game with nine levels; the first release has six levels with a game play of about 1.5 hours.

The game starts with the Aranya Kanda in the story of Ramayana, which shows Lord Rama spending time in the forest and mother Sita being abducted by Ravana. Both Lord Rama and his brother Lakshman set out in the forest in search of Sita. The game progresses with the help of the guide Shabri, who helps the player, move forward each step. From time to time players will see helpful tips being spelled out from Shabri in the game. The second level of game also covers bit of Kishkindha Kanda and goes onto Yudh Kanda in the next three levels.

This game also includes a deep, evolving farming campaign and other activities like pottery, cow’s milk preparation, blanket making, horse purchasing, Crops and fruits cultivation.

“We are heavily focused on digital marketing campaigns, using blogger services, SEO, Facebook buzz and YouTube for promoting the game. Out target audience are casual and strategy gamer kids, teens, young executives and soccer moms,” adds Mathur.

A total of eleven members were involved in making the game. An enthusiastic team of four did the art (illustrators, animators and graphic designers) along with one sound engineer. “We had a dedicated game producer cum game designer to take care of production, there was a team of three developers to develop the game and a dedicated team of two game testers, were involved in making this game over a period of nine months,” he reveals.

With Rama Force, Dream Games intends to take mobile gaming from India to next level where local content will be delivered for the Global audience.

“We want gamers to experience this unique game play of farming and tower defence as a single game, based on the story of Ramayana. People should love this experience, and for these reasons we are only using In-App purchase as source of monetisation to unlock three levels. The first three levels will be free. We do not intend to use ads at the moment,” concludes Mathur.

Dream Games wish to roll out version 2 of Rama Force in December 2014. Apart from this they also have a plan to bring out more quality Indian mythological titles, which they believe will be cherished by the gaming fraternity.

We had the pleasure of spending some time with Stefan Sagmeister at the recent FITC Toronto conference in April, 2014, and he had some things to say. See Sagmeister in Calgary at the CAMP Festival Calgary, Alberta • Sept 8-9, 2014 • http://campfestival.ca Stefan Sagmeister Partner, Sagmeister & Walsh Stefan Sagmeister formed the New York based Sagmeister Inc. in 1993 and has since designed for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO and the Guggenheim Museum. Having been nominated eight times, he finally won two Grammy Awards for the Talking Heads and Brian Eno & David Byrne package designs. He has also earned practically every important international design award. In 2008 Stefan authored a comprehensive book titled “Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far”, published by Abrams. Solo shows of Sagmeister Inc’s work have been mounted in Paris, Zurich, Vienna, Prague, Cologne, Berlin, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, Toronto, Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul and Miami. Stefan teaches in the graduate department of the School of Visual Art in New York and lectures extensively on all continents. In 2012 young designer Jessica Walsh became a partner and the company was renamed into Sagmeister & Walsh. A native of Austria, he received his MFA from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and, as a Fulbright Scholar, a master’s degree from Pratt Institute in New York. After his studies he worked as a Creative Director for Leo Burnett in Hong Kong and for M&Co. in New York. http://www.sagmeisterwalsh.com/

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